How My 3 Year old Taught Me to Keep My Eye on My Goals

You may have noticed that I haven’t written in a few days. This is especially bad since my last post was the first of a series of 10 posts on how to increase your luck. I was supposed to post every day or at least every second or third day which would give my readers the 10 ways to increase their luck in about 2 weeks. Unfortunately, i lost site of my goals and my posting came to somewhat of a stop.

Not long ago I made myself a few lists of goals that I wanted to accomplish over the next few months, year, 5 years, 10 years and 20 years. I was very proud of myself for getting them down on paper and making a list of things that I think are actually realistic. One of my goals was to build up this blog and post articles regularly. For the next few days after writing down my goals, I looked at them every morning and thought about how I would bring myself closer to my goals each day. After a few days, I stopped looking at my goals every morning. Maybe I thought that I had them committed to memory, maybe I got lazy but the realization that I came to is that “out of sight, out of mind”. I couldn’t believe it, the days that I looked at my goals in the morning were very productive and the days that I didn’t look at them were just the opposite. I think that was my problem for most of my life, I didn’t write down my goals and I certainly did not look them over each day. I wrote my goals in the first place because I woke up one day and realized that although I have had some accomplishments over the last whole bunch of years, I have not even come close to my potential especially financially.

I can’t take all the credit for my realization above, it was pretty much my 3 year old son that made me realize that I need to keep looking at my goals every day. My wife made a 3 foot tall chart for my son and hung it next to his bed so he knows what he needs to do every day from the time he wakes up to the time he goes to sleep. The chart is nicely decorated with pictures so he knows what everything is. He wakes up, goes to potty, brushes his teeth, eats breakfast and so on. His day ends with brushing his teeth, reading a story and going to sleep.

On Friday night, my sister in law was over and went to lie down in my son’s bed. My son went over to her and said “if you sleep in my bed, you have to follow the chart”. He then told her exactly what she needed to do. At that point I realized if you want to build up good habits and accomplish your goals, you need to have them written down and very visible. It also helps if they are in public view because when other people know about your goals, you become more motivated to accomplish. Many people don’t mind failing when nobody else knows about it but if other people do know, they try harder to show that they can accomplish.

Kids are some of the best teachers out there, they make you see things that are right in front of your eyes but you just don’t notice. Another thing my son can do is tell you every time a TV show says the word “stupid” because he knows that “stupid” is a bad word. I watch the same shows and don’t even notice.