Goals

I used to hate the word goals. I think my antipathy for goals began at the tender age of twelve, when I was introduced to the Young Women's Personal Progress Program. Personal progress always seemed so tedious to me. I would put off my goals until the last week or two before New Beginnings (the recognition night for the acheivement of said goals). Mom would always discover that I hadn't started on the goals and would force me to sit down and immediately make plans to finish them in time. This always seemed like such a tedious process to me. Did I really care what the definition of integrity was? Did I really need to write in my journal examples of times I had shown faith in my life? Without exception, I would end up picking the shortest and easiest goals to complete--ones like telling your mom you love her or doing an anonymous good deed for someone (I could always find someone's bed to make and have that completed in five seconds.) As far as I was concerned, goals were just another checklist to mark off as fast as possible so Mom would stop nagging me. I remember thinking with great relish "I can't wait until I'm out of Young Women and I never have to set another goal again!"

Obviously I realized the fallacies of this logic fairly quickly. Even after Young Women I found that there were times I still needed to set goals. When I started college, Mom helped me set goals to be more social and talk to people in my classes and at church. Dad "encouraged" me to set goals to earn enough money to pay for my year at the dorms myself, and later to pay for my mission myself (an encouragement I admittedly didn't appreciate at the time, but afterward was grateful for it). Begrudgingly, I had to admit that goal-setting didn't end with the presentation of my Young Women Medallion.

In spite of my continued efforts to set goals, my true conversion to goal-setting didn't happen until I became a missionary. As part of the missionary rules, missionary companionships were required to set goals we wanted to acheive for the transfer, the week, and the day. In addition, we were encouraged to work on personal goals individually. At first I found this annoying, tedious, and time-consuming, but as I began setting and acheiving personal goals, I was surprised to find that I actually liked it.

In the missionary guide, Preach My Gospel, in the section under goal-setting, it says:
"Goals reflect the desires of our hearts and our vision of what we can accomplish. . ."
"The ultimate measure of success is not in acheiving goals alone, but in the service you render and the progress of others." Reading this gave me a fresh perspective on the purpose of goals. Contrary to my twelve-year-old impressions, goals are not a torture-device created by parents to make their teenage daughters miserable. Goals actually make me happier. I love the satisfaction of knowing that I have set a goal and actually made it. It gives me hope and makes me want to try better. As Preach My Gospel says, "through goals, our hopes are transformed into action."

Lately I have been feeling a little bit down-- just not as happy as I'd like to be. It seems like life has become a boring trudge down the same barren paths-- school, work, school, work, etc. So, after some reflection I decided that maybe what I need is some new goals to brighten my perspective and give me fresh hope. With that in mind I came up with 3 new goals for myself:

1. Go to bed by 11pm every night. (This one will be the hardest, but I really want to do it. As motivation, I've promised to reward myself with a new haircut if I can stick with it for a week.)
2. Read scriptures before nighttime. (I always read them right before bed, and I'm always too sleepy to get much out of them. Time for a change.)
3. Write in my journal every day.

Already I'm more excited just thinking about these goals (and not just because of the prospect of a cute new haircut). It will be fun to see how my live improves from these few simple steps. At any rate, I'm off to a good start-- I already acheived two of them (scripture study and journal writing) for today. Now if I can just make it into bed on time-- I can picture the new haircut already!