The importance of Goal Setting:

I was rlaughecently at a wake and the woman who deceased was a mother of two grown children in her early fifties.  I have not been to a wake since my grandmother passed away, my grandmother passed in her late 80′s and we all knew that when it happened, it was time.  For the two young adult children, it was not an expectant death and as the young man was delivering the eulogy, I could not help but to cry for their loss.  But I also thought about what life is, what meaning it carries for those of us that are so busy living, doing, for what.  What would the people remember me by at my funeral?

The only true goal for your life is happiness.  Study after study, we find that what people want most is to be happy.  Happiness is the common denominator of all people and all human behavior.  Everything we do is in an attempt to achieve our happiness in some way.  Even if you achieve everything else in life, money, home, fame, success, and so on, but you do not have happiness, well that’s not a successful life.  A good measure of how you are doing is to ask yourself how genuinely happy you are.

The five ingredients to happiness:

  1. Health and Energy:  It is wise to put health above all other considerations.  If you have health, you have everything.  If you don’t, the game of life gets harder to play.
  2. Loving relationship with your family and friends:  The more people you have in your life who love and respect you, and whom you love and respect, the happier you are.
  3. Meaningful work:   We all have a purpose for our lives and we are only happy when deep inside, what we are doing is helping others in a positive way.  Happiest people are those who dedicate their lives to doing something that uplifts and enhances the lives of others.
  4. Financial Freedom:  We live in a material world.  We can be happy to the extent that we can provide the needs such as clothing, shelter, and transportation without falling short.
  5. Higher levels of peach and spiritual understanding:  For me, this is finding the path in my spiritual walk with God to succumb to what His ultimate will is for me.  I have peach from knowing the truth, the words that feed me the timeless wisdom is my Bible.

I believe it’s essential to reflect once in a while and evaluate where you are today from where you started and also where you want to be.