“It’s never too late to become what you might have been”
– George Eliot
Archives for posts with tag: goals
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
– Thomas Jefferson
You spend the first part of your life working towards the necessities; you strive to graduate high school, then college, then to get a job, a house, maybe a family. But what happens when you meet prerequisites of life and find that you have time to spare? What do you do? Where do you go?
Some people get caught up and find themselves in a “midlife crisis.” Some people feel that college, family, and the norm is not for them and find themselves doing a whole lot of nothing. So how do you choose your next accomplishment?
Use some forward thinking and picture yourself much later in life. It’s a bit morbid but we soon realize that as we get older our knees hurt more, it takes longer to recover, and that beach body gets harder to obtain.
Will you look back with your aches and wish you would have run more? Will you look back and wish you would have tried sky diving? How long will you say “I always wanted to….”
You have one life to fill with as much awesome-ness as you can. If you want it there’s a way. Don’t be your own obstacle. Make it happen.
“The only difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people are willing to fail more than once to get where they want to be.”
“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
– Henry Ford
You have heard quips and quotes about everyone having the same amount of hours in a day/week/month/ year and how they use them. But more and more I see people utilizing all their hours/ days/ weeks/ months and still being stressed out about wanting more. This is a good thing – the wanting more, but do not stress out about it. It’s call priority, and it’s up to you to organize yourself.
I find myself hearing people “complain” in these situations. I always tell them that something’s gotta give !
As long as you are following your passions and living your heart, don’t stress.
I am a man with no patience, zero patience. When my mind gets stuck on something I want it now, immediately, all of it. But I have to remind myself that life doesn’t work that way – unless you are a lottery winner.
Things happen in stages. You have to stair-step your way up to your goal. I look at everything I have in life and have to constantly remind myself that it took all the years of my life to get here.
As long as you are using your time wisely – to whatever you determine is wisely, then you can relax!
People will judge you. People will disagree with you. People will seem to be ahead of you with your goals and you will feel discouraged. Don’t!
Continue to take the steps on your path, one at a time. You won’t even realize how far you have gone until you have reached your goal.
Ok you’ve had one week to get settled and make, practice, and hopefully not yet break your New Years resolutions. So what did you come up with this year? Let’s take it a step further: we are all going to try to get in better shape and save more money. So let’s throw those two down as constants. For the rest of your life you will practice those two and not need to include them in your New Years plans. Instead you can use January 1st as your check in date and see what progress you’ve made I’m 365 days. So write down your starting numbers.
Now, what unique goals have you set for yourself in 2014? Here are mine…
1) I want to utilize the “silence” and “do not disturb” function on my smart phone more. I think cell phones are great tools and they do amazing things. Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you my infatuation with my mobile devices. But I don’t need to check every alert the moment it comes in. I want to check them in the morning or evening or when I have free time for them. But not 6 times during a movie, twice during dinner, and every time I hear a beep or feel a buzz from my phone.
2) From seeing the local museums, to picking up tourist pamphlets at the local hotels, I always come up with ideas of things that I would like to try. I have tons and tons of digital notes on cool ideas. This year I just want to go. I want to drive downtown, head out in a given direction, and just go do it. There are free things and there are pay things, but what there isn’t is a reason not to do something. I want to explore my world !
3) I want to build this blog. It took my a while to even start it. I have plenty of ideas for it. And I want to continue to improve it for you and for me.
4) I’m pretty fortunate that I have been successful in a lot of my life’s attempts. And even with the ones I have failed at, I have learned from. If I have done this well so far, what if I pushed the envelope? I want to challenge myself this year, both in my personal and professional life.
What do you want to do in 2014? I’d love it if you’d post one or some of your thoughts in the comments section.
Cheers!
Wednesday was my grandmother’s (granny) birthday, she turned 83. And I don’t know if its because I’m getting older or because I live so far away from my family, but recently when one of my older relatives has a birthday, it really makes me reflect on their lives and then in turn, my own.
The thought process usually goes like this: If I were called home over the tragic news that something happened to family member/ friend X and I was asked to speak at their funeral, what would I say about that persons life? Clearly it depends on the person and most likely I would touch on all the positives.
BUT, what would people say about me? More importantly, would I be happy with everything they had to say?
See, I have a ton of ideas in my head about things I want to do and places I want to see. But often times I put things off because I don’t want to sit down and plan that trip to Thailand or I don’t want to burn the vacation days to ride a motorcycle across the country. But I talk about these things, these dreams, and say that I will do them – someday.
The problem is “someday” can get far away from you very quickly… I’ll wait until I have more money saved up. Maybe I’ll start on that project tomorrow. Once I retire, then I’m really going to get involved in…
There are always reason why you can put something off until later. But we lose track of our priorities and our goals because life starts to distract us. Sadly though, life doesn’t stand still while we wait to achieve these goals.
What goals are on your to-do list?? What steps have you taken to get closer to fulfilling them? If someone who knew you well had to stand and talk about your life, would they talk about all the things you did, or all the things you talked about doing?
Will you rest in peace knowing you did everything you wanted in life, or at least tried to?
GrowingUpGuy 