Start With One Goal

Your Eyes Are Bigger Than Your Stomach

Listing Your Desired Goals – Part 3

“Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.”
Have you ever heard the above mentioned phrase? I remember my grandmother saying this a time or two. Don’t let your eyes be bigger than your stomach. In fact, we would have to pay a heavy penalty if we didn’t learn this lesson. She would allow us to put as much on our plates as we wanted. The caveat was that we must eat everything we put on it and waste none of it. Don’t let your eyes be bigger than your stomach. Many of my cousins had to suffer through staying at the table for what then seemed like hours stuffing themselves until they were unable to take any more. Don’t let your eyes be bigger than your stomach.

In the same way, the average person views their time. We tend to overestimate how much time we have and underestimate how long it takes to complete anything. This is major when it comes to setting goals. We see a year or even a month as if it were eternity, everlasting. This is what makes our next step so critical. We must select which desire we want to turn into a goal we would like to act upon. 

From the list of items that you created in the previous step, highlight one goal. Try your best to highlight only one, but no more than three. Many people say they can do five, but that’s a scenario where your eyes might be bigger than your stomach. The problem with doing five or more is that you are going to have to create space to accomplish these things. That space, however, is already occupied by other activities. In other words, your time is already filled with other things, so to speak. With that said, the idea is to make sure we have a manageable number of goals that we can truly act upon. Let me give you four tips in approaching your selection process.

1. Create space for new goals.
   Needless to say, your list of desires is what you want to accomplish. Therefore, you are going to need to create space for them. I suggest you start aggressively by selecting only one desire. I call this an aggressive selection because it is going to take effort to look at all your desires and choose only one to act on. Please note that we are starting with one goal until we can feel more comfortable with doing more than one in a given period of time. The normal person is unable to select just one because all the goals, if they are truly your desires, are attractive, inviting, and even exciting. Resist the urge and be aggressive by selecting only one. 
   
2. Flush out your real desire.
   Only select the desired goal you really want to accomplish. The purpose is to select the goal, the idea, or the dream you want to accomplish or need to accomplish first. It is that easy. You must choose one. Look at your list, choose only one. You might even want to say to yourself, this is the one item I truly would like to get done and if I get this one done, I am going to feel so much better. This one item off my list of things and out of my brain will give me a great sense of accomplishment and momentum toward completing my next desire.
   
   Take your list right now, sift through it, and even pray over it, if you have to. Your assignment is to select only one. If you can do this, congratulations you are on your way to next-level results.
   
3. Don’t let the list drive you, you drive the list.
   Many people are going to look at their list of desires and want to do all the items and activities listed on it at once. That’s what happens when things go out of sight and out of mind. As soon as they become in view again, that urge to attack and act bubbles to the top of your mind. They have a scientist’s word for this that I can’t recall at the moment. Trust me, I understand. Seeing your desires on paper, you can almost taste it and smell it.
   
   Before you get too tempted to execute on any of it. I need to remind you of one fact, these goals, these ideas, these dreams, these ambitions were not getting done before you had them written on paper. Otherwise, they would never have been listed. So don’t get into a mindset that you want to accomplish multiple goals. Don’t let the list drive you, you drive the list. Don’t allow the list to drive your emotions, you drive the list.
   
   Now for the thought that will balance this one out. If we take just one desire and get it done, we have made some progress that we never would have made in the first place. Driving your list means you control the list, and the list isn’t controlling you.
   
4. The objective is to select just one.
   Choose only one, don’t be compelled to do two. It is not going to work. If that thinking was going to work, it would have worked. If the habits, the skills, the actions you have always taken, we’re going to work, you wouldn’t continue to have the same results you get, you’ve gotten. Don’t be tempted to do the same thing you’ve always done, for you know that will lead to the same results you have always had. Now we are taking a new step, a new approach, so that we can produce new results.

Now that we have selected one or limited the amount of food we’ve added to our plate, we can manage it. We will be able to enjoy the meal, the journey. The benefit of not allowing our eyes to be bigger than our stomach is that we can enjoy our food and go back for seconds if we wish. The same is true with our goals. Which is better, completing one goal or taking on so many that we don’t complete any of them? “Better [uncommon] is one hand-full [margin] with tranquility than two hand-fulls with toil [too much going on in your life] and chasing after the wind [never being satisfied].” ^[1] This is called margin for my sophisticated readers. 

Again, the objective is to start attacking one goal until we get it done. Once we get that completed, we can determine which one to target next by repeating these steps. This is the most exciting part. Checking off a desire as completed can produce the best outcome for you and give the momentum needed to continue the process of accomplishing everything you’ve always dreamed of and desire to accomplish. 

Question: What one desire would you select today if you had only 30 days to complete any of them?

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1] Ecclesiastes 4:6 NIV, Bible.com, accessed January 29, 2024, https://www.bible.com/bible/111/ecc.4.6.niv

All Scripture references used by permission, see our Scripture copyrights. 

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