Achieving Your Goals

Goals, what are they? We all have them, some are for today and some are for a lifetime. How do we decide what goals are important and what ones will not matter if they do not get accomplished? I am a A type personality with list and goals, they are color coded and prioritized, but I do not always accomplish them. They also have changed as I have grown and my focus has changed. The things that were important to me twenty years ago are not necessarily important to me today. I have abandoned goals over time, some out of fear of failure and some because I realized they were either unrealistic or became unimportant. So how do we decide which goals are worth fighting to accomplish and which ones can be forgotten. I have always loved to travel, I have always said it was born into me because of being born in Africa. If the the opportunity arises for me to travel i will usually take it. I made a bucket list of goals when i was very young that had to do with traveling, I planned on visiting every continent, swimming in Every ocean and Skiing on Every Mountain. Well obviously those were never truly realistic goals as I would never be able to swim in the Arctic Ocean, though I would settle for touching it. And now the goal of skiing has kind of been dissolved as shoulder replacements and downhill skiing are not really friends. Though I have checked many things off of this list I have Swam in the Pacific, the Atlantic, The south China Sea, and The Indian Ocean. so I am getting there on that goal and hope to come close to completing that one some day. As for my skiing goal I have skied some of the greatest mountains in north America and maybe someday can travel to see some of the others even if I can't ski anymore. And I one day still plan on visiting every continent I think I only have a few left. But beyond these silly goals that I set over twenty years ago I also set career goals, family goals, schooling goals and many other types of goals I planned on accomplishing in life. I find that fear is the biggest reason for not achieving most of my goals. The fear of failing keeps me from trying. I become so afraid of being rejected that I never apply or ask. So now I am setting a new goal a goal of not allowing the fear of failing to stop me from trying. This new goal will help me to accomplish many goals that I have not yet accomplish because of the fear. Four years ago when I got hurt I felt like that was it. I would have to get out of the medical field because of my lack of ability to lift and for four years I have been being pushed into the idea of a sedentary desk job, to which I am am sure I would last one day at. I hate the idea of being in a cubical working on a computer and answering phones. My heart is in helping people. I have let fear stop me from pushing for this, but now I am more afraid of not being able to work with patients and continue to help people, than I am afraid of not succeeding in the programs that will get me there. I have learned throughout life that if we allow fear to hold us back we will never truly know what we are able to accomplish. As the old saying goes it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I think this can go for pushing ourselves to be who God wants us to be. Make realistic goals but never limit yourself because you are to afraid to try. I say reach for the stars and push every day to accomplish what you set out to do.