Summer’s end has arrived.  Here comes Labor Day weekend and we all know what that means: Time to finish the vacations and get back to work, get back to school, get back to where you once belonged.  Whether you’re 12, 24, 48 or 96, retired, fresh out of college, rich or poor or probably somewhere in between, into chemistry, widgets or inspirational music, it’s a good time to stop before you start and do your goals and motives.

Said another way, it’s time to get organized – not just to get your stock in order, but more importantly, time to get your mind in order.  I’m probably advising and reminding myself here more than I’m speaking to y’all out there, but September 1 is always a good time to stop and take mental and physical stock.

Goals and motives – it’s a practice my parents taught me, and one that I’ve tried to pass on to as many as possible in my life.  Why?  Simply because it really works – big time.

Taking an hour or three and sitting down with your self, your spouse, your team, your partners, whatever, and drawing up a ten point plan for the next six months is a simple practice that can serve us all whether we run a large company or a small household.  It makes no difference how large or how small.  Having a plan is essential to all success.

But just having that plan is not enough… We have to ask ourselves why we’re gonna do what we’re gonna do and get those answers really clear for ourselves and especially make sure those answers are spiritually based rather than just materially based.  “To make more money” is just not enough.  That will take care if itself under the heading of God’s Supply in a most miraculous way if our goals and motives are straight.  That’s a promise.

We really have to look at what we do through the looking glass of one criteria: How does what we are trying to attain help others and, consequently, help the world?

I love my life in music.  It’s what I live to do, and for years I always felt that the part of it that was most rewarding was the actual doing, the making of the music.  Once I had finished with producing a song, I always said that I simply needed to throw it over my shoulder and move on to the next and I would be happy.  But that was not always the case.  Too often the song would just land on the shelf and sit there.

Then in one of my goals and motives sessions with myself a decade or so ago I realized that my motives needed revamping.  I needed to consider far more than just my own self and to make sure that the work I did reached and inspired as many as possible.   It was then that real fulfillment began to take place in my life.  The nature of my music writing and producing then changed to serve my motives.

My goals changed dramatically and I found myself revamping my studio, changing and focusing my life on a much more specific level and founding and developing Watchfire Music as a delivery system for not only my own inspirational endeavors, but also for the various styles of inspiration generated by so many of my friends and music associates.

The desire and need to create inspiring music and thought became the driver of my creativity.  I promised myself, “No more I want you, I need you, I love you songs.   I would write for the rest of my life songs that would reach for a deeper content, songs that would explore a more spiritual side of my thought.  Why?  Because I wanted to reach people with the goodness of what I had learned passing through this life and, sticking it out there, perhaps enable them through song to better their own lives in some small or hopefully even large way.

But in order to really be able to preach it, I knew I had to live it.  That’s not always easy in this materialistic world, as we all know, but as I grew in my own spirituality and commitment to my goals and motives, I changed the way I lived, dealt with people, handled my business ethics, and controlled my own shortcomings.  Personally, I looked at my shortcomings and decided to try to drop then for more long-comings.  Most bad habits are short sighted and greed based.  Think of life on a longer-sighted level and we see the truth more clearly.  Greed then tends to fall away.

I essentially decided that money was no longer the object of my business.  The object of my business is now to inspire – first to put myself in the receiving position by the way I live to receive inspiration, and then to pass it on through the music.

Well, for quite a while there, money, not being the object of my affection, no longer appeared regularly on the horizon.  I had to get used to the artist’s life.  I was never poor, always supplied, but excess became a thing of the past.  I’ve learned to live with this concept now and, in fact, find great happiness in it.  I no longer live in debt, I carry no credit cards, I only buy what I have the money for, and it works great.  I find that I am sometimes in want, but very seldom in need.

My whole life has changed for the better based on just one or two of these little 1-3 hour sessions of goals and motives.

Now it’s time to do it again and refine thought.  I shall sit down this weekend while the Missus is away singing in Boston with my beloved yellow pad and pen and draw up my new list.  Goals and motives – a good selfless motive for each goal.

Come Monday of next week I’ll have a new beginning, a new start on life.  And most importantly, I’m gonna know where I’m going and why.

Goals and motives.  Give it a shot.