Dandelions and Daydreams

In my last post, I asked “Do you have too many goals?” Today I want to develop that question one step further and ask, “is your life too full?”

I have a friend who lives in a travel trailer, year round. She says the hardest thing about living in an RV is that she doesn’t have any room to store things that she doesn’t use every day.

I have thought a lot about her life style. Wouldn’t it be nice to throw off all the unnecessary clutter and simplify life?

If you lived in a motor home, you would come face to face with having limited space, and you could keep things around just because it’s easier than throwing it out.

I don’t like to think about having limited space in my life. We’ve been told, “you can do anything,” and “you can have it all.”

When we face the truth, life is like living in a travel trailer. You have limited space, and you have to be constantly vigilant about eliminating the things that you don’t want to carry around with you.

How do you want to pack your travel trailer? What hobbies are worthy of taking up the limited time you have? Do you have any activities that would better be left out of your trailer? Maybe you know some high maintenance people who are taking up a lot of space in your trailer?

Evaluate your life from every angle. I know it’s not an easy thing to do, but right now, your travel trailer is cluttered. Your life is packed too full.

photo by Stewart, cc-by

“You’ve got to go see the sunset tonight…well not the sunset, but if you look to the east the moon is rising over the lake,” my husband called and said.

Without thinking about the cold, I threw on my jacket but forgot gloves, a hat, and a scarf. About 5 minutes into my walk to the city beach, I was feeling the cold in my fingers and my ears.

The snow squeaked beneath my feet. My fingers were painfully cold every time I pulled out the camera to snap a picture.

On the way back, I stopped and spent 10 minutes in a hotel lobby to warm up before I walked home.

But to watch the full moon rise in a purple sky over Lake Pend Orielle and the mountains–bliss.

Goals are a great thing. They keep you moving forward in a direction you want to go, but too often, in our perfectionism, we set too many goals and lose focus.

I would guess that the average person can only focus on achieving 2 or 3 goals at a time. I’m talking about short-term goals here. Yeah, you should make long-term goals and have a vision for your life, but the goals that you are focusing on this month, this year, today…limit the number.

Keeping your goals in focus is necessary to achieve your goals. Having just 3 goals versus having 10 or 20 goals is the difference between pen point accuracy and a splat against the wall.

Take some time today to limit your goals, and focus on success.

I think that I have always been a little bit scared of success. Every time I resolve to save money (for example), my inner brat comes out and we go on a shopping trip. I have resolved to get healthier, so Tina (that’s the name I’ve given to my inner brat) and I go out and eat cake and drink candy coffee.

I don’t like to fail, but I will get almost to my goal and then I trip myself up. When it comes down to it, I am afraid of success. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I think, “If I succeed, others will expect me to do it every time.”

I also fear putting my everything out there only to find out that everything I have isn’t good enough. If I jeopardized my success, then I haven’t put everything on the line. If I am not good enough, it’s because I didn’t try my very best.

Finally, I think that Tina, my inner brat, is afraid that if I start to succeed regularly, I will have to become an adult and take responsibility for my actions.

If I don’t fight for my success, who will? The most important step is recognizing that I am a threat to my own success. If I know to watch out for certain behaviors, I can nip it in the bud. If the result is that Tina the inner brat doesn’t have a voice anymore…success is worth it.

photo: It’s Greg CC-By-ND

I’ve been trying to write this post all day. It has run around in circles several times even before I sat down at my computer to actually type. Here I am at the end of the day trying one more time.

One of the most important things I have ever realized is that God created us with a purpose, and he gave you your passions and desires to push you towards fulfilling that purpose.

Do you have a personal mission statement? Do you have a vision for your life? Do you know what makes you happy?

I’ve met a lot of people who don’t even know what their dreams are, and if you don’t know what you are aiming at, you will hit nothing at all. If you want to go somewhere in life, you have to aim for it.

When you know your values, you can evaluate any opportunity based on how it lines up with your values, dreams, and passions.