Setting Goals

Introduce Myself and the Topic

Good afternoon. My name is David Mitchell. This is my 2nd time speaking in your ward on assignment as a Stake High Councilor. For those that don’t me, a super quick introduction. My wife Rachael and I moved to Fredericksburg, into the Massaponax Ward, just over 10 years ago. We have 3 sons in 3 different colleges, a son in high school, a son in elementary school, and a 4 year old daughter.

I have been asked to speak about setting goals today. There are 3 major areas I want to hit:

1. The church’s Children and Youth programs.
2. Some strategies and suggestions for setting goals.
3. How setting goals fits in with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I am going to bounce around those 3 major areas, but we’ll go ahead and start with the church’s Children and Youth programs.

The Church’s Children and Youth Programs

The inspiration for the Children and Youth programs comes from Luke 2:52,

And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.

This verse shows how we can model our personal development after the way Jesus grew and developed as a mortal. There is a balanced approach improving in 4 areas of our lives: intellectual, physical, spiritual, and social.

This is where my first suggestion comes. Our lives should be balanced, and so our goals should be balanced as well. If we focus entirely on sports and neglect our education we won’t properly grow. And likewise if we never take our noses out of books and get outside and move we also don’t properly develop. It is also why we don’t live the lives of monks, solely focused on prayer and scripture study. To live the gospel also requires sharing the gospel, and that takes social skills we develop by sometimes just hanging out with friends and having fun.

The goals set in the church’s programs are personal and do not need to be shared. This is where the first way goals fits in with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Goals are one way we repent. Repentance is between you and the Lord, and sometimes we include the Bishop when serious and needed.

Although the goals set in the church’s youth program is personal and can be private, the church’s web site includes suggested goals in each of the 4 facets of development. It can be good to look over those to help give you ideas for your own. A few of the themes listed there:

• Learn job skills.
• Learn how to use tools.
• Improve your fitness.
• Try a new sport.
• Learn to relax and manage stress.
• Be a better friend.
• Develop better habits of prayer or scripture study.

Strategies and Suggestions

Having been working in a business setting for over 25 years, I have been exposed to many trends and philosophies around goals over the years. I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about them, but I want to briefly go over a few. In the end, we each need to find ways to approach goals that work for each of us individually. Perhaps some of these ideas may resonate and perhaps give us a new approach to try if we’ve not had success with setting and making goals in the past.

The first concept is the acronym, SMART goals. SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. An un-SMART goal would be something like: “I want to be more ogranized.” Where a SMART goal would be more like: “I will organize my closet by the end of the month.”

Another business practice is making a Roadmap. There are various approaches to this, but generally you start with a mission statement or purpose. It will then include layers such as vision, strategies, tactics, and goals, and the final layer to your plan are the action plans or specific tasks. This strategy is designed to help make sure our daily activities are working toward our final objective.

A roadmap for our personal lives may include a mission statement of “Returning to live with God.” A vision of being Christlike. Strategies perhaps could be the 4 areas of intellectual, physical, spiritual, and social. A spiritual goal could be to be more charitable, with an action plan including to fast and pay fast offerings with more intent, to sign up for service projects on JustServe.org, etc. The physical goal to be more fit could include action plan items to follow a diet, to get in 10,000 steps everyday, etc.

A simplified version of Roadmaps I’ve seen more recently in the business world are called OKRs. OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. This really narrows your focus on the final couple of layers of a Roadmap. Here, the usual suggestion is to have a handful of objectives you are working towards right now, and identifying in each objective how success will be defined and measured.

SMART goals, Roadmaps, and OKRs really are the philosophies of men. But they can be helpful strategies to help us frame goal setting for us. Whatever approach you take needs to work for you.

Gospel Principles of Goal Setting

I want to finish with summarizing how setting goals are related to the Gospel.

One of my first thoughts after receiving this topic turned to 2 Nephi 2. One small part of that chapter Lehi teaches what I might call spiritual physics. We learn, that there are 2 kinds of things: things that act and things that are acted upon.

As children of God, and to reach our full potential of becoming like God, we must be things that act on our own accord, and not acted upon. We don’t want to just go through the motions through mortality. But if we want to reach our final aim, we must act with purpose.

This led me to think about Doctrine & Covenants 58:26-28:

26 For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is ^acompelled in all things, the same is a ^bslothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.

27 Verily I say, men should be ^aanxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;

28 For the power is in them, wherein they are ^aagents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their ^breward.

We need to identify areas to improve within ourselves, and then repent.

This reminds me of Alma and Amulek’s mission to preach to the Zoramites.  In Alma 32, Alma talks about the difference between those who humble themselves and those who are compelled to be humble.  Finding areas for improvement and making goals to achieve that is a way to humble ourselves.

Again, setting and keeping goals is a form of repentance.  With that in mind, there are 2 important principles to keep in mind when setting goals:

1. Goals are not just improving, but they are improving in ways that God wants us to.  We can set a goal to be the world’s best plate spinner, and although there is nothing wrong with plate spinning, I’m not sure that is where God would have us spend our time and energy.
2. Repentance is only done through Jesus Christ.  We can sometimes change behaviors on our own.  But to change who we are and become Christlike, we need to remember to make Jesus Christ our partner in the endeavor.  In fact, without Christ and his Atonement, that kind of change is not possible.

Conclusion

I conclude my sharing my testimony.  I know that our Heavenly Father wants us to be happy in this life.  He wants us to become more and more like him and eventually return to his presence and glory.  We find happiness in this life when we keep the commandments, repent when we fail, and work to continually improve.  Setting and keeping goals is a great tool to help us humble ourselves and become better.  I know that only through Jesus Christ our ultimate goals are possible.

I say these things….

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