The 3 biggest reasons people fail to change are:
1. They don’t really see the need to change. The change is imposed on them based on the expectations, or perceived expectations, of others (externally).
2. Lack of CLEAR, SPECIFIC and MEASURABLE goals.
3. Little or no SUPPORT (training, backup) and ACCOUNTABILITY in reaching those goals.
Addressing these issues will increase your ability to succeed in life. (See also a related article on SMART Goal Setting for Fishing for People)
1. Whatever the change it must be driven by your own desire to achieve it, either out of love, gratitude or willing obedience. You don’t have to achieve it alone by yourself but the desire must start with you (internally). Your greatest strength and power to change will also come from within if you ask the Holy Spirit to help you achieve these goals. (You have a very powerful helper in the Holy Spirit if your goals are aligned to those of God’s goals.)
2. & 3. A. I. M. /T4T are designed specifically to help you develop clear, specific and measurable goals. They offer many layers of support from moral support to practical training. These systems have a very high degree of loving accountability automatically built into them. They are also very biblical. Trust in these as Christ is in the centre of them. If you are still having trouble with these group/mentor settings then there is an individual tool that a friend, daveK, gave me called SMART that you can add to AIM/T4T so long as it does not take away too much of your focus. We will cover SMART next.
A helpful acronym to remember when setting goals is: S. M. A. R. T.
| Examples: | |
| Specific | Set goals like “I will read the whole Gospel according to Mark and pray each day”, "I will keep a journal of my bible studies, prayer points and their answers". |
| Measurable | Aim for a Chapter a day, Set out a list of people and things you want to pray for and make sure you get through the list. |
| Achievable | Find out if you’re a morning or a night time person and chisel out a set amount of time each day to do these things. Don’t set yourself up to fail. Make it easy on yourself. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Start small and work upwards. (Japan was hopeless when they started to go into manufacturing. Everyone laughed and said they would never buy any junk that came out of Japan. They soon conquered the world of manufacturing by implementing a “1% improvement rule” each year. Each year they had to improve every aspect of business by just 1%. That was compounded on top of the previously 1% improvements of the past years. Soon there was no one that could touch them!) |
| Realistic | You might get sick, go on holidays or have a family emergency. So build in a safety margin into your time frames. For example Mark has 16 chapters so instead of 16 days set your goal at 32 days or round it off to one month. After all you will hit areas that you may wish to further explore. |
| Time based | Aim to read a chapter a day and start with 15 minutes a day prayer time when you first wake up. Meet with your mentor every fortnight on a Wednesday to discuss what you have learned, where you are up to and practice your skills. If your goals are realistic then put some real effort to stick to whatever time frames you came up with. |
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