I have been a goal setter most of my life. Growing up, I was very conscientious. I would get up before 5 am in high school to read the scriptures and make bran muffins for my family. I worked hard on my Personal Progress goals with our young women group at church. I shared the gospel with my friends, and was always on a diet. I achieved a lot through my goal-setting in high school.
I continued making goals as a missionary. In the LDS missionary manual Preach My Gospel, there is a quote I love by one of the current apostles, M. Russell Ballard: "“I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.”
From the time Paul and I got engaged, we would make goals every month. We tried to review them each week, then revise them the next month. We have pages and pages of monthly goal sheets in a file folder. Those pages represent a lot of faith, and even some achievement!
We continued to set and work toward goals as we had kids and our life got more hectic. We began achieving fewer and fewer of the goals we set. Until finally, we stopped writing down any goals at all. (I know, lame, right?) We were still trying to do the most important things: go to church on Sundays, attend the temple, have Family Home Evening, etc. But other things were slipping: exercise, healthy eating habits, not yelling at our kids, etc. We would go to church on Sundays, but dread it because the kids were so poorly behaved. (We hadn't taken the time to figure out ways to help the situation.) We would spend all evening yelling while trying to get our crazy kids to bed, then not want to do anything productive the rest of the night. So we'd eat junk and go to bed late, and wake up in the same grouchy cycle.
"Sometimes the thing that holds us back is fear. We might be afraid that we won’t succeed, that we will succeed, that we might be embarrassed, that success might change us, or that it might change the people we love.
And so we wait. Or give up.
Another thing we need to remember when it comes to setting goals is this: We almost certainly will fail—at least in the short term. But rather than be discouraged, we can be empowered because this understanding removes the pressure of being perfect right now. It acknowledges from the beginning that at one time or another, we may fall short. Knowing this up front takes away much of the surprise and discouragement of failure.
When we approach our goals this way, failure doesn’t have to limit us. Remember, even if we fail to reach our ultimate, desired destination right away, we will have made progress along the road that will lead to it.
And that matters—it means a lot.
Even though we might fall short of our finish line, just continuing the journey will make us greater than we were before."
This was so encouraging to me. Paul and I had been avoiding making goals for fear we would fail, as we had so many times in the recent past. Well, we will fail, at least initially, and I'm okay with that. But that doesn't mean I will give up. We've tried a few things to help our kids (one in particular) be more obedient and cause less fighting in our home, and nothing has worked. But we wrote down some new goals last night, and we're gonna keep trying.
I wish I had sat down and gotten the ball rolling on a lot of these things sooner, but all I can do is start where I am right now. My other favorite part of President Uchtdorf's article is this:
An old proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”
No regrets. Let's get started!
