Commitment

One year ago this new year's weekend, by chance I heard a motivational speaker I had never heard of before that day. She's a tiny little woman with a tiny little voice that sounds like it belongs in a Barbie doll instead of a grown woman with things to say, but the things she talked about that day started me on a journey that has been really good for me. She releases a YouTube video podcast every week, and I rarely miss one.

Around this time of year she always talks about vision boards. I've always been a bit lukewarm on the idea (I'm not really an artsy-crafty type - I'm a music guy) but after hearing her talk about it over and over again, I bought a whiteboard and put some stuff on it. Good stuff, that I really wanted to accomplish. Stuff that would take some effort, but that was within reach. Just enough to be a bit of a stretch. I did a pretty good job of it, I thought!

Essentially, I accomplished none of it. All year long. It's pretty much the same now as when I first set it up months ago. It's about a foot from my head every day while I work! Why didn't it do the thing? Why haven't all of my goals materialized?

This week she talked about vision boards again, but she emphasized something this time that I don't remember from before (maybe I just have poor listening skills). You can't just record goals on your vision board. You have to record your commitments. It's not enough to say "I want to get out of debt" - you have to knuckle down and make payments until it happens.

So this week I'm going to be reconfiguring my vision board. I'm not getting rid of any of the ideas, but I'm going to tweak the execution a bit. I need something that will help me remain committed to a course of action and keep moving along the path that will get me where I want to go.

...

Wait just a minute, Michael... I thought this was your CHRISTIAN blog! Where's the part about God in this post? Are you still even a Christian, or are you just one of those new agey motivational weirdos that show up in commercials and want to sell me a book? Hey, you know what? Psalm 37:4 says "Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart." I don't think that means that God will give you anything your heart desires... I think that means that God will actually be the source of the desires themselves! So if your heart is toward God and He is guiding your desires, all you have to do is follow what He's placed in your heart and it's pretty hard to go wrong.

Commitment!