Themes are greater than goals because they lend themselves to the basic habits that lead to achieved goals.
In my New Year’s video, I talked about this or overarching theme of consistency. Then I listed a whole bunch of things under that. Things that are pretty common things for people to set as New Year’s resolutions. Goals or habits that they want to establish in the New Year. At some point in the past, I’ve had each of these habits established by themselves. I’ve never, that I can remember, had them all established where I was doing them all together. I think that when you take those habits:
- Daily scripture reading,
- daily prayer,
- daily meditation,
- reading just for the sake of learning,
- writing for the sake of sharing what you’ve learned…
If you take those things together, I think they multiply off each other. I don’t think that they’re just additive. I think they are multiplicative. The theme of consistency, for me, gives me a little bit more grace. Let’s say I manage to read scripture every day, but I don’t manage to set aside time for meditation every day. I’ve consistently done one, even though I didn’t consistently do the other.
It’s aiming high and hitting something, rather than aiming low and hitting nothing. So I’m still achieving. I’m still growing, I’m still moving forward. That’s the basic idea.
Using consistency across the board as a goal helps keep the big picture view. Instead of beating myself up if one day I don’t set aside time for meditation, or if I don’t write in a journal one day. As long as I’m still doing most of those things, then I still have an element of consistency. I’m still moving forward. I’m still growing. I still get that multiplicative benefit of those habits all working together.
