cowgirls and achievements

It’s been an interesting and busy week, lots of action. That is good. I’ve always felt that action makes the day go by. At the end of each day, I like to take inventory of what I’ve done that day. Did I do anything to help me reach my goals? I learned something new? Did I achieve the things that are important to me? If I can look back on my activity for the day and say yes; I can retire at night with a sense of accomplishment. I have disciplined myself to give a nod to my plans and dreams, but to measure the value of the day in what I was able to do.

While I believe that dreams and goals are so necessary in life, I measure my day by how well I have achieved those dreams, how much closer I get to my goals. When I can look back on the day and see that I did what I needed to do, what I wanted to do, and I can measure success to where I want to go tomorrow, then I call it a good day. I have also learned the secret to ensuring that I have many more good days than bad. Action. Did I really commit to taking action to achieve my goals?

As I have learned my lessons in the Library of Life, an important one was when I asked myself; ‘What’s stopping you?’. I learned the sobering lesson that you are usually the biggest obstacle to achieving your goals. I learned how much closer your dreams become, with just one simple step forward. After that first step, the following steps become easier. It is that first step that is so difficult.

That does not mean that my goals at the end of the day are the same as at the beginning of the day. For example, the recent day with Sim1. At the end of that day, I had accomplished practically zero of what I had planned to do, but everything that I wanted to do. I consider it a day of great achievement. The dream, the goals of the day changed, that’s all. A day out on the town with my great-niece became much more important than moving my sister-in-law into her new apartment. If I had strictly stuck to what I had planned to do, I would have missed the sunny day. If I had dragged Sunny along while she was trying to accomplish my planned goals, then we both would have missed that golden August afternoon just fooling around together. The goal of the day became wasting it, together. And we set about doing just that, with all the vigor I had planned to put into moving my sister-in-law. And we did it well.

I have learned that no one is going to fulfill your dreams for you. That is perhaps the most difficult lesson that I try to convey to children with my stories. One day when all the kids get together and compare notes, I wonder if they’ll discover that it was always the same plot, just different stories. To Stormy, it was a rock band, to Zach, they were pirates. For Eric they were ninjas, for Richard they were soldiers. For Leslie, it was the fairies. And so, for Jenna, they turn out to be cowgirls. Okay, I can deal with it. Cowgirls it is. The only difference between telling stories to Leslie and telling stories to Jenna is not the extra quarter century between the telling of the stories. The story didn’t change, only the characters. You have to do the same things to catch a fairy as you do to become a real cowgirl. Just dreaming about it won’t do it. Talking about it won’t. You just have to do it. Or in cowboy language; “Every cowgirl knows that spraying manure by mouth doesn’t fertilize crops.”

This brings us to the third cowgirl rule for Miss Jenna;

“It’s not talking that gets things done, it’s doing.”

Do you want to be a guitarist? Pick up a guitar. Do you want to be a painter? Painting. Do you want to be a singer? Sings. It is such a simple lesson, yet so difficult to learn. And I find myself having to learn it over and over again, every day. And I am forever grateful for that.