Why You Must Learn to Set Goals

Excerpted from
The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity : A Simple Guide to Unlimited Abundance
By Edwene Gaines

In order to harness your new wealth and good fortune that tithing brings you, you must learn the next spiritual law: goal-setting. Goal-setting and developing directed faith can have truly spectacular results. Like tithing, however, goal-setting works only if you actually do it.

When you start tithing, the windows open and a shower of good starts flowing into your life. Now you need something to catch the good with, or it will be lost to you. Setting concrete and practical goals creates a vessel with which you can catch it.

During the process of goal-setting, you will need to take some time alone, away from the chaos and distraction of daily life, to get acquainted again with the real you. You may need to relearn how to daydream and let your mind wander, as you used to do as a child. Goal-setting is a wonderfully fun and creative part of the prosperity process. But it's also a very important one. You will need to give yourself the time and permission to dream big, or you will miss exactly what you are here for: to experience your own divine nature.

You're going to have to do some important inner work. I once heard a woman at one of my workshops say that she had to learn to "increase her bliss tolerance." I thought that was a great way to put it, and I myself am always looking for ways to increase my tolerance for pleasure. You have to get ready to accept what you want in your life.

And if you want something, you're going to have to get moving! You can't just sit there like a bump on a pickle. I'll show you how to get moving in this chapter. But before we get started, let's explore some of the essential elements of setting goals.

Casting Aside Your Limitations

One of the main reasons people don't reach for their goals is that they believe there is something about themselves that will prevent them from getting whatever it is they really want in their deepest heart of hearts.

Perhaps you think you're too old to have all the things you really want. Or too young. You're too heavy, or too skinny. A woman, or of a minority group. Too tired, too broke. Married to the wrong person, or not married at all. But these statements are all lame cop-outs. And they aren't what's truly keeping you from getting what you want. While preparing to set goals, you must move beyond these limiting self-perceptions and step into the role of who you really, truly are.

And who are you? You are a child of God. You are an expression of the Most High. You are a point of light within the Greater Light. Absolutely anything is possible that you want to achieve. But you've got to take concrete steps toward the dreams that you have. Goethe said. "Whatever you do, or dream you can. begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it." And when you start moving toward your dreams, what you are going to find out is that God has so much more good in store for you than you could ever imagine. But before you can start receiving all the good God has in store for you, you must cast off a sense of your limitations.

Do you suffer from an illness that limits your mobility? Do you have a difficult family that thwarts your desires? Do you worry that your dreams are bigger than your bank account? Now is the time to put these things mentally aside and try to imagine what your life would be like if you could do anything you wanted, without any constraints and limits. Don't worry about how these things will come to you. The "how" of it is not your concern. God knows the "how." Instead, focus on asking yourself. "If money were no object, if time or responsibility or age or education were no concern, what would my life look like? What would the life of my dreams be?"