Goals

A Practical Spirituality Exercise

 

When I used to teach theology, and honestly when I taught English and writing too, I used to give this goal-writing reflection a couple of times a year.  We wrote goals at opportune moments like the beginning of a new semester or the beginning of a new year, and, as time went on, we gave time and space to evaluating those goals, as well.  

 

Much of what I did with my students was reflection which also taught them something; I am big on learning something and then applying it to your life.  That seems practical to me, and, because most things are spiritual if you get underneath them, l call this kind of reflection Practical Spirituality.  I will publish a lot of blogs that are Practical Spirituality reflections and exercises that you can apply to your life.

 

One of the most foundational Practical Spirituality exercises is writing goals.  Goals are a lifestyle and people so often do them harshly, carelessly, or without true connection with their real self.  A big piece of writing effective goals is listening to our inner voice, but so much of what is in our heads is other people’s voices.  Sometimes that’s a good thing: Parents, bosses, coaches, teachers, friends, siblings, grandparents…these people help define who we are and help form us.  However, there’s a danger when we give over our OWN voice in our head to someone else.  

 

Learning to listen to your voice and to the voice of God is one of the most essential things you can do to live as your fullest, truest self, which is where we will have the most joy in life—even as we have sorrow, difficulty, and pain, because, unlike happiness, we can have joy even in the hard.  Today, the reflection and exercise in Practical Spirituality is about taking the time to really listen to the deepest voices in us:  ours and God’s.  Beginning to listen to these voices, and practicing listening to them, lead us to OUR goals, the ones that come from our true selves..  These include the big and small callings in our souls that will lead us to healing ourselves, our relationships, and the world.  

 

The following exercise will guide you in writing your goals.  In a couple of weeks, I will post an exercise for evaluating your goals.  Neither of these is an exercise in harshness.  Neither of these is an exercise in berating yourself, in practicing the critical voices in your head, in trying to make yourself into something you are not.  On the contrary, these exercises are to track your true voice, which is where God speaks to you, and to follow that to practicing, in real, normal, daily life, being your true self, as real as possible.  

 

When I was in my 2^nd semester freshman year in college, I wrote some goals and posted them above the desk in my dormroom.  I had only been in college one semester, and I had dated an older boy during that time.  We broke up over Christmas break, and when I got back to school, I noticed that many of my friends were really HIS friends.  I worried about this and so, even though I really need my alone time, I wrote a goal that said, “Go out every night on the weekends.  I DON’T CARE HOW YOU FEEL!”  This was very harsh on me and led to me either going out all the time, and then being drained and fairly mentally wrecked, or feeling guilty for not following through on my goal.  What that meant was that that goal was far too harsh.  It needed some tweaking.  As you write your goals, keep this is mind:  don’t be too harsh on yourself.  It doesn’t help.

 

Neither does listening to voices that are not yours.  My mom once read something about this and she has incorporated it into her life:  she says that one way to notice if the voice in her head or heart is from God is if it sounds like HER voice.  Sometimes, when the voice of her inner critic–or the voice of the snake, if you’ve ever had me as a teacher, and which I will get into at a later date—tries to talk my mom into something that doesn’t feel like her, she just says, “That’s not my voice.” And it helps her not to listen to it.  Not to be distracted by someone else’s voice, someone else’s goals, someone else’s path.  That other voice might mean well or it might not, but either way, it’s not her voice.  It’s not God’s voice.  And those are the two voices she needs to listen to when writing her goals, because those are the voices she needs to listen to when writing her life.  She has other voices she considers, but in the temple of her spirit, she listens to hers and God’s.

 

This is worth practicing, because there are a lot of things in the world that seek to throw us off, to make it hard to hear our own voice.  So today, take some time to listen.  To listen deep in your soul, and to notice: what is important to you?  What is lifegiving to you?  What is growing you?  And also:  What is distracting to you?  What is dragging you down?  What is life-draining to you? 

