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Can we write our diaries in advance? Can we set goals and make plans so precisely and powerfully that we are actually creating the future? Are statements like this true: “Whatever the mind of man can conceive, and believe, it can achieve,” “Beware of what you want, for you will get it,” “You can achieve anything if you plan your work and then work your plan.”?

This week the Eyres discuss their seventh book, called Lifeplanning (co-authored with Paul H. Dunn), and candidly admit that they are not happy with everything they wrote in that book. They worry that it suggests that we have more control of our lives than we really do, and wish that they had written more about how important it is to be flexible and to adjust our goals and plans as unexpected opportunities or problems enter our lives. But the core idea of goal-setting and planning is sound, and we need to have “relationship goals” for our marriages and our parenting as well as “achievement goals” for our work and careers. How well we set these goals, how frequently we review and adjust them, how prayerful and guided we are, and how diligently we work on them can determine our happiness as well as our destiny.

Since it’s writing, Richard and Linda have made significant adjustments in their personal approach to life, and now believe that goals and plans can be powerful tools, and can help us examine our lives and seek our destinies, but that it is extremely important to balance relationship goals with achievement goals and that an attitude of serendipity (watch and pray) must accompany our attitudes of stewardship (work and plan). These added ideas are reflected in a subsequent book called LifeBalance which will be briefly reviewed here in coming weeks.

For a more thorough review of the “good parts” of Lifeplanning:

 
Podcast

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