Well, it happened yet again.
We have officially started a new year. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, Nigeria, the UK, the USA, Costa Rica, Australia.
No matter where you are, by the time you read this the new year has officially started!
Want to know the AWESOME thing, God has given us readers in every country we listed! How crazy is that!
Anyways….
If you are like 98% of the world you probably set some goals a few days ago and are now working diligently on ways to explain why you won’t meet your goals in the near future.
Why do we do that?
I mean make goals for ourselves, never tell the world, then give up when it gets a little hard.
I USED to be like that too.
I would constantly set goals in my mind, then when I didn’t accomplish my goal it didn’t really matter because nobody else knew about them.
This one time I remember making a promise to myself that I would start running again.
Every day for the next 30 days. (because it takes 30 days to really create a new habit, or at least that’s what I thought.)
Then I ran the first day and Jenna said good for you, keep it up.
But she didn’t know about the “promise” I made myself.
Then by the 3rd day I was tired. My legs were sore. And I didn’t want to go for that run in the evening.
Not to mention it was COLD! And I’m a wuss. Lol
The thing is that if I would have told her my plans she would have encouraged me to keep going.
But…..
Because she didn’t know anything about them she simply said, “It’s cold out there, why don’t you just stay inside tonight.”
That was all it took for me to not put on my running shoes that night. And thus ending my promise to start running every night.
Now, this was a few years ago, we both work a little differently now.
Here’s the point to all of this. When you set a goal for yourself. Announce it to the WORLD.
Let everyone know what your goal is.
By doing this you do 2 things.
The first is that you now hold yourself more accountable for reaching your goal. Because you know that you don’t want to deal with Sam asking you at church every Sunday, “Hey, how’s that goal coming.”
and you have to answer, “Ummm, Welllll, I kind of gave up on it.”
NO
You want to be able to tell everyone you talk to who asks, “Yes I’m killing it!”
The second thing it does is it makes you start.
Setting goals is easy.
I want a private jet. That’s a goal! (a real one at that)
Now I have to start taking action on accomplishing that goal.
In this instance, I need to figure out how to make an additional 10 million just to buy the jet, then after that figure out how to make more $$ to hire a pilot and pay for fuel etc…
The thing to remember is that when you set HUGE goals they take longer to accomplish, and that’s ok.
2 last things to discuss.
While you are setting goals and trying to be true to your goals.
PRAY!
Prayer should be a HUGE aspect of all of our lives.
We should be praying for God to HELP us set goals that benefit him, not us. Maybe our goal would be to lose 20 pounds. How does that help God?
In tons of ways actually. If you feel better, and feel better about yourself then you are more likely to talk to others and then you can share God’s message with more people.
If you want to own a private jet how does that help God? Well, you can go more places and touch more people, not to mention go on more mission trips around the world.
When you set any goal, pray.
When God is for you, who can be against you?
The last thing to mention here is that I want to encourage you to set BIG, SCARY, AUDACIOUS goals.
By setting HUGE goals, (like owning a private jet or FLEET of private jets) then even if you don’t make it all the way to your goal at least you are much further than you would have been if you would have never started.
Think about it.
If I really set my goal to own a private jet, but I only ever accomplish owning a large airplane, I’m still able to accomplish more for God than if I would just said, “no this is too hard and it will never be possible.”
So stop playing it safe with your goals and start taking risks to reach your BIG, SCARY, AUDACIOUS goals!
Take action
Pretty much the last part of this was all about taking action. But here are a few things you should do TODAY!
- Pray.
Start by praying. Pray for God to guide your goals to be both a benefit to him as well as to you.
- Tell the world
I don’t care if you do it by calling everyone you know, sending out a group text, or posting it on social media. Tell the world your goals.
- Make plans
Nothing great was ever built without a set of blueprints. When you want to build a house, you need a set of plans so you can have the right amount of material.
Just remember that plans change and sometimes you have to take a wall out of the blueprints.
So don’t get concerned when you have to redraw your plans after you get started.
The most successful people are great at pivoting.
- Take action
Get started. What are you waiting for? Go out there and get started right now.
If you want to get somewhere you have to move. You can’t expect to get to town if you never leave the sofa.
So get out there and start doing something, even if it’s wrong. At least you’ll know the wrong way won’t help you this time.
- Pray
Pray some more.
Prayer needs to be a part of our everyday lives. God helps us to move in the right directions and guides us every day.
