Tag: Goals

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The Cardinal Virtues for the Christian Life, Part 4: Deliberate Living (Temperance)

In 2021, my daughter and I went to Egypt for two weeks. In part because of Covid, my daughter ended up homeschooling, so this became her senior trip. It was her first time out of the country. It was my first time out of the country in years. It was awesome and life-changing. It gave her a perspective on the world she had never had before, and it awakened something in me that had been sleeping for a long time.

At the end of the trip, my daughter said to me, “When I have more money, I want to travel.”

I responded immediately, “That’s not the way to think about it. Make it your goal to travel, and you will find the money.”

That’s how the 3rd cardinal virtue works. It’s about deliberate living. It’s about organizing our lives around the best things.

The word often used for this virtue is “temperance.” But that word doesn’t really capture what is in view. It makes people think merely of avoiding something bad or not using good things too much.

But that’s not really the point. The point is not the means. It’s the end. When you aim at good and big things, you begin organizing your life to get there. That’s the point about travel. When you have a clear goal to take a big trip, you start thinking about how you spend money everywhere because you want to gather the resources you need to do something bigger.

That’s the real meaning of temperance—or deliberate living.

How the Apostle Paul Expresses This in 1 Corinthians
In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he returns to this theme again and again: clarify how you spend your time by orienting your life toward better things.

In the ancient world, there was often discussion about what was good and what was useful or helpful. You can find this, for example, in Cicero’s On Duties (read about here). Paul takes up this same theme: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

So how are we to judge? We look at our goal. Not everything is useful for achieving it. Continue reading “The Cardinal Virtues for the Christian Life, Part 4: Deliberate Living (Temperance)”

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Keeping Sane and Productive in an Insane World, Principle # 4: Don’t Be Passive. Make Goals; Carry Them out.

Principle #4: Don’t Be Passive. Make Goals; Carry Them out.

When life gets difficult, it’s easy to enter into passive mode. It’s easy to act helpless. Life is just bad, and there is no way out, we might think. There’s nothing we can do about it. It’s comforting in its own way. If I can do nothing to change the world, I am relieved of all responsibility.

The problem is that it’s not true. Things can change. Situations can change. Families can change. People can change.

It’s not easy. Changing ourselves and our communities is hard work. That’s why it’s easy to give up. There is resistance.

But there is something that can change things: human activity. We were not made to be passive. We were made to be active. When God created human beings, He said, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen. 1:28). In other words, don’t be passive with this good world. Make it something better. Be active. Make goals. Carry them out.

God repeated substantially the same thing after the fall of man into sin. It wasn’t just for the unfallen world that God made man to be active. He said that we should do all work like you are doing it for the greatest purpose imaginable, glorifying God. “And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him” (Col. 3:17).

It’s easy to be passive in the face of difficult situations. You may have tried to go to the gym before, but you gave up. So, you think it’s impossible. You may have worked on your relationship with your spouse, and nothing seemed to come of it. So, you stopped working on it. You may have tried to learn to play the piano, and nothing came of it. So, you are confirmed in your passivity.

But there are things you can do. You can keep working at it. You can keep tilling the ground, fertilizing it, and caring for it. In time, a seed will sprout and grow into something beautiful.

Don’t give up because you tried one goal and didn’t succeed. Think of different ways to do it. Here’s an example. You may have wanted to improve your relationship with your child. So, you asked them to sit down and talk to you. They didn’t like it. It didn’t get anywhere.

But you can change your approach to talking to your kids. A friend of mine realized that if he went into the rooms of his children with their permission, they would open up in a way that they would never do in the living room. I have found that to be true as well. It’s a remarkable thing. Make it a goal to go down to your child’s room and talk to them on their turf a couple of times a week. See what happens.

Another friend of mine played guitar in a band. I had recently started working on the guitar, and we had a discussion about it. One thing he said was that I should not have my guitar in a case under my bed. Instead, I should have it out on a stand. That way, I could just grab it. He also said that I should make it my goal to practice a mere five minutes a day. I did all that. I practiced more often and usually for much longer than five minutes a day.

You can apply this to exercise. Don’t make it your goal to go to the gym. Make it your goal to exercise five minutes a day in your house with small weights or calisthenics. You will probably do it longer. Either way, you will start to get used to exercising. This will develop a habit. It will be easier to expand from there.

