Kyrie Eleison

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Socrates is credited with saying “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I beleive that every life is a gift from God and inherently worth living. Still, there is truth that examining one’s life is of tremendous value both to the self and to others who can benefit from our examination.

But I think there is something that needs to come before examining life, and, IMHO, is more important than an examined life. It is an intended life. If I simply do, and later examine - that is valuable. I may learn. Others may learn. But it is reactive - I wait until after the fact to determine my motivation. This is backwards - it puts action before thought. In contrast, and intended life is purposeful. It strives to reach, to achieve. It is active.

In my Superordinate Goals post I wrote about the two goals that I believe stand above all goals. I also wrote about how to walk back using my “Four Year Old’s Interview” moving from behavior - to uncover what goals may be motivating what we do. There is another way to move between motivation and behavior. Rather than start with behavior and work backwards by asking why, start with the highest level goals and ask how. What do you want to do? How are you going
to get there? So you want to get to Heaven - Great! How? Be a priest/nun? Be a good spouse/parent? Develop a deeper prayer life? Be a witness to my faith? Be a servant to others?
In turn, how do you want to achieve each of these?

When asking why we do what we do, and comparing that to what we want and the plans we have to get there, we can be surprised by the incongruence:

For example, starting with behavior:
I work long hours
Because I want resources
Because I want to provide for my family
Because I want to be a good husband/father

If I start from the other end, at the goal:
I want to be a good husband/father
So I want to spend more time with my family
So I need to spend less time working.

Of course life is a tad more complex, but it illustrates how we can get different answers when we start at different places. Here the goals are the same (though this is not always the case), but the behaviors are diametrically opposed. If we stay with looking backwards - just examining our lives, we can be complacent. Sure we can uncover behavior that does not align with who we want to be, but it does not lead to new behavior. To really move forward we need to not only examine our lives, but seize the initiative. We must identify our goals, and move toward them. Of course
identifying our goals is the first, and perhaps hardest task - I want to be a better Christian. Now, HOW do I do that?

What are YOUR goals? How are
YOU moving toward them?

Tags: motivation, goals, intended life