
Each month I have the privilege of meeting with a group entrepreneurial CEOs and business owners who meet for the purpose of seeking wise counsel and integrating best practices for their personal lives and companies. Recently we've been challenged to articulate personal and professional goals, and commit them to paper. I've resisted completing this exercise, and, quite frankly, keep finding excuses to put it off.
In his book, It's Not About the Coffee, Howard Behar, former President, Starbucks International, gave me some insight to why I keep procrastinating this task of articulating my goals. He writes,
"Many, many people are afraid to follow their dreams. They are afraid of goals or at least resist them. They think goals take the fluidity and spontaneity out of life. And they worry about how they'll feel if they don't reach them."
He nailed me dead on. (Failure is a perfectionist's worst nightmare.) Then he gave me hope:
"But we need to remember that goals are not a blueprint; they simply provide a vision."
That little phrase unlocked the barrier holding me back from articulating my goals. Goals provide vision. He adds,
"Goals are emotional. If a goal is not working for you, you're not connected to it. Raise it, make it meaningful, make it touch something in you that you want. Or take it off your list. ... Think about goals that seem like dreams, goals that have so much emotion attached to them that you can almost taste them."
Goals are emotional because our goals should also reflect the heart of God. What is His vision for your life? What are His purposes expressed through you for His glory? What goal, if fully realized, would touch something so deeply within you that you know you would be fully alive? Here is the starting point for setting goals that matter, for life.
Where there is no vision [no redemptive revelation of God], the people perish; but he who keeps the law [of God, which includes that of man]--blessed (happy, fortunate, and enviable) is he. Proverbs 29:18 (Amplified Bible)
...I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10 (NIV)