As we set goals with His help, we will find greater strength, greater capacity, and greater hope to accomplish the things He wants us to do, to become the people He knows we can become. We will look back and be grateful that we set our sights just a little higher, because we will see ourselves becoming better human beings as a result.
Happy New Year 2019! As it is for many of you, new year’s resolutions are a tradition in our family. Even though by the end of the year, sometimes they are forgotten, it seems at least to get our feet set in the right direction and give us a chance to refresh and renew our strength to accomplish the goals we have in life, and to help us become just a little better. Yesterday we sat at lunch and started to sketch on a napkin some of our two son’s new year’s resolutions.
My older son Mason age seven began. He said he had a goal to be kind, to give gifts to the poor, to not eat so much candy, and to be healthy. My son Stanley who is four years old when asked what goals he wanted to achieve this year said, ‘Disneyworld’. These sweet boys in their own way developed a vision of what they wanted to happen in the new year and I loved their simple and sweet responses.
My husband and I wrote down their goals on our little napkin, and then congratulated them on their goals. We taught them what good goal setting looks like. Goals are more likely to be achieved when they are concrete, when they are achievable, and when they have a specific time frame. For example, instead of writing down, ‘I want to be kind’, you could write down ‘I will say I love you once a day to someone’. Instead of having the goal of being healthy, we could have the goal of drinking 8 cups of water a day, or eating at least 3 vegetables a day.
Goals are important, help to lift our sights higher, and help us become the people we want to become. When goals are written down with a prayer in our hearts, they allow us to become the people our Creator wants us to become.
As a missionary in Argentina, goals were a very important part of our daily work. We set goals, clear and specific on what we hoped to accomplish every day. Even though the work we were doing was spiritual in nature, we knew they were important to helping God’s children find joy in every aspect of their lives. These goals enabled us to reach higher, work more efficiently, and try to reach as many souls as we possibly could. They helped us to remember the urgency of the important work we were in of blessing others around us and strengthening the feeble knees. They helped us to keep our focus on the task at hand, and remember why we were there.
Growing up I would divide my goal setting into different categories: physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and social. By doing so I felt I was able to keep a good balance in my goal setting, and tried to improve in every aspect of my life.
What are some obstacles that could prevent us from setting goals? Some of us have to work through a fear of failure, complacency, or perfectionism. However when we learn to accept that goals are only guides to help us become better, and that we do not have to be perfect in accomplishing them, we see them as ways to simply improve.
I grew up through much of my childhood and young adult life listening to a most beloved leader of our Church, Gordon B Hinckley, encourage us to be just a little better than we were. He said in an April General Conference (a biannual meeting for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) in 1995, “Each of us can do a little better than we have been doing. We can be a little more kind. We can be a little more merciful. We can be a little more forgiving. We can put behind us our weaknesses of the past, and go forth with new energy and increased resolution to improve the world about us, in our homes, in our places of employment, in our social activities. We have work to do, you and I, so very much of it. Let us roll up our sleeves and get at it, with a new commitment, putting our trust in the Lord.”
As a young girl I always felt from him a confidence, hope, love, and trust in us that he knew we could accomplish anything in the strength of the Lord. Good goals are goals that bring us closer to God. A loving Father cares about our happiness – and so therefore cares about every aspect of our lives. I believe that goals can only be accomplished with His divine help. He is the one who gives us the strength, the desire, and opens the doors for us to accomplish anything He wants us to accomplish. When we are trying to live good lives, He will open and shut the doors in our path that He wants opened and shut. This is true in every aspect of our lives. Sometimes it is painful when we want something, but it is not what God wants.
I remember this happening to me when I was dating a wonderful young man. We had dated for some time and decided we wanted to get married. We set a date for marriage. Shortly after however we both had a sick feeling and felt that this was not what we were supposed to do. The more we tried to make it work, the sicker we felt. It was a painful time, because the love we felt for each other had to be stopped. Not long afterward however we both found companions who were much better suited to us. While I did not ultimately marry this young man, he helped me to know more clearly what I ultimately needed and desired in a husband.
I am grateful to a merciful God who sees me not only as I am, but as who I can become. I know that as His children He will help us to accomplish any goal He has in mind for us to accomplish. It is never too late to set goals and to try to improve. As we set goals with His help, we will find greater strength, greater capacity, and greater hope to accomplish the things He wants us to do, to become the people He knows we can become. We will look back and be grateful that we set our sights just a little higher, because we will see ourselves becoming better human beings as a result.
If you have not already, find some quiet time today to write down a few goals that you hope to accomplish this new year. You will be happy that you did.
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