Matthew 12:33-37 Think before you speak, Grasshoppa...

Eating chips & salsa while watching a workout video...that's what I call efficiency!

http://ping.fm/XJKVD (Awesome relationship skinny!)

How much can you accomplish when you think about you? How much have you accomplished thinking about you?

The truth hurts...what truths have you heard that have hurt?

Do you know your purpose? How/when did you find it? Or have you stopped looking? Will it find you?

Are you around people who make you feel alone?

What's the biggest thing you've learned from your kid(s)?

What's the best 'kid' question you've ever heard?

Who do you appreciate the most? When's the last time you wrote them & told them?

Who inspires you?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Who needs what you have to offer?

What are you wanting to do?

What's slowing you down?

What are you waiting for?

Who are you accountable to?

How are you doing at the pursuit of your goal(s) for 2010?

What are you most thankful for?

How often do you do what you're good at?

What are you good at?

One Goal...

Alright super people...

So, as I'm writing this post, we're already 3 days into the New Year...wow...I think now is an appropriate time to drop the wonderfully overused cliche..."My, how time flies…”

Seriously, can you believe it?  It's Two Thousand and Ten...are you kidding me?  Back in the old days growing up as a kid I remember looking on the 21st Century as a mythical dragon or a land far away...off in some distant land that I would never reach...only something that my successors would be living in.  You know, kinda like how we watch a movie like the latest Terminator movie as some futuristic never-in-our-generation-sci-fi flick or like Tom Cruise in the movie Minority Report.  How cool were those "air computer screens" he would just access by moving his fingers in the air like a conductor conducts an orchestra or when he would stand over a "table" & physically touch this digital "table" & manipulate the images by just flicking them w/his appendages or enlarging the photos by placing his left & right pointer fingers on the table & spreading his fingers apart. 

I thought, "man, there's no way that'll ever happen."  And then a few years later the iTouch & iPhone are launched.  Now, my 2-yr old knows how to use my iPhone better than my wife does.  That's no joke.

Amazing isn't it?

Or the first time I heard about someone developing a telephone that will be able to go in a car.  “HA!  Whatever!  That’s absurd!  I’m sure the next thing you’re gonna tell me is how one day we’ll be able to carry around a telephone in our hands!” 

Or how about when my dad told me about someone may have discovered a way to shoot a laser beam containing music onto a small flat disc ¼ the size of our vinyl Beethoven records and that someday 8-tracks & vinyls would be extinct like the dinosaur.  “Yeah, sure, Dad!  Ok!  Wink, wink.  Got it, Dad.  Whatever you say.”

Time.  Technology.  Life.  Change.

The seasons of life seem to blow by us as if Hurricane Katrina were our standard of living.

WHAM…I was 5 riding in a little 2-seater Go-Cart with my adopted Grandpa Georgey on a little farm in Norman, OK.  Then, WHAM, I was 10 in a small little 1,000 person farming community in central IL riding on the back of a tractor shucking corn.  Then, WHAM, I was a 15 yr old freshman as a back-up wide receiver on our varsity football team due to my amazing blazing 8.0 sec 40-yard dash time.  (Not exactly sure why they called it the 40-yard “dash” anyway!)  Then, WHAM, I was a 20-yr old college kid at West Point taking more credit hours of classes per semester than I was old.  Then, WHAM, I was a married Infantry officer in the 82^nd Airborne Division jumping out of very comfortable, cozy, quiet luxury Air Force airplanes at 800 ft above the ground to get to work.  (Hopefully you caught the sarcasm in that one.) Then, WHAM, I was 30, already had two black belts in failed conventional start-up businesses (an outdoor fitness club & a mobile medical imaging center) and a successful online marketing business.  Then, WHAM, I was 35…happily married for almost 14 yrs now w/a vibrant bilingual little 2-yr old girl that currently waves and says “bye bye poopy” as she’s watching her newly plopped poopy disappear into the bowels of the porcelain poopy catcher…(fortunately I don’t have any more “Wham’s” to throw out at you…at least not for another 4.5 years!) 

Wow…that was a little bit of an intimidating exercise…sum up your life in 5-yr increments that takes up a small paragraph.  Hmm…makes you ponder your significance & effectiveness.

At any rate, we can all do it, and it still baffles me how fast time shoots by like a 45-caliber bullet.

So, as we plan & set goals for 2010, what’s it gonna be?  Knowing that THIS year, this two thousand and tenth year, is gonna zing by…what’s that ONE goal…that ONE thing…that if the sky fell in 2010 and someone flushed your life’s toilet and everything is just swirling around and around…what would that ONE goal be that if it was the ONLY thing you accomplished, it would bring you happiness & fulfillment? 

I know we all like to set 85 goals a year (or maybe that’s just me) and have more good intentions for the New Year then Sears has power tools…but just this once…think about just ONE goal.  The Grand Daddy Goal of them all…the Cats Pajamas Goal…the Grand Pubah Goal…the Mother Load Goal…the Taj Mahal of Goals…the penultimate ninja “Chuck Norris” of Goals (which we all know trumps all other goals combined!)…

I encourage you to set THAT goal.  Focus on THAT goal.  Set a game plan for THAT goal.  Get some accountability in your life for THAT goal.  Set up some good positive self-talk for THAT goal.  Put THAT goal up on your refrigerator or bathroom mirror and focus on accomplishing THAT goal for 2010.  All the other myriad & minutiae of goals are all gravy on the toppings of our 2010.  But, for 2010, keep the main thing the main thing.  After you plan, prepare, focus on and attack that ONE main overarching goal you set for 2010, celebrate!  Encourage yourself!  Build yourself up!  Do a big giant happy dance!  But, seriously, build upon that one foundational goal you set for yourself in 2010. 

You NEED to accomplish THAT goal this year.  You must.  For yourself.  For others—directly or indirectly.  For God.  For your children.  You must and you will.  I KNOW you can.  I know you WILL. 

Go.

Do.

Pursue.

I believe in you.