Thinking Out Loud, Volume CCCLVI

If I set a goal to become a multi-millionaire by next Friday, chances are I'll end up disappointed. Now...if you think the main reason that I'll fail to achieve my goal is due to my lack of faith, why don't you try it and show me how it's done. I heard a story about an evangelist who said he believed the Lord was gonna save fifty people in their service that night, but the trouble was, there weren't fifty people there. I believe in miracles, but I also believe there are some prerequisites that we have to perform before we can see them happen. We cannot just kick back in the recliner with our feet propped up and expect to see all our dreams come true....if we're gonna see it happen, we'll have to do our part. Read the next two or three paragraphs to see why I'm saying this at this particular time. This is my first "Thinking Out Loud" for the new year, so I think it would be a good time for us to stand in front of a mirror and take a quick inventory of ourselves; then let's fast forward one year with a mental picture of what we want to be at this same time next year. How does the picture of the person you want to be in January 2014 differ from what you see now? I can see a lot of things about myself that I want to change. Now, are these changes attainable? The image that's looking back at me now is that of a sixty-one year old man. If I'm still around to repeat this process in twelve months, the image I'll see will be a sixty-two year old man. That's a fact that cannot be changed, so I'll be wasting my time if I set my goal to be forty-eight next year. My point is, it won't make sense for me to set unrealistic goals. However, there are some things that I CAN change, so that's where I need to put my efforts. There have been times in my past when I've made lists of New Year's resolutions that were a mile long, but at the end of that year, I was ashamed to even look back at that list. So basically, those lists were a waste of paper. I tried to change myself so drastically that it became unrealistic, thus I ended up changing practically nothing. However, it did bring about a change in the way I make my resolutions. I figured out that my new goals had to stretch me to my limits, without exceeding those limits. So the next year, my goals were much more simple. For example, one year I resolved to make more money and spend less. That's easy to say, but much more difficult to bring to fruition; yet it was attainable as long as I made a solid plan and stuck with it....and I did it. Wow! What a great feeling of accomplishment!! One year I resolved to become a better husband. You'll have to ask my wife if I succeeded, because the old me kept wanting to creep back in, but I kept it on my mind all year long, and, in my opinion, I achieved at least some degree of success. There's a health club right behind my house, and it's amazing to see the huge surge in their traffic during the first two months of the year, but by March and April, they're back down to their normal crowd of diehards. That's because people set all these goals and then slowly revert back to their old ways of living, and chances are they're less fit at the end of the year than they were at the beginning. Just like so many of you, I'm setting some goals for 2013, and they're not gonna be easy, but they are within reason. I've learned that I will feel so much better about myself if I succeed at attaining just a few reasonable challenges than if I make a long list of resolutions and have to admit failure. Not only that, but I actually DO become a better person by the time I look in the mirror the following year. Preston