Writing What We Want

Last week, I attended a memorial service for a friend who died unexpectedly.

Along with the sadness of knowing I don’t have any more opportunities to enjoy his sense of humor and adventure, his death reminded me to live my life the way I want.

Which means I need to identify what I want.

Bucket lists.

Top 10 Accomplishments.

My legacy.

Experts say that 83 percent of us don’t have goals. Of the 17 percent who do, only 3 percent write them down. Yet, writing goals almost doubles the odds of achieving them.

I’ve written my goals before – I just don’t know where I put that piece of paper.

That’s okay, say other experts. Writing goals is the key.

When that lost paper resurfaces, people are usually surprised by how many of the items they have achieved.

There seem to be a lot of experts on goals.

I wonder if they know where their goals lists are.

I decided to think about my goals and legacy while I putt-putted on my tractor to take hay to my cows.

After all, my tractor is slow enough that I have lots of time to think.

First, I got stuck on narrowing my Top 10 goals to just 10.

I have far more than 10 things left to finish or improve.

Then I got my tractor stuck in the snow.

As I shoveled, the horses dashed through the open gate on a tour to investigate the suspicious and intriguing county road.

I wasn’t too worried about them because their hay was beckoning in the pasture. They would be back soon.

The tractor finally pulled out of the crusty snow and into the gate, where its tires spun out again.

About then, a neighbor kindly drove past, herding the horses farther up the road, past the open gate.

I narrowed my Top 10 Life Accomplishments to shoveling my tractor wheels free and avoiding jail time.

By the time I returned to the house – tired, wet and attempting to be proud of accomplishing the bare minimum of getting the cows and sheep fed -- I had scratched going to the gym from my goals for the day.

Actually, I never add going to the gym to my list.

I don’t include flying to the moon on my list, either.

My potential for either is close to nil.

I dug through some papers, though, curious about what I thought was important so many years ago.

I didn’t find my list of goals, but I found a letter I had written to myself after attending a Ranching for Profit school several years ago.

At the end of that week, each of us wrote a letter congratulating ourselves on our achievements during the next year.

Teachers held our letters and mailed them to us a year later.

This assignment used a combination of writing goals and affirmation, which experts say is even more effective than just writing down what we want to do.

I was surprised to realize that I had made a lot of progress since I wrote that letter.

I had written about learning more about soil microbes, improving my pasture management, increasing my calving and lambing survival rates and ensuring that my kids know I love them and am proud of them.

Much loftier goals than attempting to stay out of jail.

I don’t know how it works in our human brains, but writing – not typing, but pen-to-paper writing – our goals and affirming our accomplishments somehow manifests them.

Listing how we want to be remembered after we die narrows the task.

After all, I don’t need my headstone to read “She managed to stay out of jail.”