3 Things Goals Should Have

You've read and heard a thousand different things about goal setting. You know how important it is, yet the majority of you don't have written goals. Far too many of you are playing around when it comes to your goals. You have a few nice ideas about where we want to go and what you want to do in life, but you haven't committed to them enough to write them down. The upside is you aren't discouraged when things don't pan out. We never put ourselves out there and as a result we think we're safe from the pain of failure. 

The down side is, that its an illusion. Not committing to something, is a type of failure all its own. "Its hard to fail," Roosevelt said, "but it is worse to have never tried to succeed." Its' a failure in courage and it leaves you even more defeated than they guy who dared to take on the mountain and failed. Your neither hero nor villain. Instead, you're irrelevant. No one will remember or pay attention to the things you never dare to try. Should you live your life begging for the attention and appreciation of others? No, but we weren't put here to stay on the sidelines either.

Daring to do great things is about more than deciding to give it a shot and see what happens. Achieving great things is all about setting the right type of goals and pursuing them with everything you've got. As you sit down and hammer out what you want out of 2017 ensure your goals include at least three aspects.  

1. Energizing

Whatever it is you want to get done in 2017, make sure you're focusing on things that fill you with energy. You want them to cause you to leap out of bed each day, ready to get after it. Many of the goals you fiddle around with each year don't inspire this type of want to and energy. No wonder 92% of Americans fail to achieve their new years resolution. That's a an utter shame. If you're going to have any shot at reaching your goals in 2017, you can't afford to waste your time on things that don't get you out of bed before the sun, or keep you up long after its set. If they don't make you want to get after it, you need to set some bigger goals. The first step to making big moves in 2017, is to set your sights on mega goals.  

2. Measurable

How do you know who wins the Super Bowl each February? That's not a trick question, you look at the scoreboard. The team with the most points, walks away with the Lombardi Trophy. If you're going to make big changes in 2017, you have to define exactly what a win is going to look like. Be as specific as you can. You've got to find a way to turn that energizing goal into something tangible, something that can be measured. It's hard to hit a target you can't see. The second step to a great 2017, is making your goals something you can measure. 

3. Time Bound

You don't have forever to get things done. Life doesn't work that way. It might make you feel good to set goals without a definite time table, but it doesn't help you achieve much. How many of your friends have goals to "some day" do this, or that? Ask yourself how likely it is they'll ever get them done. If your not introducing time to the discussion, your not serious about the goal. Give your goals deadlines that make you uncomfortable. This will motivate you to work harder and get it done. Step three is to ground your goals in time, while remembering that if you don't get there you can always reevaluate and set a new time table. 

What The Best Men I Know Say About Telling People Hard Things

Part of loving people well involves telling them the truth, especially when the truth hurts and is something they don't want to hear.

Want to know who your real friends are? Ask yourself who has confronted you on your stuff, asked you hard questions and told you what you don't want to hear. In fact, this one quality more than any other shows you who truly cares for and loves you.

Given that part of loving people well involves telling them the truth, especially when it hurts and is something they don't want to hear, each of us should strive to improve in doing so.

One of the best ways to improve at something is to talk with people who do it really well. And that's exactly what I've done. I sought the wisdom and advice of a few of the best men I know. Men who strike the right balance of sharing the truth in love.

In this process several things popped up over and over again, and that is what I want to share with you today. When something comes up over and over, perk up and listen, it just might change your life. 

Of all the advice and insight I received as I reached out and spoke with others, humility came up more than any other. In fact, it was the first thing mentioned each and every time.

And that is telling.   

We hear this word all the time, but how often do we contemplate how a humble attitude would impact our lives? If I'm honest with you, I fail the humility test WAY too often. I routinely want things to go my way and get caught up in my own thoughts, opinions and desires. That's why I've found the advice of others to be so helpful.

So what does it look like to walk into a conversation with a humble heart. 

A humble heart is self aware

It takes stock of how it feels, what its thinking and its attitude and posture. It recognizes that anger, frustration and a critical spirit do not produce the righteousness of God and takes steps to deal with its own junk before addressing anyone else's. What's going on inside your heart matters more than the truth you're trying to share. As Scott Kedersha says, "We don't want to be people who say the right thing or do the right thing without our heart guiding us. It's like the Pharisees being white-washed tombs; clean on the outside, messy on the inside." 

A humble heart is kind

It doesn't speak harshly or rudely, but with softness and gentleness of tone. It is calm and collected, not bouncing off the walls. You've heard it said, but it is worth repeating that, it's not what you say but how you say it. Tone matters. It can either be your friend or your greatest hurdle. Jon Flaming captures the difficulties tone can present as he shares, "I could speak God's truth to someone all day long, but if it is not done with humility and kindness that person will never hear it." A humble heart recognizes that sharp and cutting words and actions are counter productive and make it near impossible for the other person to hear the truth in their words. Instead a humble heart seeks to do everything it can to be kind.   

A humble heart is motivated by love

It is genuinely concerned about the other person's well being and good. A humble heart is not looking to score points, win an argument or point out where others are wrong just for sport. No, it hangs in there and has the hard conversation because they are motivated by love. It's cliche, but people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.  

How To Overcome The Dark Side Of Lists From John Piper

How do you approach your day? 

Do you live and die by your "to do" list, or do you take your day as it comes?  

Boy do I sometimes wish I could take life as it comes. I am just so not that type of person. I am more characterized my the former of the options above, list obsessed. I am so committed to the idea that I take lists and the like to the extreme at times.

