A Grocery List for Life

Photo by fboyd

I went to the store the other day without a list and realized it takes me 3 times as long to get my shopping done when I don’t have a list.

I realized again something I already knew well, nobody on this earth should ever go to the grocery store hungry and without a list.  I promise you that if you go to the store without a list, you will wander aimlessly up and down the aisles, waiting for something good to just catch your eye.  You will put it in your cart without much thought, and when you get home you’ll put it into your cupboard and think, “Of course I plan on eating that, why else would I have bought it?”  I have done this more times than I care to remember, and when I open my cupboard looking for something to eat, I push that stuff aside and say, “Jeez we’re out of food again.”  Have you ever caught yourself doing that?  “Well, of course there’s that, but that doesn’t sound good.  Guess I’ll just run to the store and pick up a few things.”  Back to the aisle shuffle, back to a cartful of stuff.  I’m sure we’ve all done this at one time in our lives.

Sometimes you just say, “Sure I’m hungry, but I don’t know what I want.”

I hear this all the time in another context.  People often say, “Of course I have a goal.  I want to be rich!”  That’s the same as walking into the grocery store and saying, “Yeah I’m hungry, I want some food.”  What kind, what do you want it with, what brand, and most importantly, WHEN?  It is so important to be specific with what you want, or you’ll never actually get what you want.

When you go to the grocery store without a list, and on top of that you’re hungry, you end up with a cartful of stuff.  You end up aimlessly wandering the aisles of the store looking at everything.  If something sounds good, you put it in the cart and decide, “Yeah, I’ll probably eat that.”  We’ve all done it.  Do you eat it?  Most of the time, you take it home and it sits in your cupboard for a lot longer than it was supposed to.  Then the next time your hungry you look right past that stuff and say, “Darnit, we have nothing to eat.”  Even though that food is right there.  Either that, or you buy junk food that is completely unhealthy and just ends up making you feel worse than when you were hungry.

It is the same way with goal setting.  If you just decide you need to get something out of life, but you don’t make a list of what it is, you will get a bunch of stuff you didn’t want and end up unsatisfied. You will look around at your life and say, “I sure didn’t want all these bills.  I didn’t want to be lonely, or sad.  I never wanted to work all day and never see my family.”  You end up with some stuff you want and a bunch of stuff you don’t want.  Just like going into a grocery store without a list.

Now if you had made a list, you would go into the store with confidence.  You would know exactly what you wanted to get, and go directly for that.  This isn’t to say that’s all you’ll get.  Usually you pick up a few extra things, and sometimes, you have to add things to the list.  Sometimes, you decide that something doesn’t sound so good any more, and you cross it off.  But you still have a list, a guide.

Now if you apply this to life, you will have goals, some will change, others will fall off altogether, and sometimes you’ll grab a few extra things along the way, but if you make a list of what you want, exactly what you want, you can go into your day each day confidently knowing what your target is and moving toward it.

If it makes obvious sense to go to the grocery store with a list of exactly what you need, why don’t more people go into life with a list of what they want and need?  If you take just a few minutes per day looking at a list of your goals, studying them and deciding what you can do to achieve each goal, you will train your mind to look for opportunity, and you will begin attracting and lining up all that you need to have whatever it is that you want.

If you take time and focus on your goals, you will begin to attract all that you need for the achievement of the goal.  The fact that you can dream it means that you can achieve it.  The Universe has said “yes.”  All you have to do is focus on the outcome and take action.  Write your grocery list for life and begin moving toward your goals today.

I hope this finds you well,

Ryan M. Hall

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