Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Goals


I don't know about you, but when I was a youth I had been advised at least a couple of times, if not more, to make a list of 100 goals.



100 Goals.

That's a lot! "Just write 'em down" they'd say. With a story of someone who did, and then put his goal sheet away only to find it years later and see that many of his goals had been realized without him even recognizing that they were. I thought about it and have felt from time to time that I probably should... but never did. 
       Years later (as in a few years ago) I was sitting at a BYU Education Week class taught by Randal Wright (one of my favorites!) on "Achieving Your Life's Mission". This class was so excellent that I was repeating it for the second time! Midway through the class he talks about setting goals. Goooals shmoooals! I don't like goals (commitment!). While I appreciated this subject the first time, I didn't do it! Here the second go round, I was thinkin, "Right. Shmoals." So I sat back, ready to NOT take too many notes as he continued to encourage us on setting goals. He even said, making it extremely easy, "Just jot some down right now. Listen to the Spirit. You might even get some ideas now." 
"Alright," I thought begrudgingly, Whatever Brother Wright. If something comes to mind, I'll just casually write it down on this paper here, and not worry too much more about it. So I start carelessly writing a few things here and there as they come to me. -Finish a Bachelors Degree... Visit England... and then something amazing happened! Ideas of goals that I never would have thought of came into my head. Neat goals! Cool goals! Goals that made me think "Wow! That would be awesome!" Now I began to write them more meaningfully, and as I wrote them down, I knew, in my heart, that these things would happen! I was taken aback! Breathless to believe the things that I could do and achieve! Things I never would have imagined!!




       I have loved goals ever since! I love to peruse over all of the little adventures and achievements that I so anticipate accomplishing! I'm excited, and look forward to the things that I will get to do, and plan on doing! Now I GET to make goals and I feel, when I write them down, a bond to them! Like they are attached to me and what I will do in my life! And I'm OKAY with it; with these commitments because I WANT them to happen!
Interestingly enough since I have written some goals down on my list of 100, I have seen opportunities arise for me to accomplish them! Sometimes I feel as if these opportunities are almost handed to me! It is such an amazing thing to see and feel the support of my Heavenly Father as I have written my goals down!
      This morning for our home-school devotional we talked about goals. I started my list of 100 goals in Randal Wright's class that day and have added to it over the last couple of years. I'm up to 60. Phheww! I still have 40 more I can add! :) In the mean time here are some quotes about goals that I really liked!


"Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor." 
Brian Tracy
Goals in writting are dreams with deadlines. 
Brian Tracy
I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacation with better care than they do their lives.Perhaps that is because escape is easier than change. 
Jim Rohn
"Goals. There's not telling what you can do when you get inspired by them. There's no telling what you can do when you believe in them. There's no telling what will happen when you act upon them.' 
Jim Rohn
We must be careful not to let our current appetites steal away any chance we might have for a future feast. 
Jim Rohn
"You must have long term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short term failures." 
Charles C. Noble



"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals."  Zig Ziglar


"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do." Epictetus

"The person with a fixed goal, a clear picture of his desire, or an ideal always before him, causes it, through repetition, to be buried deeply in his subconscious mind and is thus enabled, thanks to its generative and sustaining power, to realize his goal in a minimum of time and with a minimum of physical effort. Just pursue the thought unceasingly. Step by step you will achieve realization, for all your faculties and powers become directed to that end." Claude M. Bristol


If you go to work on your goals,your goals will go to work on you.If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you.Whatever good things we build end up building us. 
Jim Rohn

"If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings." Brian Tracy

"It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal." Helen Keller

"Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work." H. L. Hungt

"Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all your energies on a limited set of targets." Nido Qubein

We all have two choices;We can make a living or we can design a life.
Jim Rohn

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." Thomas Jefferson

"An average person with average talent,ambition and education, can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society,if that person has clear,focused goals." Brian Tracy

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals." Anonymous

"By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be."Mark Victor Hansen

"Begin with the end in mind." Stephen Covey

"When the promise is clear, the price gets easy." Jim Rohn

"Goals that are not written down are just wishes."Anonymous




"You'll never achieve your dreams if they don't become goals." Anonymous

"What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it." Alexander Graham Bell

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,or what's a heaven for?" Robert Browning

"If you don't know where you are going, you'll probably end up somewhere else."
Lewis Carroll


"Success is not measured in achievement of goals, but in the stress and strain of meeting those goals." Spencer W. Kimball

"No one knows what he can do until he tries." Publilius Syrus

"In the long run men hit only what they aim at." Henry David Thoreau

"One ship drives east, and another west
With the self-same winds that blow: ?Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
Which decides the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
As they voyage along through life;
?Tis the will of the soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife."
Ella Wheeler Wilcox


"Commiting your goals to paper increases the likelihood of your achieving them by one thousand percent!"  Brian Tracy


"Everything At Once" Lenka

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Friendly at F&E

I had the most wonderful experience this week! But this story starts further back. Months and months back. Maybe even a year ago. I can't remember exactly, but here we go!
So around a few corners and down a couple of streets from our house is a very convenient market. It's logo kind of looks like this:


