The Journey needed a plan...

I forgot where I first heard it from... Maybe Matthew Barnett of the LA Dream Center... Or Zig Ziglar... I'm sure it was somebody wise...

The saying is this: A goal without a plan is just a dream. We kick butt at setting goals. We set goals all the time. To lose weight... To drink less... To be a better husband/wife/parent... To get to work on time... To stop picking our nose in public...

But what we don't kick butt on achieving those goals. Why? Because we don't make a plan to get there. We are adrift in a sea of vague dreams with nary a chart or compass among us.

Or, if we do happen to make a plan, we fail to map out how we are going to make the Journey... In October of 1957 the Soviet Union leaped ahead in the space race by launching Sputnik, the first man made object to orbit the earth. In response, President Kennedy announced in 1961 that by the end of the decade, the U.S. would put a man on the moon and bring him safely back.

If the U.S. Space Program would've been conducted like most of us set goals, the closest we would've gotten to the moon is a good jump on the trampoline... But they had a plan. They started by getting a capsule into space, then capsules with animals in it, then capsules with people. Then we sent an empty spacecraft to circle the moon and come back, and then a spacecraft with people in it that circle the moon without landing and come back. Along the way were many little successes and some potentially devastating failures.

Finally on July 20th, 1969 Neil Armstrong sealed the deal. We had a plan with measurable goals. And we devoted a massive amount of resources and focus on achieving the big goal by fulfilling thousands of little goals along the way.

And that is how the Journey will be successful. The big goal is to get to a more healthy weight. The first little step of the Journey was to cut out soda. Then it was to start getting more exercise with hikes in the evenings & on weekends. I cut back on sweets and upped my fiber intake. I met some goals, and had some setbacks. When progress stalled I knew it was time to refocus, and it started with those two days on the treadmill. And it got serious from there...