At age fifteen, John Goddard wrote down 127 goals that he wanted to accomplish in his lifetime. Included in these goals were climb Mount Kilimanjaro, Ararat, Fuji, McKinley (and thirteen others); visit every country in the world; learn to fly an airplane; retrace the travels of Marco Polo and Alexander the Great; visit the North and South Poles; Great Wall of China; Taj Mahal (and other exotic areas); become an Eagle Scout; dive in a submarine; play flute and violin; publish an article in National Geographic magazine; learn French, Spanish and Arabic; milk a poisonous snake; read the entire encyclopedia Britannica; and other goals, similar in variety and scope.
At age 47, Goddard had accomplished 103 of these goals and was in the process of completing several others. Goddard was neither wealthy nor gifted when he began his amazing saga of adventure and accomplishment. He was just a fifteen year-old boy who believed all things were possible and that he had the potential to do what he wanted to do.
John Goddard’s story is not unique. There are countless records of people who not only achieved great things but also did so with handicaps and against seemingly impossible odds. If the desire to achieve a goal is great enough the necessary personal resources always seem to follow. Author Dr. Robert Anthony claims that "the majority of failures in this life of ours are nothing more or less than victims of their own mental attitudes." Or as W. Clement Stone puts it. "What the mind can conceive and believe in, the mind can achieve."
How was Handel able to write his best music after his doctors told him he was going to die? How could Beethoven write music after he was totally deaf? What enabled Colonel Saunders, virtually penniless at the age of 66, to launch a business from a chicken recipe? How did Margaret Mitchell find the time to write Gone with the Wind while working fulltime at a newspaper? How was it possible for a young boy called Jack La Lanne, who suffered from flat feet, boils, a bad back and constant headaches to eventually become a guru of physical fitness? Or a girl called Wilma Rudolph, crippled by polio, narrowly escaping death from pneumonia and scarlet fever, to eventually become the first woman to win three Olympic gold medals?
It would appear that these individuals and others had one thing in common – a desire to reach a goal and a belief that they would succeed. The goal gave them a purpose – something to aim for. The desire provided the motivation to persist until their goal was realized. Without motivation, people will not succeed. And motivation comes from within. It is a product of the strength of our belief that we will succeed. No room here for negative thinking.
We hear a lot about the necessity of setting realistic goals. But what is meant by "realistic?" What one person considers impossible another may believe is realistic. A goal is realistic if we truly believe in our heart that it is realistic. It seems that God does not instill a belief in our heart without providing the resources to make that belief a reality.
Great things are achieved by ordinary people who are so busy working towards their goal that the thought of failure never enters their mind. And failure cannot exist except in the mind.
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