the evening organ: On Goals (and Mission Nostalgia)

Dear Internet,

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope your holiday was as glorious and gluttonous as mine.

This week my parents drove up from California to dine with me—and with other family members too, of course—and brought with them a giant box filled with goodies from my mission for the LDS Church, mostly letters and such. Having just moved to the Bay Area, the parentals were probably sick of lugging my stuff around California. Fair enough—I took the box off their hands.

Box of mission goodness

And spent the whole night reliving my beautiful mission in eastern Washington and Oregon though letters from friends, family, strangers, and people I met on the mish.

I also saved and read through all of my missionary planners—little calendar booklets with two pages for every day for six weeks, used by missionaries to plan appointments and set goals. I have thirteen of them, all decorated with stickers and family pictures and pages cut from Church magazines.

Missionary planners

Reading through these planners, I rediscovered the beauty of weekly planning. Every week missionaries take a few morning hours to review the week, discuss the people they're teaching, and make personal and companion goals. Some weeks I hated the tedium and time this required—but overall weekly planning was lovely and beneficial. (And not just because it meant spending a morning at home and not knocking doors . . . .)

Even more lovely was the practice of regularly setting personal goals. I learned that goals are how we become someone, how we develop from the person we were to the person we are. Of course, we can develop and change without trying. But if we don’t purposefully exert force or effort or action ourselves, then we will have no real say in who we become. We will instead be shaped by inertia or experience or circumstance. We will be acted upon.

By making and keeping goals, we act against inertia and shape our own selves into someone we choose to be. We claim our right to have a say in our own “destiny.” Goals are tools we leverage in creating our lives and our character—so set them often and set them well.

Fact from planner no. 2

I’m done preaching. Phew. Moving on.

So I got a huge kick out of reading though my missionary planners to find the weekly goals I set each week. These often silly, sometimes profound, goals gave me a fun way to remember and document my mission—and how a map of how it created a different, better version of the person I already was. My missionary service changed me—through experience, of course, but also through the ritual of consciously setting and consciously seeking to keep goals according to my current situation and struggles.

These goals gave me fun insights into myself and into the daily life of missionaries. I noticed that I set some of the same goals over and over again—for example writing in my journal, asking for referrals, and exercising. Many, many goals focused on smiling, optimism, positivity, and not complaining. Today I consider myself to be a relatively positive, optimistic, non-complaining person (hopefully you agree!)—one example of how my mission goal-making shaped me.

In a spirit of nostalgia, I’ve recorded below some of the goals I set as a missionary. Enjoy!

Sister Smith’s Missionary Goals

Pray for charity

Smile

Don't say things, houses, streets, places, or people are ugly (yes, this is for real, word for word, haha)

Learn and write down something new about each person I meet

Remember when it is my turn to give the dinner thought

Be myself

Put more trust in the Lord

Be happy in the morning

Talk more

Learn the streets where people live

Follow morning schedule

Don’t be sloppy

Be more charitable

Lose 10 lbs

Run 1 mile

Be grateful, not self-centered

Work harder

Do not eat sweets!

Ask for referrals

Stop complaining

No chips or pop (note the local vernacular creeping in)

Pray at 8 a.m.

Come home on time

Look happy

Make my bed

Stay clean and organized

Be grateful

Be on time

Be more obedient

Be less proud

No contention

Pray better

Go to bed on time

Write in the area book

Stay with my companion (haha! I don’t remember struggling with this)

Don’t be crabby or judgmental

Work harder

Don’t be lazy

Be more positive

Get better at tracting

Have a softer heart

Be more diligent

Organize stuff

Write to converts

Extend serious commitments

Involve the member more

Ask questions

Be happy (the follow-up to “look happy” above I guess)

Remember where things are

Be more bold

Expect miracles

Talk about positively about other people

Run 1 day this week

Be optimistic

Not get awkward (still need to work on this one)

Write letters

Optimism

Work on skills (wow, Sister Smith—so specific haha)

Ask for last names

Testify on door approach

Pray for people by name

Share personal experiences

Remember things my companion tells me

Not talk about myself

Focus more on the Savior

Don’t get frustrated

Follow my priesthood leaders

Don’t bite my pen (probably a request from a companion?)

Study Christlike attributes

Save money

Talk less (I can’t believe I ever ever had to make this goal!)

Be less annoying (again, probably a companion request?)

Study the Atonement daily

Don’t complain

Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved

More Planner Goodness

I wish I recorded why this day was so miraculous

Apparently on one P-Day (a missionary's "day off"), Harry Potter came to hang out with me.

A grocery shopping list—including knee-highs

A good day to go to church

Scripture of the transfer

Planner no.13. It was a tradition to decorate your last planner with a temple—a semi-facetious reminder that your next mission is to find someone to marry.