What This Summer Taught Me About Goal Setting

The Ambitious

If you’ve been following along with The Story of the Marsh Boy, we’re pausing this week to process through a lesson I’ve been learning over the summer about goal setting.

One of the reasons I started Fightin’ Poseidon was to create a space to work towards the goal of driving conversation and action around developing young boys into men. All around me I see boys in their late teens and early twenties stunted in growth. It’s like they’re stuck at twelve years old. Sorry, it’s not just a phase. If you’re tempted to think in those terms, the seven minutes it will take to listen to the excellent John Cleese reading Screwtape’s ninth letter will be the best seven minutes you spend today. There are multiple forces at work in this lack of development. Some of those forces are cultural, some are spiritual, some are propaganda, some come from within while others come from without, some forces are intentionally direct while others are collateral damage.

My reaction as a man has been, “I’ve got to do something.”

In the ambition to fortify some small wall against being stuck at twelve years old in my own son, I’ve leaned into creating a rite of passage this year. This has included some of my favorite difficult and highly adventurous hikes, reading books, and strenuous physical activity. There were other activities we talked about but never got off the ground. We made plans and set goals for each of them.

One of these goals was to read The River of Doubt: Theodore Rosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candace Millard. The progress began to plod and even though the book was well written, it was more an ambitious grind through suffering in the Amazon rainforest. My son wasn’t drawn into it, and honestly I began to lose interest myself. I began to question if there was value in pushing him to read it or if it was only that internal nagging not to leave a book unfinished. I let him stop. I finished the book on my own and came away with a far less idealized picture of Roosevelt. yes, he was a lion of a man, but I wish he had channeled that towards his family. We moved on to our next planned book, Live Like a Narnian by Joe Rigney, which he’s far more excited about.

Another one of our goals was to ruck 100 miles together over the summer. If you’re not familiar with rucking, it’s basically walking while carrying weight. We were making good progress towards our goal until summer camps hit. Then they were involved with a play production around the life of Hudson Taylor. The rhythm and momentum got lost in the breaks and it’s been tough to recover it. Then school started and the schedule filled with demands. I shortened our goal but I felt irritated about it. I had these grand plans for us to achieve and I’d fallen short on several.

The Adversary

I mentioned a moment ago that some of the forces that keep our boys from turning into men, or keep men from being effective, are spiritual. We talk about how Satan is the bad guy of the Bible, right? But did you know that Satan is more a title than a proper name? There’s some scholarly work done by the late Michael Heiser about ancient Hebrew syntax and definite articles, but without diving down that hole, The Satan is the adversary. Elsewhere in Scripture (Zechariah 3:1-2, Revelation 12:10), he’s called the accuser. Accusation is one of his prime tools to neuter the usefulness of boys and men. He will use any angle to accuse, as well.

“You never do anything right.”

“Your family is better off without you.”

“You make everything worse.”

“You’re an imposter.”

“You’re worthless.”

“You’ll never amount to anything.”

“You’re a failure.”

“Everybody is against you.”

While these may come from negative self talk, and that should be evaluated, the self is not always the origin of such accusations. These are all finger pointing accusations that manipulate the guilt you already feel by twisting it until it’s screws right into your identity. Once you’ve succumbed and taken on the narrative as your own, you’re defeated.

Remember those goals you didn’t quite hit? Any chance to bring up how you missed the mark is an opportunity to accuse you about your worth.

Knowing your enemy is one of the first steps to defeating him. So, if you’re experiencing accusation of a supernatural kind, knowing the game and being girded with the gospel is the best way to fight against it. Humility also allows you to properly evaluate yourself and not have to strive for good but unreasonable goals you’ve set. There’s nothing wrong with lofty goals, but if I’m going to plan begin a workout plan with kettlebell swings, it’s probably not a good start to aim for 1,000 a day on day 1. Maybe 50 or 100.

The Reality

Gospel first. As the song by the Getty’s sings, No guilt in life, no fear in death, this is the power of Christ in me. Here’s the brief presentation.

We’ve all fallen short of God’s standard thanks to our representative head, Adam in the garden of Eden. We’re born into the curse he earned for us. Now there is a debt of sin we all owe. We didn’t start the note, but we have added to it. God sent His son, Jesus, into the world to live the life we could not live and pay the debt we could not pay. He died on the cross for all who believe that His shed blood paid their debt, then because the grace could not hold Him, He rose from the dead on the third day. In Christ, we go from being enemies of God to adopted as His sons and daughters, and have an inheritance of eternal life on His work alone. Turn from your old ways that don’t satisfy you and drink from the fountain of living water that slakes all thirst.

The kind of freedom trust in Jesus offers is immense power. You’re no longer in bondage to accusations of guilt because they don’t hold power over you. The small phrase “but Christ” changed everything. You’ve fallen short? Yes, but Christ has redeemed me. You’ve sinned yet again? Yes, your guilt is earned but Christ has purchased your freedom. Learn to walk in this newness of life.

For the Christian, this is the reality. Your sins have been paid for, now go and sin no more.

This all applies to goal setting.

The two ditches I fall into with goal setting are, on one side, not setting goals at all, or, on the other side, setting unrealistic goals that don’t take much other than my own ambitions into consideration. These ditches are also the reality I can’t see without some humility.

It feels trite to wind this newsletter down with a basic goal setting principle, but isn’t it the basics we often forsake for the sake of the flashy and overambitious? Don’t we aim to better our lives with tactics without putting in the hard work of developing skills? That’s true for me, at least, and if life has taught me anything it’s that I’m not sailing alone in these waters.

What’s the basics? Set S.M.A.R.T. goals.

S: Specific

M: Measurable

A: Actionable

R: Reasonable

T: Timely

A goal should have each of these elements. Specifics give you focus. Instead of read more books this year, you plan to read 5 books this year. Instead of losing weight, you plan to lose 10lbs. These specifics allow you to measure your progress. It’s hard to measure a goal if you don’t have a number tied to it. Only read 3 books or lost 7 pounds? You fell short of your goal but you still made progress. Are you able to take action towards your goal? It’s going to be difficult to achieve a reading goal of reading gives you migraines. It’ll be tough to have a weight loss goal if you have debilitating back injuries. Going back to kettlebell swings, it’ll be tough to achieve any reps if you don’t have a kettle bell. If you do have the means to take action, reasonable goals will help keep you on track. You want tough arms so 1,000 kettle bell swings a day sounds awesome, right? Or maybe you want to read 5 books a week. What a boss! If you’re going from zero to 1,000 or zero to 5, how realistic do you think failure is? Make your goals ones that will stretch you but that you can actually reach. And finally, give yourself a due date. By this date, I will have either achieved X benchmark or reached my goal.

You can’t always control the results, but you can control what you put into it. Sticking to these basics would have helped me set goals I wouldn’t have had to battle guilt over missing.

No sense in giving the accuser any more ammunition against us than he already has.

We can teach these lessons to our sons and equip them for the reality they will one day face without us.

Talk to y’all in two weeks.

~ J.P. Simons

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