April Letter Newsletter
Most nights around our home, once the kids go to bed, Tavia and I will have time to get things done without the help of our children. Sometimes that involves one of us exercising while the other stays at home, catching up. A few nights ago, as we prepared freezer meals for a freezer meal exchange, we started to watch a movie we had seen before, Eddie the Eagle. For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, it follows a very non-athletic boy called Eddie Edwards whose goal in life is to represent The United Kingdom in The Olympic Games. For Eddie, the goal is a pretty audacious one!
If you know anything about goals, you know that a goal needs to be challenging yet attainable. Yet throughout Eddie the Eagle, our Eddie ends up in situations that consistently leave him the butt of a joke. It makes the movie entertaining: I’m sure that’s the point, a little. Casting and acting help, too–making Eddie’s goal seem virtually impossible.Eventually, as you’re watching Eddie fail over and over, our hero becomes less funny and more pathetic. There’s a kernel here worth considering.
We ALL have goals and dreams. Some are pretty simple. But some goals are big, hairy, audacious ones. I know about big and hairy: sometimes when something is big and hairy, all you want to do is hide it. When you have a big, hairy, audacious goal, most of the time you keep it to yourself or you’ll share it without ever making steps toward achieving it. But it can be stranger still when you finally begin doing some of the things that you’ve been talking about! There are people in my life that I am positive are tired of hearing about my big, hairy, audacious goals. You want to know a secret? I’m not close to reaching my goals but it feels AWESOME taking the steps toward them!
So why am I talking about this now? Why did I pick April as the time to talk about goals? Isn’t that something you talk about at the end of the year as you create your New Year’s Resolutions? By now, most people have given up on the resolutions they made at New Year’s. It’s just the way it is.
But I want you to think about that resolution you gave up on–maybe it is a simple goal, or maybe (like Eddie the Eagle) it is a goal like becoming an Olympian. A big, hairy, and audacious goal. Now think about one thing you can do right now to get you another step closer to achieving the goal. Not what you can do tomorrow. Not what you can do next Monday. Not the step you take when you’ve picked up that self-help book. Not next New Year’s. But the thing you can do right now. Do it, then repeat!
It will be hard! All the really great stuff we try is hard. If your goals and dreams were easy to achieve, you would have accomplished them already. Stop talking and start doing! Personally, I had to hear the same advice from two people I respect an awful lot before the advice began to really sink it. You can keep on dreaming, keep wanting to get better. You can keep setting goals. Hopefully you’ll get so excited about what you’re doing that you’ll say, “I think a little bit of wee came out!” (You really need to go watch that movie) Now go out there and be that somebody you’ve been talking about becoming!
