Certain things I can dismiss out of my thinking, in fact, a lot of things. I decide I am not going to think about it anymore, and if it pops into my head, I consciously choose to think about something else. It usually only takes a couple of times of doing that, and it is gone. It is a good discipline to have so that I don’t fret about things. Sometimes some issues resist all my best efforts to dismiss or control, and this goal of successfully climbing to the top of Mt Adams is one; it is bugging the heck out of me! I am not sure if it is my pride or the intense desire that I have programmed into my head over the years not to be a wimp or allow myself to make excuses when I don’t accomplish a hard goal. Whatever is motivating me, when a thought persists despite my best efforts to bury it, I usually go with it, so I am making the commitment and goal to climb to the top of Mt Adams in 2021. If anyone wants to do it with me, let me know, and you can be part of planning the ascent.

In life, as we pursue goals that have a potential for a significant impact on other people’s lives or are noble in regards to God’s plan, failure is common because of the difficulty factor in such goals. The key thing when failure happens is to evaluate what the barriers were and then to adjust and compensate, and remake the goal with those changes built into the strategy of accomplishing it. Adapting to the obstacles, mountains, and unknown problems that regularly pop up into our life is what ”Overcomers” do, that is what ”winners” do, that is what high achievers do.

I regularly hear people say, ”Well, I guess God closed that door in my life”, when difficult things happen in pursuit of a dream in their life. God will occasionally shut a door as a way of guiding us into His will, but most often He opens doors as His guiding method. The bigger the dream, the nobler the goal, the more difficulties there will be, that is a law of life. Our awareness of that law is what keeps many from pursuing big goals and dreams, they don’t normally choose to do things that are guaranteed to bring problems into their life, and that choosing to enter the broad and easy door keeps many people poor in real and significant accomplishments in their life. Some day they will stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ and receive very few rewards from the Lord for the life they have lived.

So, I have mentally gone over every reason that I can think of for not accomplishing my goal of climbing to the top of Mt Adams, and I have established a plan and strategy to compensate for those reasons. If I fail to summit Mt Adams next year, it will probably be because I did a poor job of following my plan and strategy for success. Still, my level of motivation to succeed is high enough, I think, to overcome my natural apathy and laziness regarding the physical conditioning that I will need to do. We will see.