these next four months

I just finished reading Brain Tracy's Goals, which is sort of like The Secret without all the crazy.

One of the book's main themes is that in order to achieve your goals, you have to get specific about what you are trying to accomplish. Doy, right?

The author says you should write down your 10 to 15 major goals every day. At first, I thought that writing them down every day would just be busy work. But, I've been doing it for the last few weeks and it's been really amazing.

The key is to not refer to yesterday's list when you write up today's list. This forces you to go through the thought process again and again of basically deciding what it is that you really want to do right now. You can't do everything, you have to choose what's going to make the list, and what's going to get weeded out. Because you are rewriting the list everyday, you end up drilling that top ten list into your mind and you end up thinking about your goals a lot more during your daily activities.

The author says that after about a month or so of honing your list, you will reach a point where you list becomes almost identical every day. I'm pretty close to that point now.

These might change a bit over the coming days and weeks, but for today, these are (some of)...

Dave's goals for these next four months:

1. I communicate sincerely with my Heavenly Father through prayer at least twice daily by December 31, 2008.


2. I read the Book of Mormon cover to cover by December 31, 2008.


3. I attend the temple with Holly at least once each month by December 31, 2008.


4. I go out with Holly (no kids!) once a week by December 31, 2008.


5. I have no debt (other than our mortgage) by December 31, 2008.


6. I have (and hold to) healthy eating habits by December 31, 2008.


7. I run five times a week by December 31, 2008.


8. I lift weights five times a week by December 31, 2008.


9. I weigh 170 pounds (or less) by December 31, 2008.


10. I launch the side project (that I've been daydreaming about for the last two years) by December 31, 2008.

There it is. It's now public. All three of our readers will mock me in the street if I don't follow through with these goals.