You have to carry out some kind of action, and that action must never be haphazard or vague in any way. You could say,

"Well I'll just read a few books, try a few things; mess around a bit, surf the net..."

Do you think you will reach your goal this way? How would you go about it if your goal was to be married?

"Well I'll just walk down the street, hang around, and wait for something to happen."

Get ready for a single life.

You may have clear goals. But how clear are your plans to reach those goals? If you do not know how you plan to reach the goal, you will be like another Columbus. Someone said of Columbus,

"He didn't know where he was going. When he arrived, he didn't know where he was. And when he returned he didn't know where he had been."

Make Your Own Plans

Well sometimes accidents happen. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of my life being an accident.

You must lay your plans out very clearly. If they are not clear, or you don't even have a plan, then I can tell you what will happen. You will become a part of somebody else's plan. People around you will force you to fit into their plans.

You say, "It's not fair. I always end up doing what they want to do."

"What were you planning to do?"

"I don't know. I just wanted to see what was going to happen."

Well at least they planned what to do. You ended up in their plan because you didn't have one. How can you expect anything to happen if you have no plan?

Without a plan things will not happen the way you want. And even if something does happen, how will you know that this is what you wanted?

Circumstances in Line With Plans

You should be able to check things off as they happen. Each stage of your plan will fall into place, and you will know when you have reached your goal. An event takes place in your life and you say,

"Yes, this has happened to get me closer to my goal."

How do you know that? Well you might say,

"God is in control and therefore He brought it to pass. So everything that happened in my life was according to plan. It is fate."

Many religions of the world have this idea that fate is just something you have to accept as the hand of God. But God never forces His plan on us. He works with us to help us get the things we desire.

When something happens, you should be able to say,

"Oh yes, that's exactly what I was hoping would happen. That helps me in my plan. Let's take it and use it to go forward."

Yes, miraculous things will happen in your life. As you begin to release those forces to work on your behalf, they will create circumstances for you.

But when they happen, study them carefully. Are they according to your plan or against your plan? Not every good thing that happens in your life is best for you. But not every bad thing is wrong either.

Something bad could happen that fits in exactly with the plan. And when you look at it afterwards you realize that if things had not gone that way your plan might have failed. But you would never know this if you didn't have a plan.

You say, "I'm planning to be wealthy one day."

"Good. How do you plan to do this?"

"I am going to travel around the world and just visit all of the nations."

"How do you plan to do that?"

"I'm going to be a world famous speaker. They will know my name everywhere. My books will be in every bookshop in every nation."

"How do you plan to accomplish this?"

"Well I hadn't thought about that, but I sure wish it does. And I'm really praying hard that it will happen."

It's not going to happen. Your plans must be clear. They must involve specific actions and they must have deadlines. Without a deadline, your plan will just go off at a tangent into the air somewhere.

Don't Get Diverted

You might say,

"Well I really planned to work hard today, but I ended up on the Internet and I started surfing. I saw a few things that interested me. And I saw this one page, and that led me to that page.

"I clicked on a link that took me there, and I listened to some stuff and read some stuff. And before I knew it, it was lunch time already."

"So what were you planning to do today?"

"Well I was planning to reach my goal by sitting down and beginning to write a new book."

And how did this diversion fit into your plan? It didn't, so get back on plan. If you didn't know what your plan was, you might have thought,

"Maybe there was a reason that I found that web page. Maybe it will help me reach my goal one day."

Maybe it will - if it fits into your plan. And if it didn't fit into your plan then something is wrong. Either that, or your plan is wrong and you had better change it. Maybe you planned wrong.

Deadlines Bring Your Goals Closer

Your plan has to be very specific and very clear. It has to go stage by stage with deadlines in it. Otherwise your goal will just get further and further away, like the horizon.

Imagine a thirsty man in the desert. He is crying out for water, and he thinks he sees water flowing over the sands. He thinks he can see an oasis in the distance, but the closer he gets to it, the further away it gets.

Your dreams are like that, but not your goals. Your goals are not just mirages. They are specific, and the plans that you make to get there must be very specific.

If you plan to travel to a specific place, you should know how far it is. You should know what speed you will be traveling at. Only then will you have an idea of how many hours it will take.

Yes you could have interruptions. You could go through a speed trap along the way. You could have a flat wheel. Something could go wrong.

Your plans should be flexible. You have to allow for eventualities. When something goes wrong, you don't say,

"Well that must have been a bad plan that I made. It just didn't work."

No, there is nothing wrong with your plan. It is just that life threw things at you that came against your plan and interfered with it.

So make your plans. Then get ready for the final stage that will make your dreams into reality.

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