From the Scriptures

"Teach me your ways , O Lord;

make them known to me.

Teach me to live according to your truth...

I always trust in You."

- Psalms 25: 4-5

YOUTH WORLD

Goal Setting

Rev. Suresh Pawar. Chaplain, Religious Works Department

People encourage us to set goals in our life or career. What does goal mean? It means aim, ambition, purpose, target, object or aspiration. It is obvious that one has to have clearly defined goals in all areas of one's life. There are three reasons for this. They are:

1. It gives us a sense of focus in our life:
   Our lives seem to have become very complicated with too many options .There seems to be far too many things to do at any given time. There are lots of distractions too to compete our attention. Goals clarify our desires and in doing so help us focus on those activities that will lead us to what we want. If we know precisely where we are going, it becomes easier to select those activities that will get us there. Therefore, the first step to realizing our goal is defining it and then to focus on it.
2. It helps us to be alert to opportunities:
   The discipline of goal setting prompts us or encourages us to seek out new opportunities, which we might need to seize in order to create the personal, professional and spiritual life we desire.
3. It helps us to commit ourselves to a course of action:
   Goals give us the inspiration to act on our priorities, chart out the course of action and make things happen in our life rather than waiting for opportunities to come our way.

Selecting goals that motivate us is one of the best ways to boost the level of our personal commitment of life and our choice.

What does the Bible teach us?
God desires all his children to be successful, significant, fulfilled, satisfied, joyful, secure, and to live in peace. Consciously or subconsciously, we set goals in our life and continue to formulate and adjust our plans in achieving them. But sometimes they may not be in harmony with God's plans for us. How can we be sure that we have chosen the right thing in accordance to God's plan and purpose in our lives?

• God has designed us in such a way that we can know if our belief system is properly aligned with God's truth.
• God has given us a feedback system that is designed to grab our attention so we can examine the validity of our goals.
• That system is our emotions that alert us whether we are cherishing a faulty goal based on a wrong belief.

Can any God-given goal be blocked, uncertain or impossible? If God wants something done, it will certainly be done! When we see and pursue values from God's perspective, we will reach our goals because they are God's goals for us.

Here is a verse from the scriptures:

"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the Lord, "plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope." (Jeremiah 29:11)

Question: What is our biblical understanding of success, significance, fulfillment, satisfaction, joy, security and peace?

May the Lord help us recognize when our goals are not in line with His and make the proper adjustments in our belief system.

The theme adopted by our country for this year's WBW was The IMS Act: Making it Known to People.

Experts in child nutrition recommend exclusive breast feeding for infants up to the age of 6 months and continued breast feeding till the child is 2 years old. This is one of the most effective means of reducing deaths in children under the age of 5 years. It is a well established fact that breast fed babies grow better, fall ill less frequently and achieve a higher intelligence quotient (IQ) than their bottle fed counterparts. Why then do mothers (even those who do not have to go out to work) resort to bottle feeding? The answer in one word is Advertisement. Advertisement and aggressive promotion of infant milk substitutes to gullible mothers by their manufacturers. Even educated people fall prey to these advertisements which claim that the infant milk substitutes are as good as or better than breast milk! It was to stop this misinformation campaign and to promote the breast feeding that the Government of India in 1992 enacted the "Infant Milk Substitutes, Feeding Bottles and Infant Foods (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 1992 (IMS Act). But as it so often occurs, most of the people including doctors are unaware of the provisions of this rule. This write-up attempts to bring out the salient points of the IMS Act.

The IMS Act
The following things are banned under the IMS ACT
Section 3
Bans the promotion of infant milk substitutes (IMS) and feeding bottles through any medium (like magazines, newspapers, TV, internet etc)
Bans anyone from creating a belief in any manner that IMS are in anyway equal to or superior to breast milk.
Section 4
Bans distribution of samples of IMS or baby food or cooking utensils, feeding bottles or any other gift article as an incentive.
Bans baby milk manufacturers or their agents from contacting mothers or expectant mothers
Section 5
Bans the distribution of literature or information material relating to IMS.
Bans the donation of IMS to anyone except to an orphanage.
Section 6
The container of baby foods should carry a warning about the ill effects of not breast feeding and also clearly state that breast-feeding is best for the baby.
Container should not carry any picture of a baby or a woman or any other picture that could enhance the saleability of the product.
The container should not carry the words humanized or maternalized or any other similar word.
Section 8
Bans hospitals or health care institutions from displaying posters or placards promoting the use of IMS or feeding bottles
Bans persons other than health care workers from demonstrating feeding with IMS or using a feeding bottle
Bans persons other than a health care workers from distributing feeding bottles or IMS to a mother who cannot breast feed her child.
Section 9
Bans persons from giving gifts of any sort to a health care worker as an incentive for promoting the use of IMS.
Section 20
Prescribes punishment for those who contravene the above mentioned provisions which includes imprisonment up to 3 years or fine up to Rs.5000 or both.