You Know Where You're Going

"You know where you're going."

Those words hit me smack in the face during class today. And then I promptly zoned out (sorry professor) to review and reflect where I am and where I'm going.

Yes, I DO know where I'm going. And I DO know where I want to be going. The answer to where I'm going and where I want to be going should always be the same, but it's not always like that. What I realized amid all my pondering today was that there is only one thing that can cause the answer to those questions to be different from each other, and that one thing is action. I have many goals for where I want to end up and what I want to accomplish, but I won't reach a single one unless I know what to do to get there, then do it.

I know I want to graduate from BYU.

In order to do so, I must prioritize, study hard, and do well.

I know I want to coach gymnastics as my career.

Well, I'm going to have to put myself out there and actively work my way up the job ladder. And getting a degree certainly will help me along.

I know I want to be a mother one day.

We all know how that one's going to happen.

I want to be a great wife to my husband, and one day a great mother to my kids.

I'll need to work on my patience, that's for sure. but I'll also have to learn to focus on the millions of beautiful things, rather than on the few dozen damper things.

I know I want to an active, serving member of my church and my community.

That will take some volunteer work and some effort.

I know, most of all, that I want to live with my Heavenly Father in the Celestial Kingdom after this life.

I will need to be taking constant action, to make sure that I am always one step ahead of Satan and am strong enough to resist the worldly tendencies and habits that I have previously fallen into so easily.

The outcome of my life depends on my actions. I love this snippet from President David O. McKay's talks in Conference many years ago:

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I may not tell of myself by the things I play on my phonograph (boy, does that date this quote...) But maybe more like the things I play on my iPod. Anyways, to accomplish the goals I have, I have to strive to act like, and be the person that I want to be. Because that person is the one who will achieve all those goals (and many more). When applied to the same situation, I want to answers to both, "Where are you going?" and "Where do you want to go?" to be the same.