Tag Archives: resolutions

personal growth

Less Is More

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As we wrap another orbit around the great gaseous ball of fire in the sky, humans scamper about our terrestrial sphere busier than ever, clamoring for more.

More stuff. More hobbies. More causes. More rights. More voices. More vices. More of everything.

More isn’t inherently bad. As we dream of what is to come in the year ahead, many of us are thinking of positive ‘mores’ we want in our lives.

We want to spend more time with family. We want to develop more healthy habits. We want to pursue more meaningful lives. We want more joy in our marriages.

But even in positive contexts like these, more can sometimes be harmful. As I think of the direction in which I want to grow and the healthy habits I want to adopt, I find I can bite off more than I can chew. I can set resolutions or goals that are too lofty or too broad.

If I say I want to be healthier or I want to be a better husband in 2018, I set myself up for failure because I haven’t defined what actions I’ll take to achieve this goals. When I read a blog that gives me 10 ways to have a happier marriage, if I go after all 10, I probably won’t achieve one of them.

While I do have overarching goals of becoming healthier and being a better husband, if I don’t break these large goals down into manageable, realistic tasks, I will never move forward.

If you have spent any time in the business world, you’ve probably heard of SMART goals. The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.

For me, setting targets that are relevant, specific and attainable are the only way I will actually have success.

  • Relevant – How does it tie into my bigger goals? Will it be impactful to my loved ones or me?
  • Specific – What exactly am I going to do? Who, what, when and where?
  • Attainable – Can I actually achieve success in this area? Will I actually do what needs done?

For example, I want to be a better leader in my home. To that end, I will be scheduling family meetings in 2018. I have already purchased a white board calendar and a white board where I can schedule the meetings for all to see and to jot down our meeting notes.

Our first few meetings will revolve around establishing a family mission statement. So I have already listed out questions to guide our conversation. And I have committed to this goal in front of men in my life who will hold me accountable.

These are some of the specific and realistic measures I’m taking to move me towards being a better leader in my home. They aren’t that difficult or ground breaking, but they are happening.

I have set a few other goals for 2018, and they are similar to this one in that I am taking specific actions to move towards mile markers that I know I can hit. And they are moving me in the overall direction I want to go as a Christian, as a husband and as a dad.

I’m not going to win a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 or chisel my abs into a six pack. But I know I will take several small steps that will move me forward in my journey. And I will end 2018 a better man than I am now.

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I Quit

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Effective January 1st, I retired.  No, I didn’t leave my 9-5 job.  I quit a brief, but illustrious, career as a zombie slayer.

You see, a couple months back I loaded an app onto my phone that launched me into a post-apocalyptic world where I had to survive zombie attacks and raids from opposing camps. I quickly learned the ropes and hardened into a grizzled survivor.

My team grew in strength. I collected better weapons.  I annihilated opposing crews, leaving bodies in my wake.  I joined a faction and rose through its ranks.  Then, with one quick swipe of my finger, I left it all behind.

I realized that I had compromised my real life in order to build a fictitious empire that amounted to nothing. The goal of game developers is ultimately to get users to spend real money on virtual stuff.  Because I’m so cheap, I refused to spend money on the game, which meant I had to earn stuff the old fashioned way, through the investment of my time.

When I started playing this game, I set out some rules for myself. I vowed that I wouldn’t play when I was spending time with my wife or kids, and I wouldn’t spend any money. The money rule held fast, but I let the other rule slip from time to time.

I found myself sneaking in quick battles during any moments of downtime. Then I noticed I was letting the game seep into other areas of my life. In my car before work, at lunch, in the bathroom, during my morning reading time, when I was supposed to be playing Barbies with my daughter, in bed at night – I was slaying zombies.

The beginning of a new year is a time when many of us take stock of our lives and seek to eliminate bad habits while establishing good practices. It became clear to me shortly after I started playing, that this was a habit that had to go.  Not only was this game distracting, but it was a time stealer.

I shudder to think about how many hours I actually wasted building a kingdom of nothingness on my phone. The game tracked how many ‘raids’ I did, and I’m embarrassed to say that my total was around 1400.  With each battle taking around a minute to complete, that is 23 hours that I threw in the trash can, not to mention the time I spent doing other actions in the game.

The moment I dragged the game’s icon across the screen of my phone into a virtual trash can was so liberating. My time is too precious to fritter away on empty pursuits. There is value in recreation, and video games are not inherently bad.  But I had let this game get out of hand, and I let it steal valuable moments away from me.

What are the zombies stealing time from your life? Do you need to retire from something? If so, there’s no better time than now to make the change.

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2015 Vision

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binocularsI am not a New-Year’s-resolution-making kind of guy. I know most resolutions don’t make it past Valentine’s Day. And if I have resolved to make a change in my life, I work on that change regardless of what time of year it is.

But I understand the appeal of resolutions. There is something about a fresh start in a new year, about having a chance for a do-over, that can bring hope. The accountability that comes with establishing a goal and sharing it with others can also be helpful.

Though I don’t do resolutions, this year my wife and I tried something new. We had a visioning session where we talked about our hopes and goals for 2015. We broke our discussion down into three areas: Relationship, Parenting and Finances. We talked about big picture goals – like being more patient with our son. And we talked about specific actions we can take and habits we would like to develop to help achieve the big picture goals.

I recently heard former NFL coach, Tony Dungy discuss the importance of vision and planning in life. He used the analogy of a football coaching staff that watches film to prepare for their opponents. They anticipate and plan their response to the adverse situations that they are likely to encounter in the game. Then they prepare for those situations through practicing – engraining the correct response into their minds and creating muscle memory.  Winning football teams don’t just show up on game day and hope for the best. The combination of strategy (vision) and practice (discipline) are vital to success.

I have to admit that I’ve spent much of my life just winging it.  I have showed up on game day thinking good intentions and a good heart were sufficient to get me through most circumstances. But I have been woefully unprepared for many of the situations in which I’ve found myself as a husband and a dad.  Poor preparation means that I failed to react to adverse conditions properly even after finding myself facing those same conditions over and over.

Despite developing several disciplines over the years that have poised me for success, I have spent little time setting goals in my personal life. I understand, however, that this is a practice that successful people employ to achieve their success. It is even identified as one of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  I took the Seven Habits class years ago, but I never took habit number two (begin with the end in mind) to heart.  The highly ineffective habit that I have is running and gunning with a loose purpose but no clear vision of what the end looks like.

Because my success as a husband and father is so important to me, I decided to invest some time envisioning what I want 2015 to look like for me and my family. It was actually exciting thinking about the possibilities that lie ahead. Seeing the man I want to grow into, the habits I want to develop and those I want to eliminate created a greater sense of hope for the future. It was equally good to hear my wife share her hopes for the year ahead to make sure we are on the same page in setting direction for our family.

A few of our goals for the year ahead are to read a couple’s devotional daily, to begin marriage mentoring with young couples, to increase our trust in each other, to stop raising our voices with our kids, to research and have an age-appropriate discussion with our son about sex and to go have at least one overnight get-away as a couple.

Setting these goals is just the beginning. Discipline and follow through are necessary to transform these goals into reality.   I know that greatness rarely happens to those who wing it through life, to those who lack vision. And I am certain that even with a clear vision for the future, I will encounter resistance as I try to develop new, healthy habits. My body and mind will try to push me away from difficult, towards easy…to convince me that my goals are unrealistic or not worth pursuing.  But the path of least resistance is almost never the path to success.