Checking Our Compass

For many of us the pathway to obtain the specific goals that we set is relatively unknown, at least to us.  We’re in the dark.  It’s somewhat of a mystery to us and we have to figure it out in order to reach our desired destination. 

Imagine if we took a journey through a wilderness that we have never traveled through before. We wouldn't know the way.  We may not know east from west unless we had a compass.  If we had a compass and knew the general direction we needed to go was north, we could use this tool as a means of checking our progress. It would be like a guide. It would provide us with feedback and validation so that we would know when we were on the right track, when we were deviating off of it.  It would be important to know not just that we were deviating but to which direction so we could know how to correct our course.

Those whom we choose to put our trust in to guide us are like a compass.  With their help we can be aware of whether we're on the right track or not before we arrive at our destination.  This is helpful because goal achievement journeys can be long and costly.  We invest a lot of time, money, and energy into them.  Large investments make it more difficult to change directions. We don't like to waste our time or money. And once habits start forming they are hard to undo both spiritually and physically.  If where we end up is desirable THEN THIS IS GOOD!  Desirable destinations become abilities, talents, good habits, sustainable joy, and sustainable relationships.  Undesirable destinations become weaknesses, bad habits, virulent sorrow, and black-hole relationships.

The Little Things
President Gordon B. Hinckley told the following story about how even a small change of course can end us up at a destination very far from where we intended to go.

President Gordan B. Hinckley

“Many years ago I worked for a railroad. I was in charge of what is called head-end traffic. One morning I received a call from my counterpart in Newark, New Jersey. He said, “Train number such-and-such has arrived, but it has no baggage car. Somewhere, 300 passengers have lost their baggage, and they are mad.

"I went immediately to work to find out where it may have gone. I found it had been properly loaded and properly trained in Oakland, California. It had been moved to St. Louis. But some thoughtless switchman in the St. Louis yards moved a small piece of steel just three inches, a switch point, then pulled the lever to uncouple the car. We discovered that a baggage car that belonged in Newark, New Jersey, was in fact in New Orleans, Louisiana—1,500 miles from its destination. Just the three-inch movement of the switch in the St. Louis yard by a careless employee had started it on the wrong track, and the distance from its true destination increased dramatically. That is the way it is with our lives. Instead of following a steady course, we are pulled by some mistaken idea in another direction. The movement away from our original destination may be ever so small, but, if continued, that very small movement becomes a great gap and we find ourselves far from where we intended to go.

"It is the little things upon which life turns that make the big difference in our lives, my dear young friends" ("Words of the Prophet:  Seek Learning" by President Gordan B. Hinckley). 

A true guide provides feedback along the journey to confirm when we’re on the pathway to obtaining our goal and warn when we deviate from it. 

Feedback along our journey makes our journey more efficient.  We don't have to reach the end of every trail to know we took a wrong turn.  We can sense it in the beginning stages and make our course adjustments before we're thousand of miles away from where we intended to go.

The Listener by James E. Christensen

Because there are a variety of guides that conflict with each other in their prescribed pathways, their feedback will be conflicting.  Thus, it is crucial to have chosen who to put our trust in before embarking on our journey.  Which guide's feedback will we listen to?  If we don't make a firm choice, we will have to deal with conflicting feedback, which will confuse us and slow down our progress.

I have found the following questions to help me and my children when we’re trying to find our way through the wilderness of conflicting feedback coming from a variety of sources.

Have you chosen a someone to put your trust in?

When you engage in your journey, when do you receive confirmation from that person?  When do you receive warnings from him?

Are you experiencing conflicting feedback?

Who else is trying to influence you?  Who do you worry about what he/she/they thinks about you?

Who is on the same team as this person you have chosen to trust?

Who conflicts with this person?

Even if others are on the same general team as the person you chose, do they know about your specific goal and have you chosen them to help you obtain it?  Do they have the hope in you that your personal guide has?  Do they even know your potential like he does?

Goal Achievement: The Journey

We can think of our New Year’s Goal as our desired destination.  Getting there is a journey.  On Google Maps, we need to both enter in our desired destination and our present location.  It then provides a set of directions to get there.  We can see this journey visually on the map and we can see it in the step-by-step list of what road to take, where to turn right, when to merge, and how long/far it’s going to be between each step.

Present Location

Where are we compared to where we want to be?  How is this determined?  I determine it by taking a good, long, hard look at where I’m at right now in regards to the Specific Goal I have set.  I don’t want to evaluate every detail of where I am at because that will just confuse me.  This requires me to really know what my goal is.  Why do I want to obtain it?  What will change when this goal is accomplished?  What do I want to change about myself?  What area do I want to take a stand in so I can change things in those around me or in my environment?  When I can answer these questions, I can better identify my present location.  For example, if I want to change one of my behaviors, I need to be able to describe that behavior in relative detail.  What do I do now?  If I want to change a behavior in someone else, I need to identify exactly what they do now.

