The Real Challenge

From a young age, I’ve always been a person who likes challenges. So I would often “challenge” myself and set lofty goals for things I wanted or things I wanted to achieve.

Unfortunately, as a young man my goals were often shallow and frivolous and to be honest, a little bit embarrassing as well. They were mostly about dating a certain girl, or buying a faster car, or keeping up with my peers, which should never be your goal at any age.

However, as I grew older my goals changed. What’s interesting is that my goals didn’t change just because I got older, they changed because I changed. For example, as I matured and started a family, my goals shifted more towards helping my wife and children and less about helping myself. And when I started my first business, my initial goal was to make the business successful. But as I started hiring employees, my goals shifted to include helping my employees achieve success as well. I discovered that it felt really good to watch one of my children win at a sporting event, or get an award at their High School. That same great feeling showed up when one of my employees earned a promotion, or when my wife and I were able to afford to give out awards and nice gifts to our employees at Christmas time.

So in my opinion, most people do change over time and so do their goals. Now that I am much older and semi-retired for example, my goals are a lot less lofty and probably back to being a bit shallow. One example, 12 years ago I took up golf and gave myself the goal of becoming a single digit handicapper and also to shoot a round in the 70’s. I admit that’s a bit frivolous, but those are two very difficult goals. At this point in time I will probably never become achieve a single digit handicap, but last Friday, after 12 years of trying, I did finally score 79 in a round of golf. It felt really good to achieve that personal goal, but it also brought back a flood of memories of other goals achieved over the years that were so much more meaningful because they involved helping others.

And that got me thinking… Having goals, and working hard to achieve those goals, is a good thing. But what’s more important is to make sure to have goals that matter, not just to ourselves, but to others. That’s the real challenge!

God gives us dreams a size too big… so that we can grow into them!

~ Anonymous