I
remember last year in Mr. Long’s class he would make us write goals every week.
He would tell us to make goals that are for a short amount of time or goals
that we want to accomplish the next week. He would have us write a medium goal,
something that we wanted to accomplish by mid-term or by the end of the nine
weeks. Lastly, he would make us write a long-term goal. Not to be mean but I thought
this was the dumbest assignment in the world. Every week he would tell us to
pull out our goal list and then we would have to report on how we did on the
short term goal, and then we would have to report on how we're progressing
towards the other goals. Every week I would write some lame goal that I knew I would
accomplish with little to no effort. Sadly, I continued to do this for most of
the year and did not write a serious goal.
However,
now that I am a mature senior, goals are becoming more important to me. May is
coming quite quickly. Before I know it I am going to be graduated and then it
is completely up to me how I make my life and quite frankly, if I do not have
goals then I am not going anywhere.
Mr.
Long always told us that if you do not write the goal down, then it does not
count as a goal and you are less likely to accomplish it. That is what I need
to work on. I have goals in my head that I want to accomplish but I need to
take those goals and put them on paper. One of the best feelings you can have
is when you accomplish a long-term goal. Ever since I turned twelve years old
my dad always told me that I am going to be an Eagle Scout. This became one of
my goals that I wanted to accomplish.
Just in
case you did not know you can only obtain your Eagle Scout award between the
ages of twelve and eighteen. Well, I turned eighteen on the sixteenth of this
month and I still was not an Eagle Scout on the first of this month. So I had
to make a mad dash and hurry and finish all of the requirements. After a few
stressful weeks and a ton of phone calls I finally achieved my goal and received
my Eagle award on the tenth of this month. Six days before my birthday!
As
seniors, we are ultimately in charge of what becomes of our lives. I know that
goals seem really lame and seem less important than other things that we have
going on in our lives, but I honestly believe that they are important. Mr. Long
used to always tell us that if we write our goals down and hang them somewhere
we see it every day then we will be more inclined to one day accomplish that
goal.
I totally agree that writing down your goals makes you much more likely to achieve them. If you do not write them down, you will likely forget them. I myself also made a goal to get my Eagle Scout many years ago. It is much harder than you would think it is. If I had not written down my goal, I would probably have never accomplished it. Also you have to want to achieve that goal. Without the desire, you are lost before you have even begun. The harder the goal, the more desire that is needed to achieve it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you so much on this. At the beginning of my junior year in high school I wrote all of my goals for that year on my mirror. I achieved almost every one of those goals, including making one of the all region teams for baseball last year. Just having those goals written down made me work that much harder.
ReplyDeleteI remember back in auto's my freshman year Mr. McPherson had us write down some kind of business plan. Being the young and dumb programmer I was way back when, I set up a plan for a software company. Him and I talked about how I could potentially do it, and since that day I had consistently worked at making that a reality. Only took two years for me to finally start up Proxima (switching to “Propelled Bird Software” soon) but I had to keep pushing at that goal. GOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAL!!!
ReplyDeleteNice Nathan. I think the majority of us can relate to this idea of goals. Goals always seemed like a silly thing to me too but now with May coming up on us so fast, they seem to be becoming more and more important. People always say that actions speak louder than words but if they are thoughts in your head then they are words. Just like goals. They may start in your head but according to the quote they don't mean much until you actually do them. Seniors especically need to remember this. Goals can only mean something when there is someone there to accomplish them. Good post.
ReplyDeleteThis is very true. Goals used to seem somewhat of a task but now that we need to make decisions they are so much more important. There was a story I heard somewhere where they took a person into some sort of water body, it was like a lake or a river or something, and had them swim a set distance. They took another person and put them in a different body of water and they had to swim the same distance. The first person could see where they would be done with the distance and the other person could only see water. Needless to say the first person won the race. Anyway, thanks for sharing!
ReplyDelete