How Badly Do You Want It?

Happy New Year to you all. It’s that time again, time for new goals, new vision, and maybe even trying to do the new goals from last year! It’s challenging, I know. We have so many bright ideas and plans, but somehow when the rubber meets the road well…

It’s difficult to do things in our busy lives. They pull at us continually. We know we should make the changes but it’s so hard! Is it really? That’s where simplification comes in. Make it easy, and doable. If your goals are so far out there, that’s where they will stay.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time? No, I’m not suggesting you start your year eating elephants, that’s just nasty! What I’m suggesting is to tackle the problem with an open mind. Baby steps, tiny changes. Drink one extra glass of water a day. That’s 365 extra glasses a year. That will count for something!

How badly do you desire it? If you want it bad enough, you can do the change. It’s all about YOU! You’ll have to do the work. God will lead and guide you. He will help you and even send help to you. But you must put in the hard yards. For those discipline ones, that’s not a problem, but for the rest of us. It’s a challenge.

Make minor changes. Try to incorporate your change with something that you already do. For example, when I brush my teeth, I do leg exercises. I’m already brushing my teeth, so instead of just standing there for two minutes, I use that time to do leg kicks and leg raises. While I’m waiting for the kettle to boil, I use my bench top to do chest presses. This way, you can get things done. Two minutes isn’t much. I get 30 kicks in and 30 leg raises. I brush my teeth twice a day. Times that by a year. Hello, firm legs!

God has a way to get you your dreams. You remember the story of Jacob and Rachel, the love story of all time. Where Jacob worked seven years before he could finally marry her. Then he wanted to leave Laban, his father-in-law, to start his own life. Although he had worked all those years for Laban, he had nothing. Laban got rich, not Jacob. So God gave Jacob a plan.

We read the story in Genesis 30: 29-43. (ESV)

29  Jacob said to him, “You yourself know how I have served you, and how your livestock has
fared with me.  30  For you had little before I came, and it has increased abundantly, and
the LORD has blessed you wherever I turned. But now when shall I provide for my own
household also?”  31  He said, “What shall I give you?” Jacob said, “You shall not give me
anything. If you will do this for me, I will again pasture your flock and keep it:  32  let me pass
through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every
black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats, and they shall be my wages.  33  So
my honesty will answer for me later, when you come to look into my wages with you. Every
one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found
with me, shall be counted stolen.”  34  Laban said, “Good! Let it be as you have said.”  35  But that
day Laban removed the male goats that were striped and spotted, and all the female goats that
were speckled and spotted, every one that had white on it, and every lamb that was black, and
put them in the charge of his sons.  36  And he set a distance of three days’ journey between
himself and Jacob, and Jacob pastured the rest of Laban’s flock. 37  Then Jacob took fresh sticks
of poplar and almond and plane trees, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of
the sticks.  38  He set the sticks that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs,
the watering places where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to
drink,  39  the flocks bred in front of the sticks and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled,
and spotted.  40  And Jacob separated the lambs and set the faces of the flocks toward the
striped and all the black in the flock of Laban. He put his own droves apart and did not put
them with Laban’s flock.  41  Whenever the stronger of the flock were breeding, Jacob would
lay the sticks in the troughs before the eyes of the flock, that they might breed among the
sticks,  42  but for the feebler of the flock he would not lay them there. So the feebler would be
Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s.  43  Thus the man increased and had large flocks, female
servants and male servants, and camels and donkeys.

What did Jacob do? The image was in front of the goats when they came to eat. They saw this image and changed what they produced. Imagine what it can do for you if it works for goats. It’s all a matter of how badly you want it.

Prioritize your goals, write them down, and cut out images of what you want. Make a vision board with these images and keep them before your
eyes. Before long, they will become a part of you.

Have you ever found that once you looked at a new car suddenly you see that make and model everywhere? Why? Because you have it on the inside of you. If you want to lose weight, find a picture of the body you want. Be realistic here. Cut off the person’s head and put a photo of you there.

Go the extra mile and do the extra things required of you. At the end of 2023, it won’t be a goal anymore, you would have achieved it. And how good would that feel?

So let me ask you, “How badly do you want it?”