The New Way to Set Goals Part 1

Following Gretchen Rubin's system of setting goals from The Happiness Project, I've been tackling a handful of goals each month and each evening I either give myself a check mark (I did it!) or a dash (I didn't do it).   This system, drawn from the journals of Benjamin Franklin, has been astonishingly effective.  (You can find all sorts of downloads from Gretchen here.  But it's this one that has been my favorite.  I simply scroll to the bottom and print the final blank one.)

The next step in goal setting has been to not beat myself up about goals that aren't working.  I've given myself the opportunity to reevaluate each goal and make changes as necessary, always using the framework of following my personal commandments.

With, "The Savior is the center," as my number one personal commandment, I knew the big change that I needed for January was to kneel to pray.

A couple of years ago, Wendell and I went on a trip to Las Vegas for a car dealer conference.  There, I slipped and fell creating, what I learned later, was a hairline fracture in my knee cap.  There's not much to be done with such an injury, so the best thing I could do, was stay off of it.  Including for prayers.  It wasn't fun, but as time passed, my knee has mostly healed.  I'll admit that I still can't kneel on a hard surface.  But this not kneeling had become a habit that I needed to shake.  At the bare minimum, I could kneel for couple and personal prayers in my bedroom (on carpet) using a pillow for added cushioning.

In the Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis reminds us, "Whatever their bodies do affects their souls." Therefore, if I kneel before my Maker, my spirit is so much more likely to be in tune with His Spirit and my will is more easily conformed to His.  This allows me, to keep the Savior at the center of my life.

This was an easy goal, in a sense.  It was one I was able to accomplish perfectly instantly.  Few goals are like that.  But at the end of January, I removed this goal from my tracking sheet and am still keeping it perfectly.  This is what happens when a goal becomes a habit.