Friends, it is a new month! This year is really racing fast! Just a couple of weeks ago, we had the new year celebration! God has brought us through this far and we need to be thankful to Him. However, some of us have had some experiences that has left us a bit winded and struggling for air. Our knees ache and we just feel like quitting the race. No friend, this is not the time to quit. This is not the time to give up on your dreams and desires. This is the time to refocus and pick up speed.
Now is the best time for you to review your strategy for this lap of the year. Doing this will help you to stay on the path to your goals. So how do we review our strategy?
#1. Look at your goals again. Unless you are like some people who list goals for the year and put then in a drawer till the end of the year, you probably would have made efforts towards your goals, and probably experienced some failure. Sit down and take a look at your method again. Look for a new approach, a new path to your goals. If you have accomplished your goals, good for you. However, do not rest your oars yet. Set new goals for yourself.
#2. Be positive (Have faith). David is a classic example of a man who was positive. He stood before the giant and told him he was going to knock him down. And he did. In the race towards our goals, we need to be positive. Challenges and hurdles will be placed before us but we need to overcome them to move forward. Being positive is having faith that your goal is attainable and that you will get there, no matter what.
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” – Winston Churchill
#3. Study. There is a chinese saying, “study hard and make progress everyday.” When David wanted to challenge Goliath, he went to pick five smooth stones. You also need such “stones” to make your goals and these stones represent knowledge. Like I emphasise, the most important source of knowledge is God’s word. Scripture says,
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children – Hosea 4:6
We are certainly limited to a large extent by what we know. Now, what knowledge are we talking about here? Are saying we should head up to the library and pick the largest book on the shelf? Certainly not. We are talking about knowledge that will get you to where you are going and the way you get it is to ask questions.
“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge” – Thomas Berger
Such knowledge is very valuable because it can prevent you from making the mistakes people who have treaded the path before you have made. But we should also know that knowledge on its own is ineffective.
“Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice” – Anton Chekhov
#4. Avoid time wasters. Time is the only resource that is shared to everyone equally. It time that we will trade for all that we will posses in life. You should know that time is your greatest resource. How well you manage your time will determine to a large extent how successful you become. Avoid time wasters and they are many – procrastination, idle chatter, sleep (when it is too much), TV, gossip, and the list goes on. Ask yourself each moment, “is this action contributing to my goal or not?” If it is not, stop it and use your time for a more productive task. We should note that resting is not wasted time. Your mind and body needs to be refreshed otherwise you will burn out.
“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t
own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep
it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it
you can never get it back” – Harvey MacKay
#5. Appraise yourself continuously. We probably heard about the Tomahawk cruise missile during this current Libya conflict. The missile is remarkable. It is a self-navigating missile that continuously checks its flight path to the target using an onboard digital map. This missile is terribly accurate. We also need to continually check our progress, a kind of self-appraisal, to ensure that we are “on target.” That way we reduce the risk of getting to the end of the year and discovering that we have missed the target.
These are just some points to note. Friends, you can make it if you believe. Many people have gone before you and have made it. Yours will not be an exception. But you have to make effort, you have to try. Don’t give up yet!
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step” – Chinese Proverb
See you at the top!
