What planning a grocery list and setting life-changing goals have in common

Hello to everyone who is visiting thanks to the lovely mention Wally Conger gave me in his encouraging and informative new Web site this week. Wally is the best friend I've never met and always has some intriguing ideas to offer.

I established this blog to chronicle my thoughts as we move into the world George Orwell envisioned when he wrote Nineteen Eighty Four, and I still visit our growing dystopia from time to time. As time goes on, I've become not so distracted by exterior impositions on liberty as I am by the myriad ways we can still live in freedom — because no one can enslave you without your permission. In fact, as writers like James Allen point out, it's the self-imposed limits that stand between each of us and the lives we want to live.

The transition to a new year is often seen as the time for reflection, goal-setting and preparation, but every day begins as a blank slate — every day is a good day to set goals and embark on new journeys. If the idea of setting a big life-changing goal seems too daunting, start by planning out your day.

We do that anyway. Every day has a to-do list attached. ("Call the plumber, buy eggs and milk.") I find that the days when I remember to take a couple of minutes and write it down keeps me focused. Otherwise inevitably something will be lost in the shuffle. ("I've got the eggs — what else did I need?" "Why is the kitchen floor wet?")

If it works for a day, think of the advantages of making a longer-term to-do list. Sit down Sunday night and map out the week. Now you're doing stuff on Monday that will make it easier to finish that project that's due Friday, because you took a few minutes to look beyond today and understand the big picture for the week.

Now lift your eyes a bit further and plan out the month, and then a year. Then cast out the line and think about where you'd like to be in five years. All of a sudden you're setting goals. The same concepts apply whether you're setting goals for a drive downtown or for a decade.

Discouragement contributes to breaking New Year's resolutions or abandoning goals. That's because we forget those words of wisdom attributed to John Lennon and others: Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. So what if you didn't make it to the gym three times this week? Just make plans to get it right next week.

If a tree has fallen on the road downtown, you don't shrug your shoulders and abandon the trip; you just find another route. If your favorite grocery store is closed, you find another store to buy your eggs and milk this time — and maybe you discover that store is even better. If you have really latched onto a goal that lifts your mind to a better place — starting a new business, getting healthier, living debt-free, all of the above — expect that there will be bumps in the road and detours, but hang onto the dream.

Living life on purpose

In the first song of his valedictory album Brainwashed, George Harrison caught me up short with a line I've since come to realize is an old one, but it was the first time I'd heard it.

If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.

All of the self-help books I've ever encountered seem to come down to a few basic truths, and that's one of them. Expressed more positively, it's simply: Know where you want to be, set a goal to get there, and act on the goal.

The Earl Nightingale and James Allen pieces I referenced the last couple of days, use agrarian examples to make their point, Nightingale referring to a farmer and Allen to a gardener. Their point: If you want to grow flowers, or corn, you till the land, plant the seed and do what's needed to bring the plant to fruition — weeding, watering, etc. And you'd better plant in the spring if you want the food by the end of the summer.

Their point is that the mind is like the soil, and goals are the seed. You set the goal and do what's needed to bring it to fruition. And you'd better set a deadline if you want to reach the goal. Without a specific timeline, you have no way to know whether knee-high by the Fourth of July is a sign of coming success or of impending failure.

The farmer analogy works well because most people understand how hard farmers work, with a single-minded purpose — grow the corn, keep the cows milked. Setting your mind and going for a goal is not easy. As my friend John Newman reminded me the other day in an e-mail, have you ever tried to think about just one thing for two minutes straight? It's pretty much impossible; your mind has a will of its own and will skip off on a tangent. Keeping eyes on the prize is a simple concept, but not an easy task. If it were easy, everyone would reach the goals they set.

Allen takes it a step further, however, suggesting that everyone does reach the goals they set — and because most people don't set goals, they reap what their minds sow (or failed to sow). "If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there." Allen says:

Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.

And on a subject that recurs frequently here:

The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do. Doubt and fear are the great enemies of knowledge, and he who encourages them, who does not slay them, thwarts himself at every step. He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.

We all face doubt and fear on a daily basis, and manipulative men and women encourage us to be afraid so they we will buy into their self-serving solutions. Refuse to be afraid — that is, refuse to let doubt and fear control you — and you're on the road to freedom.

As I wrote during the last election season, "Freedom is not about having the right ruler. Oh, wait, yes it is. Freedom is understanding that I am the boss of me." You can live a life without doubt and fear weighing you down; you simply have to live it on purpose.

'You will be what you will to be'

Yesterday's excursion into Earl Nightingale led to today's excursion into James Allen and As A Man Thinketh, as nice a summary of basic truths as I've found in a long time.

Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts. For out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.

Read it all.

