Field Goal

Things typically don't click for me unless I apply them to sports. Goals, for example. In a game of basketball, you can score a lot of them. But you can also accomplish a lot of them. In High School, we would come up with team goals to accomplish in each game-how many points we'd let them score, how many turnovers we'd have, etc. While completion led to much rejoicing in the land, failure resulted in running endless suicides. You bet your sweet aspercreme we tried our best. Despite the toll that punishment took on my mental stability, it did help me to play smarter and harder during games.
And now, I Naomi, write some of the words of Thomas S. Monson:

"It is necessary to prepare and plan so that we don't fritter away our lives. Without a goal, there can be no real success. One of the best definitions of success I have ever had goes something like this: Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. Someone has said that the trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never crossing the goal line."

Daruma Doll. Cute, right?

 Mr. Pehrson, my Sports Psychology teacher, emphasized in his class that goals must be S.M.A.R.T. I think serving an honorable 18-month mission for the church appropriately fits all those categories. However, the second requirements of goals is that you have to be accountable, otherwise, what would failure matter? I mean, if I didn't have to run sprints for having too many turnovers, I wouldn't have tried quite as hard.
My brother Derek acquired a Daruma doll from one of his Young Men's leaders. The idea behind these things is that you color in the first eye when you decide on a goal, and the other when you finish it. I chose an alternative method of establishing my own accountability. I just told my family. Sometimes that's all you need-just some other people that will be majorly bummed if you decide to wuss out. And also there's no way I'm going to just sit at home and let my brothers have all the fun.