While I believe strongly in the power of habits and that accomplishments are by and large a result of the habits we cultivate, there can be a dark side to it all.

What is the dark side of list keeping?

Allowing the list to be the priority and believing that just by keeping the list all your dreams will come true can be an easy trap to fall in. One I've fallen in many times myself.  

Lists are great tools and can help us achieve many good and right things, but shouldn't be our end all. They are incredibly limited in their power and can crush you if you're not careful. 

Thankfully John Piper offers some truly helpful and insightful help to us in this 10 minutes of audio. It is perhaps the single most important 10 minutes of preaching I've ever heard. It is an excerpt from a 2004 sermon entitled, What Is The Will of God and How Do We Know it?, in which he discusses among many things the only way we can live the Christian life. 

Here is one of my absolute favorite paragraphs found near the end of this talk. Tell me this doesn't encourage and challenge you at the same time. 

"I don’t buy and large live my life by lists. You try to live your life by lists, either the lists will be ridiculous in its shortness compared to the 10,000 things you do each day or it will be so long you would die. There is only one way to live the Christian life. Don’t be conformed, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. It is our only hope. Life is too spontaneous. You just can’t live it by lists. You can’t live it even by the 10 Commandments, because 95 percent of the time you are doing stuff without reflecting on whether it breaks any commandment. You are just doing stuff. My biggest challenge is: Piper, be new. Be new. Just get at the core of my being. If there is any stuff, junk, pride, left down there that is just causing the stuff to come out unbidden and unplanned, get at me down here, Lord. That is the only hope, isn’t it? So concluding exhortation. Immerse yourself in God’s Word. Saturate your mind with it. I don’t know another way."

This short clip of audio has had a far greater impact on my life than any other, and I pray that it is just as impactful for you today. We can't afford to live our lives clinging too closely to our lists. We must have transformed minds, it is our only hope. 

Quick, I Need More Time Stat!

We are almost to the weekend and if you are anything like me, you're looking at your "to do" list and feeling like you just don't have enough time in the day. Can I get an amen on that one? Someone needs to invent a time machine, like yesterday!!

You might have missed it while your nose was to grind stone but someone finally figured it out for us and it could change everything about how we get things done.

It's called an alarm clock.

Before you get mad and leave, which can be oh so tempting when someone shares news you don't want to hear, hear me out. I promise it'll be worth it. Hey if its not, you can delete this tab. So win, win?

Think about it, what is one sure fire way to create more time in your schedule to get things done? If you said, getting up earlier you're exactly right.

We all know this, but how many of us take action on it?

We love our sleep like a fat kid loves sugar donuts and the thought of sacrificing any of it is painful. Most of that pain however comes from regret. The regret that comes from knowing that if we got up earlier we could change our lives.

I'm not going to waste your time making a case for why we all could benefit from getting up earlier. I'm just going to assume you agree with me and want to make some changes to your life. Isn't that why you’re here? 

So you want to get up earlier? Today I've got one ultra simple way for you to add one hour to your day in just one week with minimal suffering. We've all tried, and failed, to get up earlier through the years. We do really good for a few days, ok maybe we do good for like 2 days and give up, but for whatever reason we can't make the change.

So how do you make it stick this time?

Set multiple alarms on your smart phone.  

The introduction of technology into our lives has many benefits, especially in helping us create habits. No other device has been more impactful on us than the "smart" phone, specifically the iPhone. That little device in your pocket has enormous power and potential to help you change your life.

Sit down for one minute and set five alarms for the upcoming week, one for each day. Each day you will set the alarm for 15 mins earlier than the day before. You'll hardly notice getting up 15 mins earlier.

Your alarms should look like this:

Now that your all set. Don't give it another thought until next Friday when you set your alarms for the following week. If you want to keep rolling back the clock feel free to do so, or you can simply enjoy having an extra hour each day next week. 

How To Send Emails Straight To Folders In Gmail

How many of us receive hundreds of emails each day that clog our inbox or perhaps we just have a desire to better organize how we process email. I have written previously on this topic, but one area of automation that could be a complete game changer for you.

Wouldn't it be amazing if you could send some emails directly into a designated folder and never see them sitting in your inbox?

You're in luck, there is a handy little way to do this with most email clients.

Outlook does this especially well with what they call "rules". Back when I used Outlook, I had a rule for just about every type of email that came through my inbox. It was extremely helpful to me and my productivity at the time. Since making the switch to Gmail as my primary work email client, I have missed using rules for organization.

But I recently learned that you can do the exact same thing in Gmail!

It is easy and simple and can change your life in just a few short clicks. Below is a quick little guide to help you out.

Step 1: Open the email you want to send to a specific folder

Step 2: Click on the upside down arrow 

Step 3: Select "Filter messages like this" from the dropdown menu

You should see this screen next.

Copy the email address in the "From" field and paste it into the "Has the words" field. This should help also direct emails you send into that folder in the future.

Then click "Create filter with this search" and you will see the following menu.

Step 4: Select what you want to do with these messages when they hit your inbox. If you want it to skip your inbox and go straight into a specific folder, click "Skip the Inbox" and then "Apply the label". On the dropdown menu next to "Apply the label" you can select the folder you want it to go into or create a new folder for it.

You can also select to apply this "filter" to other messages or conversations in your inbox. This will process those emails you have already received according to this new "filter."

After you have selected all you want to do with these types of emails, click "Create filter"

Success! You have now set up your very first email filter!