Olympic athletes are intentional...you can be too!

Olympic athletes are intentional people.  They have realistic but challenging targets in mind.  They know what results they are looking for and why they are working hard to achieve them.  

In the race of life if you are going to win the prize you too will need to become intentional. You can start today by learning how to create and pursue S.M.A.R.T. goals.

S.M.A.R.T. goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.  Let’s briefly review each:

• Specific – A general goal would be, “Get in shape.” But a related specific goal would be, “Join a health club and workout 3 days a week for the next52 weeks.”  A specific goal has a far greater chance of being accomplished because it has defined parameters and constraints.
• Measurable – There must be a logical system for measuring the progress of a goal.  To determine if your goal is measurable, ask yourself questions like:  How much time? How many total?  How will I know when the goal is accomplished? etc.  When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued efforts required to reach your goal.
• Attainable – To be attainable, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work.  In other words, the goal must be realistic.  The big question here is:  How can the goal be accomplished?
• Relevant – Relevance stresses the importance of choosing goals that matter.  For example, an internet entrepreneur’s goal to “Make 75 tuna sandwiches by 2:00PM.” may be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, and Timely, but lacks Relevance to an entrepreneurs overarching objective of building a profitable online business.
• Timely – A goal must be grounded within a time frame, giving the goal a target date.  A commitment to a deadline helps you focus your efforts on the completion of the goal on or before the due date.  This part of the S.M.A.R.T. goal criteria is intended to prevent goals from being overtaken by daily distractions.

When you identify S.M.A.R.T. goals that are truly important to you, you become motivated to figure out ways to attain them.  You take the time and make the effort develop the necessary attitude, abilities, and skills.  You can achieve almost any goal you set if you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps.  Goals that once seemed far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable, not because your goals shrink, but because you grow and expand to match them.

Its time to get intentional!

We all have the same amount of time and so it is not about the amount of time that we have but about what we do within the framework of those hours, days, weeks and years that makes us more or less effective.

For many years as a teens and into my early twenties I had no desire to plan my time preferring instead to be spontaneous (and I believed inspired) which I was very good at and I did manage in many circumstances to fly by the seat of my pants and still make things work, despite a lack of planning and preparation. 


However I eventually began to realize that often I could have done so much better and worked more easily with others if I had invested some time planning my days and weeks and preparing for events and tasks with some forethought. I began to make some changes and started to use a time planner and as time went on the changes began to stick. 


Admittedly it has not been something that has come naturally to me but over the years as I have become increasingly more thoughtful and intentional about my schedule I have noticed the following benefits.

1. I am able to fit more things into my life because I now  have a plan and a set of priorities
2. I am able to achieve a better outcome from things that I have prepared for because I have made the time to prepare for them.
3. I enjoy the anticipation of looking forward to events that I have planned for in advance
4. I work better with other people because they knew what I am doing in advance and can schedule their own lives and priorities so we can work more closely and effectively as a team.
5. I have got better at saying NO to things as I now have a set of principles that help me set my own agenda instead of being driven by other people’s agendas.

What are you doing with your time?

Are you spending time or investing it?

Are you planning your life or simply drifting along taking things as they come?

Are you being intentional about your life or is it a case of whatever will be will be?

What is your one thing?

One day a rich young man approached Jesus with a question about how he could inherit eternal life. 
After Jesus had quizzed him about keeping the commandments and found that this guy was to all intents and purposes morally sound he said to him. "One thing you lack, go a sell all your possessions , give the proceeds to the poor and come and follow me." The young man went away very sad the scriptures tell us because he was very rich. 

The one thing Jesus asked of him he was not prepared to do even though it was within his personal power to do it. He could have followed the advice of Jesus, it was within his grasp and capability, but the cost was too high from his own point of view and he just could not face losing his money, even though he could have found life itself. He missed the opportunity to maximise his potential!

Its easy to make judgements about the young man but when we point the finger there are always three more fingers pointing back at us!...So what about me and you?

What is the one thing you lack?

For many of us there is one thing or one area in our lives that if we addressed the particular issue involved, it would dramatically and positively effect every other area in our lives, our relationships and our ability to follow Jesus more fully. You know what is it , we all know what it is , God knows what it is, the one thing that bugs each one of us. 

Sometimes the one thing changes in different seasons of our lives but often it is one area that keeps on bringing us into a kind of lack even though on the outside our lives seem pretty much together at least to people looking on. But on the inside we know differently , we know well the impact of secret sins, the lack of discipline, the eating disorder, the negative self esteem, the fear of rejection, the perfectionism that controls us, the grudge, the hurt, the questions ...........the list goes on.

We know what it is and we know what a positive difference it would make if we could let go of the one thing or maybe introduce one thing into our lifestyle. Despite our knowing we still walk away sadly because there is always a cost to letting go of something which we have been comfortable with but which is doing us harm, and  at the same time embracing something new and different even if it is something that will do us good. We fear change and the unknown and cling onto the familiar even while Jesus is saying to us "let go and let God". In allowing the "status quo" we too miss the opportunity to maximise our potential.

So three questions to consider

1. What is the one thing in your life that you either need to let go of or one thing that you need to embrace in order for your life to move towards all you could be?
2. What has stopped you addressing this issue until now?
3. When will you start to do something about it?

Remember you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you!