Shooting at Targets

You know how sometimes it feels like you need to do about a billion different things, and they all need to be done RIGHT now, and there’s so much to do, you can’t even figure out what to do first?

Sigh. And it gives you grief.

I was driving down the street, stressing about the aforementioned malady when something brilliant came to mind. My mom hangs frames on their bathroom wall with great quotes or pictures, and every so often she changes the quotes. Suddenly, as a gift from above, one of the quotes came to mind.

“Nothing can add more power to your life
than concentrating all of your energies
on a limited set of targets.”

Well, duh. Now that you mention it, it makes all kinds of sense.

If you’ve got 50 arrows in your quiver, and you shoot them all at one target, you’re going to get a few bull’s eyes. And a couple dozen or so in the other rings. And of course, you’re going to miss the target quite a few times. But you’ll get bull’s eyes! And hit tons of other places that give points!



If you have a circle of 50 targets around you and can only aim one arrow at each one, then sure, you’re going to get a bull’s eye on a few. And you’ll hit the rings on twenty or so more. But there’ll be a lot you don’t even hit.



And here’s the kicker— the ones you don't hit could be the most important targets.

When you have that one target that you’ve been aiming at, and it’s filled with tons of arrows, IT FEELS REALLY GOOD (I’m just guessing here).

And when you have a whole mess of targets with no arrows, it kinda makes you feel like you really suck at... Okay, we’ll say archery.

So I decided to make a gigantic bon fire and huck most of my targets into it, leaving only a couple to aim at. (Okay, I didn’t actually burn them, because I really like all those other targets! I’d like to shoot some arrows at them sometime very soon. So, I mostly just stood them on end in a neat little row with a label on the side so I could find each one at a moment’s notice.)

But holy cow, does it feel good to have less targets to aim at!

I’m talkin’ REALLY good.

So I say, chuck some of those targets you’ve been aiming at!

I think you’ll like it.

I mean REALLY like it.