learning that I’ve got a lot to learn

I’d say that just about sums up the past month or so of my life. God has humbled me and broken me in many ways, and for that I am thankful. I have had more free time in the past month than I’ve had in a long, long time and I have been embarrassingly undisciplined and unproductive with it. I’ve got such a long way to go.

My friend Lee has been helping me with this area of my life. We were talking one morning this week over coffee and he started asking me some questions about my life and my goals. Then I realized that I’m not really much of a goal-setter. In fact, I think for a few years I’ve almost poked fun at goal-setters and five year plans and all, thinking them a cumbersome weight to the freedom flowing from the unexpectedness of life. And then I realized that I would love to have accomplished more in the past year of my life, and also that if things are unchanged I don’t forsee myself being more productive in the year to come.

Uh-oh. It looks like my free-flowing self needs some cold, hard, old-fashioned goals if I’m ever going to accomplish anything that I want to do. This is the line that did it for me…

Lee: “Most of the time, no matter how bad we want to do something that will take a lot of effort, if we don’t set up systems and goals to keep us accountable to accomplish what we want, life just wins and those things will never happen.”

Life just wins.

Not anymore life. I’m going to grab a fistful of goals and beat you into submission. Your busyness is not going to keep me from accomplishing things forever.

So to Lee: Thanks. I really appreciate your questions, wisdom, present and future accountability.

And to everyone else: Don’t let life win. It sadly does so much of the time. Maybe you should be that crazy goal-setting guy with me for a while and set some for the things you want to accomplish? And if you do, be sure to find some kind of accountability for them. Pursue that dream that still keeps you up at night. Write that song or story that’s been aching to get out of your soul. Go back to school and take those classes. Go overseas. Chances are you will never be more free than you are right now, and time will just make it harder to pursue those dreams. And most importantly, make sure you are hanging out with someone older and wiser that can pour into you. God knows all of us know-it-all twenty-two year olds need that.