Should we focus on our goals or on our journey?

Should we focus on our goals or on our journey?

I have spent most of my life thinking about my goals but realized what I have been doing is writing and thinking about my journey.  It is with this thought I look backward and forward on where I have been and where I am going.

Goals are a great thing and I personally believe we should write them down.  I started writing them down when I was a senior in dear old Shidler High.  I spoke them to myself many times and many ways long before I wrote them down.  For example, I always wanted to be funny and smart like Jim Heath who was and is the smartest guy and the funniest.  We went to school together for 12 years.  I wanted to be fast like Hugh Allen Jones.  I also wanted to write real neat like Hugh Allen.  I wanted to be able to fix things like Jon Tanny Olsen who could fix any vehicle or tractor or combine long before he could legally drive.  He could just figure things out.  I wanted to be admired by my teachers like they would always praise the work of Denise Logue and Joy Frank.  Sure these are small things but they were the building blocks of what I was and am today. 

But what really resonates with me is that it was not as much my goals that lead my behavior but my journey.  My journey was filled with lots of small things that added up.  Some were bad things and some were good.  In fact I wrote myself a note today: 

• ·      By losing do you win?
• ·      Is losing really winning?

It depends on YOU, your attitude and how you reflect on those things.

I look in my rear view mirror through Christ who strengthens me and I focus on what I learned.  I look through my windshield where Christ deflects the bugs and the wind of my life.  Putting all of this together brings me to this conclusion:

·      Constant growth personally and professionally on a daily if not hourly basis is the brick that is laid, one at a time, cemented together creating a sturdy wall that I can stand on, reflect on and rely on when times get tough and when things are great.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• ·      A great journey depends on the people you grow up with
• ·      A great journey depends on the people you surround yourself with
• ·      And a great journey depends on how you ground your morals, principles and ethics in life and it was a free gift

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com