Don’t Put Away Your Goals. Keep Them In From Of You

"New Year Resolutions suck!" shouted Mr. Lucky-Go-By at the top of his voice.

Mr. Lucky-Go-By once believed in making New Year Resolutions. Today, he is a grumpy old man. One New Year's Eve, he decided to sit down at his desk to compile his list of New Year Resolutions. He wrote them down on a clean white sheet of paper.  This was his first time to do so.  When he had finished, he picked up the sheet of paper, neatly folded it twice across its length and put it in the top right-hand drawer of his desk. He knew that it would be safe there. "I can always come back at any time to look at it each time I want to remind myself what my New Year Resolutions are," he said.

When the year was about to end, he sat down at his desk. He opened the top right-hand drawer and searched for the peace of paper on which he had written down his New Year Resolutions.  This was the first time that he had looked for this paper since the day he had put it away.  When he had found it, he unfolded it and laid it flat on top of his desk and begun to read the goals that he had set for himself at the beginning of the year.  He had achieved none of them.  "Maybe next year," he mumbled to himself, disappointed that he had achieved none of his goals.

He did the same thing the following year. And the year after that. He repeated this routine for a good number of years and he would be disappointed that he would achieve none of his goals each time he read the goals that he had set for himself at the beginning of the year.   "Why then do I keep on setting goals if I am going to achieve none of them?" he asked, with a frown on his face. "Life will decide my fate. It always has," he reasoned.  Therefore, he resolved never to set goals away.

Don't put away your goals. Keep Them In Front of You

The process of setting goal is not an end in itself.  You also have to keep looking at and pursue the goals that you set for yourself.  If you don't keep looking at them and pursue them, you won't achieve them. However, we oftentimes put away our goals soon after articulating them.  They may be written down or not, but we usually forgot them, put them on hold or loose track of them for a later time which never comes. And we don't achieve our dreams at the end of the day.

Are you looking at and pursuing the goals that you set for yourself this year? Do so if you really want to achieve your goals.  Don't put your goals away. Keep them in front of you. In Philippians 3:13-14, Paul says, "Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." Set your goals. Keep sight of them. Pursue them.