...not just your goals. One of the tough challenges I see with many people is staying focused on goals. It's very easy to get sidetracked in our day and age. Concentrating on priorities becomes more difficult as we are deluged with all sorts of distractions. Today, we have more cable channels, talk shows, books, magazines, and newspapers than ever before - and this doesn't include the internet. We have more leisure time and expendable income than any other time in history and we have more activities to choose from.

All these things can be a benefit in their own time but they can also sway us from our true priorities in life. People who change direction with every new opportunity or idea that comes their way must ask themselves how committed they were to those original long term goals. Accomplishing goals in life requires focused commitment. A person will never succeed at anything if they continually move from one thing to another. The key to staying on track is first making sure you have a mission statement before you begin setting goals for yourself. If your foundation is unstable, it will be hard to finish the project. Dr. Stephen Covey says, "In order to deal with change in this day and age, we must first know what is changeless about ourselves." Once we discover our true calling and write a mission statement that supports it, then it becomes harder for us to be shaken off course, despite distractions that surround us.

Once our mission statement is in place, we can then focus like a laser beam on the task ahead. If we go out on a bright, sunny day and hold a magnifying glass over a stack of newspapers, it will never start a fire - if we're moving the glass around. But what happens when we hold the glass in one place? The beam is concentrated on that one spot and eventually - voila!