Goals in life are very important. A goal is a tangible mark in front of us that we want to achieve. A goal serves as a good measure and a good motivator. It helps keep us focused.
Take football for example. I get to spend time with coaches. I know they’re very smart, but the referees want to make sure they know where the goal is. They paint the goal line a different color so that nobody can miss it. Some people in life never know where the goal line is.
Also in football they help us measure the distance to the goal so that a team can move towards it. It is marked off in ten yard segments. Those lines go all the way across the field. To help out even further, they break the ten-yard measurements down to one-yard measurements with little two feet lines along the out of bounds line. At any time a coach or a fan can look and see exactly how far the team is from reaching the goal. It’s not a guess – it’s specific and exact.
The goal not only measures, but it motivates. The purpose of each play is to make progress towards the goal. No plays in football are ever designed to lose yardage. The best plays are those that take you closer to reaching the goal. As coaches, teammates and fans cheer to motivate the players, they execute to reach the goal.
How well defined are your goals? What do you have in place to help you measure the goals? How motivated are you to reach the goal? Here are three recent examples of goal setting and goal meeting that happened in August 2018.
Clark Kent Apuada, nicknamed “Superman” by his friends, is a 10-year old swimming star. He broke the 10 and under record held for 23 years by Michael Phelps in the100 meter butterfly. He was a second faster than Phelps! Superman said that when he was 7 years old he set the goal of breaking Phelps’s record. He experienced the exhilaration of reaching his goal. He’s only 10. Phelps went on to win 28 Olympic medals. I can’t wait to see Superman’s future goals and accomplishments!
Haley Dawson is an 8 year old who set a goal for being the first person to throw out the first pitch at all 30 major league baseball stadiums. She just notched her 21st stadium at Fenway Park. She could easily find a good excuse because she has a robotic hand. She suffered from Poland Syndrome, a rare congenital disorder that caused her to be born without part of her right hand. A medical team in Nevada built her a robotic hand. She has a goal, and she is going to reach it!
Lalu Muhammid Zohri became the first Indonesian athlete to win a gold medal at the World Junior Championships in Finland. He ran the 100 meter sprint in 10.18 seconds, beating two of the favorites from the US. He set a goal to win it – and he did. One of the deterrents to reaching goals is our capacity to make excuses. Zohri had a lot of legitimate excuses. He was raised in a bamboo home on the island of Lombok. He had to train barefooted because he had no money. He borrowed $30 from his sister to buy shoes for the big race. No excuses for Zohri – just accomplishing the goal!
Nehemiah set a goal to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. That’s a very measurable goal, and he was motivated because God gave him the goal. He met a lot of opposition which could have been used as an excuse, but he miraculously finished the wall in 52 days! (Read Nehemiah 6.)
What’s your goal? If you shoot at nothing, you will hit it every time!