 

So let’s write your goals.  The best way to do this is to write them down.  You can also think about this or talk about this while you are driving or working out or otherwise not writing, of course, but if you want to get the most out of it, at some point, get your journal or a piece of paper or a napkin out of the glove box and write. Feel free to take as long as your reflective self needs.  Listen to yourself. Deeply. 

 

Take a moment to gather yourself, maybe to light a candle, to get quiet and relaxed.  Close your eyes, sit up tall, stretch your spine long with a deep breath and ground yourself in what you know with a long exhale.  Breathe in deeply and notice your goodness, breathe out and settle into the presence of God.  Take a moment to ask for guidance in your prayer, to ask that God show you what you need to see.

 

As you write your goals, consider the following:

 

Write:

• No more than 8.  We can’t hold down that many things, and honestly 3-6 are better.  Excellent athletic coaches ask their athletes to work on only one or two things at a time when honing skills or changing something.
• Beware of being harsh on yourself.  That does not help us grow.
• Check in with yourself:  Is this goal from YOU and GOD or someone else’s voice in your head?
• Set process goals, not outcome goals. ( ie, “Do my math homework every night” rather than “Get an A in math” or “Talk to my son every night” rather than “Have an awesome conversation every night”)  We have some control over our process but we do not have control over outcomes, and trying to control something that you don’t have control over leads to frustration, not progress.
• Be specific and concrete.  Let these goals be things you can actually do, in your real life.  Breaking a big goal into manageable pieces can be helpful in this.

Here are some reflection questions for discerning what your goals should be:

 

• Consider the six major areas of life:
  • How are you doing with your family?
  • How are you doing in your social self? 
  • How are you doing in your work or school?
  • How are you doing with extracurricular activities/with what you do with your spare time?
  • How are you in your relationship with God?
  • and how are you in your relationship with yourself?
  • There might also be a central loving relationship in your life, like a marriage, that gets its own category.  If that is true for you, how are you doing in your relationship?

• What do you want to continue?  Where are you living just exactly as you want to be living?  

• What do you want to build on?  Where do you sense a thing that has a good foundation that would support growing or deepening? How can you give time and space to this thing?

• Where are you not living as you’d like to be living?  Can you identify something to change, to cut, or to work on, while being gentle with yourself?

Writing: 

• Upon considering all these things, write out 3-8 goals for your new year.  Don’t make too many; that will water down the whole and burden you.  Really MEAN the goals you write—make sure it’s something that your heart wants and is willing to work toward, not something that comes from someone else’s voice in your head…or what you THINK someone is thinking in their head.

• We will check in with these goals occasionally.  You might also physically post them somewhere where you can see them, and you can absolutely check in with them on your own anytime you like.  

• If and only if you have time:  write a chunky paragraph on each of your goals.  Outline
  • why this goal is important (notice if it feels forced as you write…that’s a sign of desolation, a sign that it is not authentic and not from God)
  • what will be the challenges in pursuing this goal (if it’s a good goal, the dark side will certainly want to subvert it)
  • and who/what will be helpful in fulfilling your goal…and how you can avail yourself of their help.

Reflection songs to help you get into your deep self:

• Heavy, sung by Birdtalker
• Below My Feet, sung by Mumford and Sons
• I’m Gonna Be, sung by Post Malone

I pray for you as you get into your goals, as you get into your new year.  Seek to have this year be a year when you listen to yourself, when you let yourself be in the quiet, even if it is loud around you, and allow yourself to begin to hear that still, small voice, that says to you, “You are my beloved.  With you, I am well pleased.”  Know that you are loved and pleasing to God, exactly as you are, and allow yourself to continue growing into the truest version of yourself, through evaluating your life and writing and acting upon goals.  

 

May God be with you as you do this brave thing in the presence of Love.

 

Peace and love to you, today and always.  Until next time.

 

solacecoachingcompany.com

@asrealaspossible 

 

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