Choose Goals You Can Control

I am not the first person to say this, but we could all benefit by choosing goals we can directly have some control over.

Often times, we judge our success based on some external factor or factors that we have no control over.  In the church world, this might mean attendance at events, positive feedback after a message or an event, giving, etc.  In education, it might mean student test scores or how well behaved the class is.

While those are fine benchmarks and things to measure, I can't physically control attendance.  Or feedback.  Or giving.  So while I need to track those things, I can't necessarily measure success off of them.

But, and this is one of those big buts, there are tons of things I can do that can impact those measurements.  If I am teaching, did I use all of the creative resources available to me to convey my lesson?  Did I do all I can to make our church as friendly to guests as possible?

These and hosts of other questions are actually better goals because they are ones I can do something about.