Goalsetting

Setting goals has been on my mind recently. And it's kind of funny how when I'm thinking about something it usually comes up.
Yesterday someone asked me, "So what are your goals for this new year now that you've had a birthday?"
I wasn't really quite sure what to say. I do set goals, but I usually don't write them down. They're typically just things that I think about, that I want to work on, or change, or achieve.
For example, I realized at the beginning of the school year that I stay up too late and it causes me to not want to get up the morning. So I decided to go to bed earlier. I didn't write anything down. I just started going to bed earlier on a consistent basis.
Same with my scripture study, magnifying my calling, attending the temple, etc. I didn't write any of those things down. I just went ahead and did them. Maybe those kinds of things are just simple one step goals and don't require a whole lot of planning and writing down.

As far as having multistep goals that require planning and effort, and writing them down with a plan to achieve them... Those are much less frequent for me. And when my friend asked me what kinds of goals I had planned for myself, this is what I thought this person was talking about. And I didn't really have anything that I felt comfortable sharing.

In late August/early September I had this big goal that I wanted to achieve but I wasn't entirely sure how to go about it. That was one I wrote down. I wrote down the goal and what I needed to do to achieve it. It's funny looking back on it because that goal isn't really measurable. The items needed to achieve it are, but the actual goal I was trying to achieve wasn't measurable. I don't know if it makes as much difference as usually taught, because I have been progressing toward said goal. But it also isn't a goal that really has a timeline to achieve. But maybe that's the way real goals should be. They should be measurable and have a timeline. But maybe not all are like that. I don't really know.

Last year (around December) I actually created a vision board for myself. It is kind of like a visual for goals. I got the idea from an article I read a long time ago about a man who upon moving into his new big fancy dream house that he finally was able to buy, he was unpacking his office and he found a vision board he had created many years prior. On the board he found a picture of the house he just bought, cut out from a magazine. He had forgotten about cutting out the picture and putting it on his board. It was funny because he bought the exact same house from the picture. I took my vision board apart when I moved rooms after breaking off my engagement with Brad. I haven't made a new one yet.

I'm not sure what I would put on it. It was kind of hard to make the first one because the majority of the things I desire are not tangible things. And sometimes it is literally impossible to even visualize how to bring them into fruition. That kind of thing requires the powers of Heaven.

Like I said at the beginning, it's funny how when I think about something it comes up. Today I read 2 Nephi 8-9 and this quote:
"Keeping everything in balance can be a real problem... Often the lack of clear direction and goals can waste away our time and energy and contribute to imbalance in our lives. ...Our main goal should be to seek "immortality and eternal life." With this as our goal, why not eliminate from our lives the things that clamor for and consume our thoughts, feelings, and energies without contributing to our reaching that goal?" ~ M. Russell Ballard
There was a follow up question that said, "How do you spend your time, money, and energy?" I think that we spend our time, money, and energy on the things that are important to us, and where and what we spend those resources on indicate what our real priorities are.