The Destination vs. The Journey

Choosing a specific destination narrows our choice of routes.  There are a few different routes to choose from which may even take about the same amount of time.  There are other routes we could take but they lead to other destinations, not the one we have selected for our goal.  Key:  If we choose a goal, our choice of process is narrowed.  It becomes more structured.  We are limited.  We need to comply with certain rules or laws to actually get there.  We can’t turn right at certain streets because turning left is the route to get there.  We actually can turn right but at some point, we're going to have to make a U-turn.  Most of us are okay with this.  We recognize the driving instructions are only helping us obtain our goal.  In fact many of us appreciate the structure instead of a loosey-goosey way of traveling (“Well maybe this street will get us there...”).  

The Long Way Around

Others of us can’t stand the confinement of specific instructions, rules, laws.  We want as much freedom as is possible to choose when to turn right or when to turn left.  We like to just explore wherever we are, taking side roads just to see where they go.  This is when the journey is more important than the destination to us.  In fact, we may have not yet identified a goal that is valuable enough to us to exclude other possible goals and therefore other possible pathways.  We are still exploring, shopping around, brainstorming, choosing—taking the scenic route.  And that is okay and necessary!  But the time must come when all of us need to make a choice.  There is time given to make that choice.  The choice needs to be made before time runs out.  Joy is in the journey and in the destination.  The destination is when we have the ability, talent, capacity, and positioning to help others on their journey.

We may also choose to take the long way because we need the time to become.  We may desire to achieve our goal with all our heart but need more time to actually develop the ability to do it.  This means that at least part of our goal is to improve the way that we journey.  It has something to do with our personal fitness—our ability to run, to climb, to endure.  Physically it may be our cardiovascular endurance, our strength, or our flexibility.  Spiritually it may be our patience, our ability to remain balanced in imbalanced situations, or our ability to empathize and get along with others.  Sometimes the only way we can obtain these goals is with time and repeated experiences.  Thus our journey to arrive at our desired destination may be the long way around.

The Mountain Journey

Every goal is a mountain to climb.  We may choose to take the harder journey straight up the mountain side.  We may need and have the capacity to travel at a more intense rate.   Caution:  When we speak about getting to the top of the mountain, it’s not about beating everyone else.  It's not about being king (or queen) of the hill.  We mean that every goal, when obtained, elevates us to a higher level.  When we obtain it we become something more than we were.  We have a higher, more complete perspective of life.  We just get it better than we did before.  This is growth.  How we use that new and higher perspective (to squash others or show off vs. to help others and demonstrate a solid example of where the pathway to obtain this goal is) is another topic for another discussion.  Any mountain climber (or treadmill user) knows that when incline increases, the heart rate increases.  It is also true that when we increase speed, heart rate increases.  Increasing both incline and speed makes for a more intense workout.  

Finding our individual target heart rate zone and staying within it enables us to endure to the end at a specific incline and speed.  This is our rate of progression.  It's our personal pace.  Journeying within our zone (and I'm not talking about comfort zone here) enables us to get to the top without keeling over or just wanting to quit (give up on our New Year's Goal) before we get there.

Choosing Destination and Time

If we want to get to a certain destination and we are presently located in a certain place, there are certain physical laws that must be obeyed in order to get there.  Because Scottie cannot beam us up, we have to climb.  We can’t say I want this thing and I want it right now.  As noted in the last post (Goal Achievement:  Choosing a Guide), there may be Conflicting Causes that say they have Beam-Me-Up-Scottie routes to obtain the exact same thing as if we had actually taken the real mountain journey to get there.  These routes are false and the results will never be able to satisfy us (see post:  The Value of Valuing).

Thus it is true that IF we:

1.  Choose our destination

2.  Unavoidably reside where we presently do

AND

3.  Have the capacity to progress at a certain rate (Our Personal Fitness Zone)

THEN

we can’t choose the time it’s going to take us to get there.  Bottom line.

If our goal is to obtain an ability, talent, state of joy, condition, or piece of knowledge for which the process to obtain it is presently unknown OR if our goal is to obtain a relationship that involves the agency of another, we can't choose the timing.  But if the process to obtain our specific goal is known AND we know our zone--our progression rate, we can establish time limits for each step to be completed.  In order to identify our zone, we need to spend time evaluating our past progression.  We are unable to set realistic goals if we don't know our zone--our capacity to climb that specific mountain.

