The flow of my life generally consists of living day to day, doing the things that I know are right and not really caring about the future. The thought process has generally been, if I live "right" (a good Christian life), then I need not worry about the future. Why stress about things that I have already been promised will be taken care of? Even the Bible talks about taking no thought for your life in regard to what you will wear or what you will eat. God tells us to seek Him first and all the things that we have need of will be added to us. So why do I need to have goals?
The other fact in regard to my life and goals, is that most things that I want to do don't have timeframes attached to them. For example, I am working on customizing a truck and I do work on it from time to time, but I don't have a goal of being done with it in 5 years or even being so far after so much time. My goal is just to work on it. What's wrong with that?
A very close friend (not one of those friends that I occasionally talk to, this is one of those real friends that can tell you the truth whether you like it or not without worrying about the fallout of a disagreement. I would expound on this more, but I think I'll save that for another blog entry) confronted me about my lack of goals especially in regard to timeframes. One argument was, "how do you measure progress if you don't have a timeframe?". My reply had something to do with the fact that stuff is getting done. That didn't go over to well. Time marches on, and my projects and endeavors seem to span out longer and longer. Should I care? Should I change something? How do I measure the "success" of my life if I have no goals? Isn't it enough to press toward the mark? Do I have to be 2 milestones closer by the third quarter of next year?
In my life currently there are somethings that I would consider successes and similarly there are some failures. I keep pressing on. One thing that I have noticed in retrospect, again thanks to my friend, is that sometimes I just let things drag on and eventually get out of control and then have to deal drastically to handle them. If I would put goals in place to handle these issues in a reasonable time frame, I am sure I could reduce a lot of stress points in my life. I often feel like I am behind the wave of events in my life and I am simply reacting. I am starting to wonder what it would be like to be in front of the wave on somethings and then direct there conclusion and/or direction.
I realize that this entry is probably loppsided toward the non-goal lifestyle, that is only because I am more familiar with it. I am trying to remain open so that I can reap the benefits of both worlds. Now that my eyes have been enlightened (another aspect of a real friend) it would be irresponsible of me to ignore the potential peace that could come from implementation. I plan to work the mix and see where it takes me.
