Goals

I am very good at making goals. I like approaching them in an organized manner, and I'm pretty proficient at it. It's a two-step process. First I sit down with my journal and work on identifying exactly what it is I need to do. Sometimes this is easy - I want to run a marathon, for instance, and really the only complexity involved in that goal is figuring out when to run it. But when the goal is less clear-cut the process becomes much longer, and I may spend hours writing in my journal trying to figure out what is wrong, what needs to change.

The second step is to make a list - I love lists, and if I can lay out a list of concrete steps that will help me to reach my goal, I feel much better. Knowing what I am going to do to make a change or to accomplish a task tends to make me feel as though I have already fulfilled my goal.

The problem is that I usually don't follow through. I didn't realize this until yesterday. It's January and, as opposed as I generally am to New Year's resolutions, it still seems like a good time to reflect on the year behind me and the year ahead of me, where I was a few months ago, where I am now, and where I want to be at the end of the semester. And in the process of reflecting I've identified several things that I'm not completely satisfied with, things that need to happen, things that need to change. In my characteristic manner, I sat down yesterday with the intention of outlining a plan of action. I am going to be more social, I am going to be a better visiting teacher, I am going to work on forming deeper relationships with people who I have kept at bay as casual acquaintances, I am going to finish this project that has been hanging over my head for the last several months, etc., etc. I am going to be a better person.

And then I stopped and thought, "Why am I doing this?" I mean, in theory it seems that having a plan of action is better than having nothing, right? But the truth is, I have almost never stuck to a plan of action. This wouldn't be such a bad thing because at least I have goals, and "if you aim for the trees and fall you land on the ground, but if you aim for the sky and fall at least you land in the trees" and all that. But the truth is, setting these specific goals and then failing to realize them has set a dismaying precedent - I no longer feel obligated to follow through with my goals. I no longer put effort into these line-by-line goals because I am used to letting my feelings of the moment override my feelings at the time I made the goals in the first place.

That's not to say I am at a standstill in my life, that I am not moving forward in crucial ways (well, okay - I am not moving foward in some crucial ways, but that's how life is). It's just that I had an epiphany in which I realized that I have been getting lost in the details, and beating myself up for not following through on the little steps that I set for myself. What really matters is the big picture - "This is who I want to be." I'm not going to get there because I'm not perfect (thank goodness for the Atonement!), but I know where I want to be headed and if I stop thinking about the precise steps I need to take in order to get there, I may find that I move closer to my goal in ways that I didn't necessarily anticipate when I set out.