Ready, set ACTION

Roll up your sleeves, tighten your belt and take a big snort of ammonia, it is time to get things started. You and I want change, but not change for change sake. We want a defined change and we want that change to redefine our life. Since we want the change, then all we have to do is say "poof" and it will happen. OK, that was far fetched a bit so all we have to do is pray about it and God will make it happen. Again, God is not a Genie in a bottle nor is He Santa Claus. Well, dang, the easy, no sweat ways won't work so how do we take action.

By now, you know I like things that run in threes--Stooges, strikes, Musketeers, etc. As for taking action, yep, I have got a 3 step plan.

DREAM
All good action plans begin with a dream. I find that people (including me) tend to dream way to small. The best part of a dream is that it can be huge. There should be no limits to a dream. Take for instance a bench press. Let's say that you have 100 workouts in a year and you start at a reasonable weight. In most gyms or the weights sold in stores, the smallest weights available are 2.5 pounds. The weight you select is easy enough to do 10 times without much effort. Every other workout, you put the weight equivalent to a sack of sugar on the bar. In other words, you will add 5 pounds every other workout (or 50 workouts) in a year. In theory, that would yield a 250 pound increase. Now some of you are screaming, "John that is not possible." I ask you to tell me why it is impossible. What if you only reached half that amount a year (125 pound increase) and you did this for 2 years (the same impossible weight in 2 years). Again, even if you only met that by 50% you will still have a 190 pound increase in 2 years. I have heard people say "shoot for the stars and you may still hit the moon". Do not suppress your dreams. And write them down. We will learn how to use that against you later.

GOALS
From dreams come goals. I see goals as the stepping stones to reach your dreams. Setting goals deserves a full blog to do it justice. Goals must be small, measurable and obtainable and once they are reached, can serve as a springboard for the next goal. The old adage "Inch by inch is a cinch and yard by yard is hard" fits here. Maybe the goal is to read your Bible 10 minutes a day. This may seem like an insurmountable goal but build on what you can do. For instance, maybe it is read a chapter a day and increase a chapter every week. It will be no time that you are reading those 10 minutes or more. I had a patient once that said she could not get out of bed in the morning. She started by setting the alarm and forcing herself to walk out of the bedroom. Sure, for a week or so she immediately crashed on the couch but she applied the same approach and eventually found herself walking to the mailbox. Her "dream" is to walk with her husband in the mornings and she is a lot closer than she was in the beginning.

RESOLVE
Good ol' Stonewall Jackson comes in again to save the day. As mentioned in previous entries, I do like me some Stonewall. "Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve". This sort of explains New Years Resolutions. We START with the dream and the goal, and then resolve to make the change. For me, they usually last until about 9pm New Year's Day. Resolve takes, well, resolve. Resolving to change takes hard work and dare I say, accountability. Accountability requires creativity and the next blog will show some creative ways that I plan on injecting accountability into my life.

What are your dreams? Can you manufacture goals to reach them? Then what are you willing to do to reach your dreams (that is where we get stuck)