Earl Nightingale's 'Strangest Secret'

An oldie but goodie to share today — because it's brand-new to me. Dan Miller mentioned on his podcast that "The Strangest Secret" by Earl Nightingale is one of the most influential pieces of writing he's ever encountered. I did a quick search and found it, and it's as good as Dan made it sound. The article sums up well a simple truth we've all heard thousands of times — that we become what we think about.

A sample:

A person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that's what he's thinking about. Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn't know where he's going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will thereby create a life of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing ... he becomes nothing.

Simple advice — so why is it so hard to follow? Nightingale has some insights into that, too, in this article worth reading.

3 men who made a difference to me in 2009

If I live my life differently from this general time onward, the credit should be shared with three men whom I encountered for the first time in 2009, one in person and two via their writings and podcasts.

Barry McGuire is the one I met in person, and technically I "encountered" him for the first time years ago, but it was meeting him that turned my mind and life around. His tale of teetering on the eve of destruction and finding his way to a new place is inspiring; he's the one who pointed me toward the book The Sacrament of the Present Moment; and listening to and speaking with him ignited a creative spark whose fruits I will be sharing with the rest of the world in 2010 and beyond.

Dan Miller is the author of 48 Days to the Work You Love, a terrific guide to discovering the job/work you want to do and how to go about getting it.

Dave Ramsey is the author of Financial Peace and The Total Money Makeover and host of a daily radio program that is condensed into a podcast five days a week. I think I understood his principles years ago, but he made me finally pay attention. Or perhaps I was finally ready to act on the principle that debt is dumb.

I heartily recommend all three men's body of work to anyone and everyone. To the extent that my body of work is more focused and productive in 2010, I owe it to their influence.

Happy New Year, all!

Roddenberry wins?

Gene Roddenberry in Star Trek envisioned a world with no money and an Earth government that worked in harmony with alien races from other planets.

No sign of the alien races yet, but there's lots of talk these days about that Earth government.

Before you get too carried away being afraid of the one-world government, remember: There's always someone who wants you to be scared. Don't be. Figure out what their agenda is, avoid it and go live your life in peace.

What if they gave a blockbuster and nobody came?

Man, I want to be jazzed about Avatar, the big new multimillion-dollar epic written and directed by James Cameron.

Now, James Cameron has done some mighty incredible work in his lifetime. Blew me away with Terminator and Terminator 2. Great, great flicks. I was surprised to see him try to do a sequel to Alien, which didn't need a sequel, but darned if the thing wasn't bigger and better in some ways to the Ridley Scott original.

True Lies was a pleasant surprise, a delightful romp, and The Abyss simply blew me away. Both versions of it. I'm probably the only guy on the planet who thinks The Abyss was Cameron's finest hour, but there ya have it. (In fact, I think the reason I was so disappointed by Know1ng is that it was basically the same story as The Abyss, only above the surface and not as well done. Oh, maybe it's more like The Abyss meets Cocoon, but the point is both source materials were a helluva lot better.)

So if those were the James Cameron canon, I would be in line NOW to see Avatar when it debuts at the local theater on Friday. But there's one other little notation in Cameron's filmography, and that's why I am just not jazzed about the new flick.

It's this gawd-awful thing called Titanic. Man, I wanted to be jazzed about Titanic, it's such a great real-life story, a modern epic of hubris completely humiliated. The supposedly invincible ship that can't even finish its maiden voyage. An enormous human tragedy, so many dreams dashed at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

But instead Cameron spent oodles of money to deliver an unbelievably trite story about two unpleasant characters who fall in love despite the machinations of her unpleasant mother and unspeakably clichéd rich-guy fiancé, a boring tale that takes half of a three-hour movie — 75 minutes in I was fidgeting in my seat wondering where the frack is the damn iceberg?! — the terrible CGI effects, I didn't for a minute believe I was watching anything except a computer illustration or a giant movie set, and last but not least the old lady has the multimillion-dollar gem that could help the struggling explorer pay his bills AND SHE THROWS THE DAMN THING INTO THE OCEAN! WITH A BIG SMILE ON HER FACE!

As great as every James Cameron film was that came before Titanic, that's how bloody terrible Titanic was. It was the worst time I have ever had in a movie theater. Absolutely the worst, and that includes the time I wasted watching the jaw-droppingly bad First Family, the biggest waste of a brilliant cast ever captured on celluloid.

Now, of course, Titanic is by far the biggest-grossing film of all time. And therein lies the dilemma. Was Avatar made by the feisty and creative genius who made all of those terrific movies in the 1980s and early '90s, or will it be as bloated and overrated as Titanic? The money's on Cameron following the money, trying to capture lightning in a bottle twice. But I'm afraid he will find you can't go home again, no matter which direction he tried to go.

So I'm going to sit this one out, folks. Tell me if Avatar is any good, if you decide to go. Maybe if I hear enough "I didn't expect to love it, but it's incredible I tell ya, incredible" then I'll check it out. If it's still in theaters by then.