Whatever you want to do or are concerned about, you have options. You can drop the passivity, get active, and start to make a difference. Even if things don’t turn out how you would like, you will be happy that you did something to make yourself better and learn rather than being a passive spectator.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope it encourages you to be active in the face of your problems. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this article in the comments below. If you like it, subscribe in the box below or share this article on social media. I hope to see you here again.

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Photo by Dave Ruck on Unsplash

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No More Wasted Years: In Defense of New Year’s Resolutions

Thanksgiving gives us an opportunity to see the good of the past year. Christmas enables us to see a source of joy that transcends our circumstances. New Year’s offers a fresh start. We’ve got a whole year ahead of us!

Two years ago, I made it my goal to sleep outside in a tent two nights out of the entire year. I didn’t do it. Two nights! That’s all I needed to fulfill that goal. Last year, I reviewed that goal, and I thought about how to make it happen. I decided to practice “camping” in my backyard. I would see what things I would need, how I could cook outside, and how to set up and take down the tent. Then, I’d be ready to do it out there. So, I made my goal of sleeping in a tent for two nights again.

This year, I slept in a tent nine nights. I practiced twice at home. I camped at a campground in the mountains by myself for two nights. I stayed at a KOA while travelling. I led a men’s camping trip for our church. I camped with my wife for the fist time on our 20th anniversary trip in Florida. That’s what resolutions can do. They challenge us to move forward and do things that we haven’t done before.

Have you ever experienced something like that in your life? How could you experience more of it? I’ve talked to a lot of people about New Year’s resolutions, and here’s some of the questions I’ve had and the answers I’ve given. These are my ideas on how to approach New Year’s goals or resolutions. I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below. Continue reading “No More Wasted Years: In Defense of New Year’s Resolutions”

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The Goal of Counseling: What Is Our Vision for the People We Talk to?

Why do people go to counseling? It is because they see something in their life or the life of others that is not what it is supposed to be. They are depressed. They can’t find a job. Their financial situation is grim. Their marriage is falling apart. They are bitter. They can’t move forward from loss. Their children are misbehaving. Their work is going badly.

All these reasons presuppose a certain vision of life. This vision exists in the mind of the counselor and the counselee. If the counselee had no goal, then they wouldn’t go to counseling. If the counselor believed people were fine the way they were, then she wouldn’t try to help them.

The question is, what is that vision? How clear is it in our minds?

For many, it is simply the vision of what we might call common or normal life. This is life where you feel OK, make a reasonable amount of money, get along reasonably well with your family, do fine in your job or school, and don’t get into big trouble.

When one of these things are disrupted, people can really start to struggle. This is what leads people to seek counseling. They seek help with these problems so that they can get back to normal life. Often, when that goal is met, counseling comes to an end.

But what if the goal of counseling is not simply the common life? Then, this will have an effect on counseling from the beginning. What if counseling has a bigger vision for life than just getting along reasonably well? Continue reading “The Goal of Counseling: What Is Our Vision for the People We Talk to?”

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5 Perspectives to Get Us Unstuck

We’re about to start a new year. It’s time to think about new goals, new activities, and new habits. The trouble is, we often end up stuck in the same old ways of doing things. We start something new, and resistance sets in. It’s like we’re walking through deep mud and trying to climb up a steep bank. It seems like everything around us wants to keep us in the same old ruts.

The ancient philosophers of the Western world dealt with big abstract ideas, but they also thought through these common problems. I have found that they offer some ways to help us think differently about common problems that offer new perspectives. They are alternative perspectives on common problems that can help get us unstuck.

1. Change of habits takes time. Aristotle says “. . . men acquire many qualities neither by nature nor by teaching but by habituation, bad qualities if they are habituated to the bad, good if the good” (Eudemian Ethics, 1.1).

My comment: we look at many things we can’t do and think that we cannot do them because we cannot do them now. Aristotle observes that many things involve work over time, habituation. So, it would be better when looking at most things we cannot do to not say, “I cannot do that,” but rather to say, “I cannot do that today.” We can acquire new skills. They just take work over time.

2. How you think will determine how you live. “Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind, for the soul is dyed by the thoughts” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.16).

My comment: the way that we think about things has a strong effect on how we feel about them. However, we can think differently about things and so feel differently about them. For example, we may look at mistakes as a disaster, and so we get angry at ourselves. However, we can think differently. We can accept that mistakes are a normal part of the human learning process. This makes it easier to keep going. That’s what these alternative ways of thinking are all about. If our thoughts shape the character of the soul, we can change our thoughts and consequently the character of our soul. Continue reading “5 Perspectives to Get Us Unstuck”

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