A favorite of ours actually. A nice place, that's not too large to get in and out of in a few minutes, tidy, fresh food every day, clearance prices that are scarcely beat, and the workers are friendly. Yes, they are very friendly. A little TOO friendly! In fact there was one worker there in particular who happened to be foreign, which maybe explains a little bit of why her behavior was so, well, foreign. She just always seemed a little too overjoyed when the children and I would walk past the threshold and into the store. She would come running over to us to greet us with all the enthusiasm of a faithful four legged friend. Now, don't get me wrong. I love a friendly greeting, and if I know you by name, by all means, please! Come up and greet me with an amiable hug, but I had NO idea who she was and she would dote all over my children. My children didn't like it. It made them uncomfortable. It made me uncomfortable. This strange lady coming up and pinching my children's cheeks, giving them hugs, she even went so far as to kiss one of them at one point! This became a problem. My favorite convenient store is not so convenient anymore. To the extreme of when I pulled up to the store to grab a few things on the way home, my 2/3 year old would say "No! I don't like this store! I don't want to go here! No!" I, completely understanding, would find myself dodging into the store to avoid further frenzied greetings and to help keep the peace with the children while in the store. I would wait to enter until I could see that her back was turned, or she was helping a customer so that we could limit our encounters with her to one per visit! This was getting ridiculously out of hand! I had to do SOMETHING! What could I do? I didn't want to be rude. I thought about leaving a comment for the manager, "Dear manager, your employee is too nice. Please tell her to be a little bit more rude so that we can feel comfortable and at home here. Thank you. Sincerely, Cold Shoulder" No. I didn't want to get her in trouble for being "too nice". What was I going to do??? And then eureka I've found it! The light bulb flashed on and the angel on my shoulder said,"You could give her a Book of Mormon." and the devil on my shoulder said, " Yeah, if you give her a Book of Mormon then she'll want nothing to do with you like a bunch of other people did when you gave them a Book of Mormon. And then if she tries to bombard you in the store, you could just say, Hey! How's that book comin? And that would surely ward her off!" Yeah, I thought! That has about a 95% chance of working! I'm doing it! I had figured it out! I, in all my maliciousness, was going to give her a Book of Mormon! I know! Evil aren't I!?
Well, I thought, if I'm going to give her a Book of Mormon, I might as well do it right. The next time I went to the store I asked her where she was from. Romania! One Romanian Book of Mormon coming right up!
Well, it had to be ordered, but I didn't get around to ordering it and I just figured well, I will be going by the distribution center in a few months I can pick one up then. So months passed. And I stopped taking my children with me to F&E, and she stopped harassing me so much. In fact, I wondered if someone else had left a complaint to the manager about the problem with their nice employees. She backed off and became simply nice.
Finally I made it to the distribution center and I got the book even though I didn't need it as much for its originally intended purpose, but I got it anyway because this is what I had decided to do so I was going to do it! I traveled back home and planned to write in the book and give it to her, but there was no pressing need anymore so I didn't worry about it too much. But every now and then I began to worry. I have to give her that book. I got that book in Romanian for her and it's still sitting there. "Why haven't you given her that book yet?" would come into my mind. Frankly, now that she wasn't such a threat, I didn't want to bother her. But I had to now! I had committed!
I couldn't ignore the promptings that I was feeling to carry out my initially malicious act.
I decided to stop putting off what I knew I should do. I wrote my feelings of the book in the front, and tied a lovely ribbon around it, and I took one of my biggest guns! My second daughter who is all together charming and adorable and one of the things that started this whole mess in the first place! I handed her the book, knowing that it would probably mean a lot more to this lady to receive it from one of my little darlings that she adored so much than from me. I told Brenna that if, with a big smile on her face, she could give it to the lady, that would surely earn her a piece of gum! ;) We both knew that this is always a deal that she can't pass up!
As we drove to the store, finally with the book, I was just a little nervous and tried to think of how to make the situation as perfect and smooth as possible. I thought how ironic it would be if she just happened to be off and not working that day! I parked my car in front of the store and as I did so I saw 4 men dressed in suits getting out of their car right next to me. They looked at me, and one of them paused and called to the others for something. He approached me and handed me a pamphlet. Jehovah's Witnesses!!! Of course there would be other missionaries there the day I decide to bring a Book of Mormon into the store!!!! Oh well, what can I do but press forward. We walked into the store and looked for her. Man! It was packed! Every register was being used and they are all self checkout! This worker runs all of the self checkouts and she was busy! Hmm. We decided we would just have to do our shopping first and hope it died down enough. We finished our shopping and even dawdled for a few minutes waiting for it to die down. We began checking out while she was still busy helping customers and what do you know? Our register is demanding that we "Please wait for assistance". I smiled and waited. She came over to help, a little bit ruffled, I signaled Brenna to go in for the kill! Brenna handed her the book. Here was the moment of anticipation! Would she welcome it?? She took it, and looked at it fondly and sighed, "Oh. I have always wanted a book from the Mormons. But I never got one. I have always been curious about it and wanted to learn more about the Mormons. Thank You! Thank you so much for giving this to me! That was so nice!" and as she spoke tears welled up in her eyes and she pointed out how she had gotten goose bumps, and she was so grateful! I couldn't believe it! I was taken aback! I was touched and awed! That was the first time I had ever gotten that reaction when I had given a Book of Mormon away!  And it made me smile and laugh a little inside to see how the Lord had taken my frivolous "maliciousness" and made it into something useful! I am so grateful for his wisdom! And I look forward to seeing what happens with this!
As for my neighborhood F&E we took care of the personal space invasions. F&E is a great store! However, I do have to say how ironic I find it that I am still dodging in and out of aisles because now the Stock Clerk is STALKING me and telling me that he's glad to see me again!!! BWAAHHHH!


"Every Breath You Take" Police