thought exercise on Goals

Worthy goals are generally motivated by something deeper than success. In her conversations with Nobel laureates, [researcher Xiaodong D.] Lin said she has found that “they all have insatiable passion...

Pragmatism may be defined simply as the approach to reality that defines truth as “that which works.” The pragmatist is concerned about results, and the results determine the truth. The problem with t...

In a survey given in 1976, participants were asked to list their life goals. Fame ranked fifteenth out of sixteen. In a recent survey, 51 percent of millenials listed being famous as “one of their top...

A documentary about Ernest Shackleton’s early twentieth-century exposition to the South Pole shows the classified ad Shackleton put in a London newspaper: Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wa...

Companies in this era of apps and personal tracking devices have grown much smarter about surfacing milestones that were previously invisible. The app Pocket, which stores articles from the Internet o...

I recently heard a story about a race in which one runner had a significant lead over the rest of the field. As the man rounded the final turn, the crowd roared as he inched closer and closer to the f...

​​There is a story involving Yogi Berra, the well-known catcher for the New York Yankees, and Hank Aaron, who at that time was the chief power hitter for the Milwaukee Braves. The teams were playing i...

Albert Einstein, the great physicist, was once traveling from Princeton on a train when the conductor came down the aisle, punching the tickets of every passenger. When he came to the famous professor...

Nearly 200 years ago there were two Scottish brothers named John and David Livingstone. John had set his mind on making money and becoming wealthy, and he did. But under his name in an old edition of ...

As a young boy, around the time my heart began to suspect that the world was a fearful place and I was on my own to find my way through it, I read the story of a Scottish discus thrower from the ninet...

Some years ago an army sharpshooter was visiting a small town. He was surprised to find bull’s-eyes with bullet holes in the exact center all throughout the village. “Someone or some one’s here must b...

The politician Helen Violet Asquith (later Bonham Carter) was once attending a dinner with Winston Churchill, who initially seemed lost in abstraction for an awkwardly long period of time. Abruptly he...

Years ago I heard a motivational speaker encourage his audience to “eat that frog.” … it makes sense in its own way: Stop procrastinating and just do the thing you fear. Once you do that, everything e...

If you’ve ever wondered what the explicit goals are of the Klu Klux Klan, here is a definition offered by the organization itself: The goal of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux ...

Success is a shining city, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We dream of it as children, we strive for it through our adult lives, and we suffer melancholy in old age if we have not reached it....

What Determines Happiness?  Imagine a movie theater full of a hundred people. These hundred individuals represent the full continuum of happiness: Some are exceptionally happy, others less so, and ...

Any experienced gardener has heard of a botanical term called Apical (ah-pick-ul) dominance. In most plants that grow from a central stem, from maple trees to bush peas, whatever branch is at the top ...

Desegregation was one of the big goals of the civil rights movement. “Separate but equal” in the South became “separate and unequal.” The disparities were in things as small as water fountains and as ...

Jesus’ parable [of the banquet in Luke 14:16-23] makes it clear that there are business and career invitations . Some people had real estate that demanded attention, and others had invested in ox...

I am convinced that the scourge of our scientific and technological age is depersonalization. There is a heartbeat pulsating at the center of the universe, giving life and meaning to everything, but o...

The coaching philosophy of Don Shula helps us understand the gifting of the church for God’s mission. Shula spent 26 years as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins. Under his leadership they had their ...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares insights on the topic of rest from the poet David Whyte: [The] poet David Whyte opens our minds and hearts to rest when he writ...

In his thought-provoking book, Twelve Lies That Hold America Captive, Jonathan Walton uncovers some of the hard truths about American culture. In this excerpt, he describes the consumption associa...

Desegregation was one of the big goals of the civil rights movement. “Separate but equal” in the South became “separate and unequal.” The disparities were in things as small as water fountains and as ...

Tennis superstar Andre Agassi was only nineteen years old when he starred in a television commercial for Canon cameras. The spot featured him in all sorts of eye-grabbing poses, a spectacle on display...

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for the success of the human species. It enables us to learn from our mistakes and make plans. When the PFC is healthy, we behave consistently in ways that enable ...

John Wesley’s covenant prayer demonstrates a level of sacrifice and devotion to Jesus that has been rarely matched. How many of us have asked for suffering, in order to experience the humility and the...

The adjective busy set as a modifier to pastor should sound to our ears like adulterous to characterize a wife, or embezzling to describe a banker. It is an outrageous scandal, a blasphemous affront. ...

When Freud says…that consciousness is the tip of the mental iceberg, he was short of the mark by quite a bit-it may be more the size of a snowball on top of that iceberg. The mind operates most effici...

Jonathan Edwards is one of America’s most influential philosophers and theologians. Edwards wrote dozens of books, sparked the First Great Awakening, and was influential in the lives of hundreds of mi...