I’ve talked a lot about goals over the short life of this blog so far. The theme for this past year has been goals. That may seem unusual considering that this year turned out to be totally unanticipated. However, in times of turmoil and unpredictability, we especially need goals.
There are two main reasons that you need goals. The first is so that you have a purpose to aim toward. I’ve been reading a book by John Maxwell called Your Path to Success. One of his main emphases is that success is a journey and not a destination. This may sound trite at first, but setting and meeting objectives that you set for yourself is much more a mark of success than an ultimate lifetime achievement. We won’t all be famous, invent something new, or win a Nobel prize. We will live our lives with little to no notoriety, but that doesn’t mean we can’t all be successful. We can all work toward being better tomorrow than we are today. This is very encouraging to me.
The second reason you should set goals is to help you plan. I wouldn’t have thought we could spend 150 and then 300 hours outdoors playing, biking, and being on the trails the last two years. Because we wanted to reach these target numbers, I was much more intentional about planning outdoor time. The things that you leave off for “when we get to it” never really get gotten to. That’s a silly way of saying it, but you need to plan if you want it to happen. I hope that encourages rather than discourages you. These two reasons for goals have been the most helpful advice for me on our Trail Family journey.
So what are our new Trail Family Goals for 2021?
Our new target outdoor time will be 500 hours outside total.
Complete at least one Bicycle Ride and Seek. Check out this facebook group.
Visit Stoneface again. This is a local spot on a rail trail where a boulder is carved into the shape of George Washington’s head.
Go on one camping trip.
Go on six pre-planned hikes at parks and forests local to us. I picked the number six because this means that about every other month I will be planning a bigger hike for our family. I think that will be a good pace.
What are you looking forward to for next year? How encouraging is it to think for a while about all the things we CAN do instead of what we can’t do?