What Do You Want To Do

This time of year always finds me looking back to see what I did right the past year, what I could have done better and what I didn’t do that I should have done.
This past year has had its challenges, but there were many good things that happened as well.  It’s easy to forget the good things and remember only the bad, but I keep a private journal and looking back through the entries for 2005 some very interesting things happened.  I made new friends and I renewed old friendships that I had neglected.  While I made progress in some areas of my life, I let other areas slide.  It’s a matter of focus.
This coming year there are a number of areas of my life on which I intend to focus.  My health is good, but I have let my waistline slowly expand. This year I had a goal to “improve my health by exercising more and eating/drinking less”.  It’s a great goal, but not very specific. In order for a goal to be effective, you have to be very specific and place a time by which you intend to see improvement.  I currently weight 215 pounds so my goal for the New Year is:To improve my health by losing from 215 pounds to 195 pounds.  I will do this by reducing my caloric intake and increasing my activity level so that I drop about a pound a week.  I didn’t gain the weight in three weeks so it will take a while to knock it off.
In order for goals to be effective, they must be specific, they must have a time associated with them and they must be measurable so that you know if you are making progress.
I have also been saying for years that I am going to write a book.  You can say you’re going to write a book until you are blue in the face, but until you schedule time, sit down, draw an outline, sketch out the characters, and begin to write, the book will never come to pass. This blog has helped tremendously. It takes discipline to write daily, to play guitar, to sing, to get you real estate license, or to become a nurse.  Anything worthwhile in life requires that you trade your life force in order to make it happen.
It all comes down to wanting to do something in life.  You can go with the flow and get by fine, but at the end of your life, how will you be remembered?  As someone who “got by just fine,” or “someone that did something remarkable”?
I believe that we all are blessed with creativity, talents, and abilities that enable us to do things.  The question is, what do you want to do?