Increasing Rate of Progression
We can improve our ETA (estimated time of arrival) by improving our Fitness Zone.  This is gaining strength and endurance both physically and spiritually.  If we can learn to handle an increased incline and/or an increased speed, we will be able to get there faster without keeling over or giving up.

More thoughts on the Goal Achievement Journey in the next blog post.

Goal Achievement: Choosing a Guide

I have tried to teach my kids that when we choose a New Year’s Resolution or any goal, we need to also choose a guide, mentor, coach, trainer to help us obtain it.  This is someone who has already achieved the same goal or a similar goal AND has the time, desire, compassion, empathy, and faith in our potential to assist us in our journey.  I call this person a Cause.

It’s hard to trust someone to help us who has not already achieved the goal we’re seeking to achieve.  He or she needs to at least have obtained an incremental degree of it and be ahead of us on the journey. 

Conflict enters a relationship like this if we look on others who are ahead of us with envy or jealousy.  We may somehow think that being behind them defines our inherent worth, or lack of it.  We may even think it’s impossible for us to achieve what a certain Cause has or that there is a finite supply of the things we want.  We may imagine there’s not enough room for us to occupy a similar position.  

It makes it harder when Causes act as if the above reasoning is true.  They may treat us as if we are not as valuable as they are because we’re behind them in the journey.  They may judge our inherent worth based on the fact that we have not yet achieved the same goals they have.   

If they fail to differentiate between our present position on the journey and our POTENTIAL, their judgments of us interfere with our ability to achieve goals for REAL REASONS.  I call a person who has achieved certain goals but DOES NOT HAVE the time, desire, compassion, empathy or faith in our potential to assist us in our journey YET ACTUALLY WANTS US (however unconsciously) to envy him/her a Conflicting Cause.

I saw this conflicting type of relationship in my kids when they had to trust teachers and coaches or even friends who treated them like this.  It messed up their REAL REASONS to identify and accomplish goals.  Instead of wanting to do it to gain abilities, talents, and strengths to be of greater service to their fellow men, they wanted to do it just to prove they were of worth.  They felt like they needed to be in some sort of a rat race competing for an exclusive position and status.  Get ahead of their fellow men, get to the top, pass others up, show everyone what they’re made of.  

Losing Cup Cake Wars

It’s so easy to get caught up in that kind of thinking.  Overcoming the influence of Conflicting Causes is a major feat.  The only way we can do it is if we have a True Cause—someone who has already achieved the goals we’re trying to achieve AND who has the time, desire, compassion, empathy, and faith in our potential to assist us in our journey.  He sees and KNOWS the strengths we already have.  He appreciates them.  He recognizes our present value.  It’s all sincere, REAL.  No fakeness in a True Cause’s ability to evaluate our VALUE.  He also is aware of just where we need help, the steps we need to take to accomplish our goal, what’s holding us back, and what pace is right for us.  He is dynamically gentle and firm with us.  He doesn’t let us slack off and he doesn’t push us to run faster than we have strength.

 

This kind of Cause almost sounds too good to be true.  Yet it has been my experience that these kinds of Causes do exist.  The one I have chosen is this way.  I have introduced my kids to him and have worked to help them develop their relationship with him over time.  You would think they would have no problem whatsoever recognizing the value of such a Cause and doing everything they can to be allegiant to him. 

But the issue is there are so many Conflicting Causes out there who offer all kinds easy ways to accomplish our goal.  They prescribe short cuts and immediate obtainment.  They pull up next to the rugged mountain path we are ascending in a bright red sports car and tell us we can drive to the top instead of hiking.  The workload on these proposed journeys is dramatically reduced.  It’s the easy way.  And sometimes, in the moment, these Conflicting Causes seem to be the best option.

Because all of these factors exist in our goal achievement journeys, I have tried to teach my kids that they need to choose their Cause.  Evaluate the people who want to teach, train, and coach them.  Take a good long look.  I want them to use their heart to guide them when they analyze the way a Cause has achieved his/her goal.  Check out how he/she treats other people who have not yet achieved the same thing.  And focus on the REAL REASONS for goal achievement.  Fight against the smoke-screen-purpose of obtaining goals to get ahead of everyone else as a means to establishing value and obtaining happiness.

Now that we all have most likely identified our New Year’s Resolution, the next step is to choose a Cause.  It may be choosing a book about a Cause and his/her journey.  It may be choosing a college to attend, a degree, and certain classes.  It may be choosing a company to work for.  It may be joining a community cause.  Whatever it is, we must know that this is our choice and we must actively choose it in order to arrive at our desired destination in the end.