Romans 8:39 says, “neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
In other words, nothing can keep us separated from God’s Love.
A Little More
When Jenna and I got married it was our goal to build our own house, raise a wonderful family, and live close to our existing family.
You see, we started our journey with a blueprint.
A plan.
Then we decided to build our house.
Again we made another blueprint, this time a real one. Lol.
I still remember going to get bids for lumber packages and going to the banks like it was yesterday.
We went to about 5 different providers for building materials. And I still remember sitting in the office of one of them after I handed him my blueprint that I pulled up on my computer and printed out on an 8.5”x11” price of paper.
He literally laughed out loud and said, “you don’t really expect to build a house from this 8.5” x11” single piece of paper do you?”
I remember not getting upset, but standing up and telling him, “I can see that you clearly are not the right company to support.”
Needless to say, we didn’t buy anything to build our house from that company.
It doesn’t matter if your plans look like or are designed like anyone else’s, as long as you have a plan.
At the same time, we started talking to banks about financing.
You see we didn’t know much about financing, especially mortgages at that time. So, we went and got approved for a mortgage before we got our construction loan.
Which in end was perfect, because we would have never gotten a construction loan without being pre approved for a mortgage. But we didn’t know that.
Anyways as we went from local bank to local bank they all laughed in our faces when we told them that we were going to build this house ourselves while working a 40+ hour a week job.
For most people that would have stopped them dead in their tracks and they would have been filled with self-doubt.
But not me.
God had blinded me to their doubt, and it didn’t even phase me.
I knew that God would provide the PERFECT situation for OUR needs.
Anyways….
We finally sat down with a local bank, Alpine Bank. Neil was the guy we were talking to. He looked over our application and then called us to come see him. He was a young guy, maybe in his 30’s.
We sat down and started talking about how we were going to make this happen. He noticed our enthusiasm about the project and the fact that we were building my families homestead property and our children would be the 5th generation on the same chunk of dirt.
Later he would tell us that his boss told him not to fund the construction loan and there was no way that we would ever finish the house on time or without coming back for more $$$$. There was just no way.
But Neil saw our passion and perseverance.
He was impressed not by what we wanted but by us. A young couple with ambition. Ambition like he had never seen before, he would later tell us.
So against his bosses wishes we signed loan papers. And went to work ASAP!
Then in the middle of building our dream house for a wonderful family of 4. That’s right you heard me we had 2 kids and didn’t want more.
God gave us a little surprise.
Jenna came to me with tears of joy in her eyes and told me that she was pregnant.
RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF BUILDING A HOUSE!!!!!
WHAT THE HECK!!!!!
The one thing we didn’t want right now was to be pregnant. She wanted to be there to help build and we could work side by side throughout the entire project.
Well, our perfectly symmetrical house, 2 bedrooms exactly the same so that neither child should complain about having the smaller bedroom or feel that they weren’t loved as much because the other had more space. Was now thwarted.
Looking back, it was a HUGE blessing that this happened when it did. (And in case you didn’t realize that wasn’t the last child we had either, Jacob came a few later after that.)
Our goals and now changed,
So what did we do?
Make a new blueprint, not for the house, we had already poured the foundation so we had to pivot. And make adjustments.
Just like we always do when it comes to goals and planning.
NOTHING ever goes exactly the way it seems it should go.
Anyways. To make a long story shorter, we finished building the house in 14 months and stayed under budget by about 10K.
I’m not telling you this story so you can look at us and think, WOW they truly are amazing and can do anything.
I tell you this so you know that when you set goals and work towards those goals. You can accomplish anything!
The keys are to first set the goal, then take action, then pivot when things go as planned. (in our case we had to pivot on this goal about 1000 times) and lastly is to set a deadline.
When you set deadlines they need to be reasonable.
For us and this project it would have been unreasonable to say that we wanted to have our house built in 30 days. It might be possible for a TEAM of highly trained experts to do that, but not someone who had never built a house before.
The deadlines for your goals are the most important.
Also, you should know that when you make goals, they should be BIG, SCARY, & AUDACIOUS. When you think about them it should cause your stomach to do a little dance and get all squished up.
Only then do you truly know that your goals are big enough?
Remember that if you set your goals to reach the stars and you are only one the moon, at least you made it to the moon! That’s about a million miles further than if you would have never started!
So, get out there and start taking action on your GOALS today.
Comment on your goals and your “blueprint” to get there.
