Goals

Recently, our church had a woman's encouragement day where we enjoyed a wonderful brunch and listened to a good friend of mine talk about the importance of making goals..realistic goals.
Writing down goals not because it is the first of the year and everyone makes unrealistic resolutions but BECAUSE it is the first of the year giving us a fresh start.
At first I thought "yeah right, okay, goals...my main goal is to get through each day."
But, I know myself well enough. I know that I resist implementing new plans. I actually like planning but have a hard time getting going on the said plans. Maybe its due to years of making unrealistic New Year's resolutions that I just could never keep.
I sent away from the gathering truly encouraged...and, with a long list of small goals to work on for ninety days. Yep, 90 days is doable. Then I will reassess and either add more to the list or change things around a bit.
We were also asked to find an accountability partner. This past year I was blessed with a surprise friendship. Jennifer and her family moved to the Oakdale area recently.
They all showed up at church one Sunday and while greeting them she informed me that we were Facebook friends. I thought I had recognized her!
This was our first time meeting each other but we do have a lot of friends in common.
A quick friendship developed and now she is my accountability partner.

So, Colleen, the friend who was speaking to us about goals gave us eight areas to work on:
self-care, spiritual, intellectual/emotional, relationships, life/time management, nest management, financial, uniquely you

I thought I would share with you the different goals that I made. These are goals that I am working on until the end of March. So far, I am doing fairly well.

For self-care the decisions were made for me. I had actually taken a blood test and my Chiropractor, who is now practicing Functional Medicine, gave me the results. I was severely dehydrated and lacking vitamin D and Bs. I also had other things to deal with but those I can save for another day.
So, for self-care I am going gluten free and drinking three 24 oz bottles of water a day. In the meantime, our whole family is working on eating as much organic, whole foods and cutting out sugar and refined foods. We have done this before but since Eric died it has been hard to actually care. I can tell that my period of mourning is coming to an end as I am able to manage these things now without being so overwhelmed.

Spiritual - I plan on memorizing one song from the Psalter and one worship song that we sing in our church. I have such a hard time memorizing lyrics so I want to deliberately work on memorizing Mercies Anew and Psalm 54.
My second goal in this area is to keep a prayer log. I pray a lot. When I can't sleep I pray. When I am up with Sweet Pea at night I pray. I need to pray more but I also need to keep a log of those of whom I said that I would pray for. When I say I am going to pray for you, I mean it. But, sometimes my brain does not remmber as well as I would like so the prayer log will help me in this area.

Intellectual/Emotional - Although reading is one of my loves, it is also one of those loves that most frustrates me because I have a hard time making time to do so.
Did you notice that I didn't you the excuse that I don't have time? The thing is, we all have the same amount of time in a day to creatively fill with what we think is important. If reading is important to me I will find the time. So, this goal is one I am most excited about because I am purposefully making time to read something that is educating.
This book was brought to my attention by, I believe, Dr. George Grant and it helps that it has an acknowledgement from Ravi Zacharias. The book above was written by an Indian philosopher and so far the first part of the book is dealing with aesthetic philosophy which is something I have always wanted to study.

For the emotional part of the above section I am trying to create a new habit. Every time I am frustrated I will count to ten and say a quick prayer for wisdom. This is in hopes of controlling my tendency to speak louder when I get frustrated.

Relationships - I have a lot of relationships that I need to work on continuously. But, for the next 90 days I had purposed to work on my relationships with my older girls: Rebecca, Miss M, and Daisy. I was able to spend some great time with Rebecca while she was down here for a week and I have some ideas of how to encourage her over the next couple of weeks (although I can't explain them here because I know she reads this! :).
As for Miss M and Daisy, I will be traveling with them over the next couple of months for debate tournaments. It is not easy to get one on one time with them with Sweet Pea around but I sure hope to make some milestone memories with them that they can look back on.
I have very little time with them left at home. I am telling you what...those years of high school and early twenties go by so quickly. Before you know it they are off on a new adventure and your sole communication is by phone.

Life and Time Management -I had begun making a new chore list before hearing Colleen talk about goals but I was kind of stuck in the planning stage and wasn't sure how to implement it all. The Chore chart is almost complete because of the encouragement of Colleen and others. As your kids age, you find that chore charts, lists of things to do, and goals need to change with them. Since moving to the new house I had seen the need for change but had never put it down on paper. Now I am catching up and making sure that I have chores listed for weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. And, next to them will be a dollar amount of which I will pay for these things to be done. Some of the items will be normal chores that you just do because you live in the house but we also want to encourage our kids to go above and beyond and be able to make a little money on the side. Nothing big...learned that a long time ago. Kids are happy with just enough to be able to save for something big or use to buy their favorite gum. A worker is worth his wage though so we try to be fair.
The second thing I am working on under life and time management is making better use of the children in helping maintain the house.
With the birth of this newest one I have found myself more frustrated with the inability to get it all done. It has been five years since I last had a little one in the house and I had gotten use to getting so much done. Well, baby doesn't let me get as much done...this means I have time to work on management and encouragement skills with my children. This is good!

In the area of Nest Management I have been lacking. But, then Pinterest came into my life! Pinterest is this amazingly fun way to keep and organize great ideas. I have been doing this manually for the past twenty years....instead of keeping magazines I would clip the idea out of the magazine and file it away for future use. Pinterest is the same thing except it is digital AND I don't have to have a special box to store all the info. Yes! So, now I have all kinds of great ideas stored online and guess what...it's inspiring me to make my house more of a home.

Another area that I am working on is creating new memories, new traditions for my new family. Of course, I need to keep some of our old traditions for my older girls but I need to create new ones for everyone. So, I'm trying to come up with unique birthday ideas and other creative ways to make memories with my new family. I know the value of having years of memories and how it helps solidify families.

Financial - I rarely even looked at the finances before I became a widow. That means that for two years I have learned the hard way how to manage our finances. I highly doubt that my oldest daughter and son had much training so I have a goal of helping my other children so that they know how to manage a budget, how to deal with extra expenses, and how to work credit to your advantage. I am not an expert but I just don't want them to have to such an uphill climb. My goal for the next 90 days is to work with Miss M and Daisy.
Secondly, I plan on passing the financial stuff to Phil. It is one less area that I need full control and one less thing on my plate means more time to work on some other project.

So, in the Uniquely You category I decided to spruce myself up a bit. First off I have made a commitment to always have make-up on and have my hair done when I go out of the house. I have kind of let this area of myself go ever since I got pregnant. Well, no more! And, honestly, I like it when I have my hair done, my eyebrows waxed, and my make-up on. The toes, well, the toes will have to wait until the warm weather comes and I begin to slip on my flip flops again.

And, last but not least, I made a goal to complete a photo album for 2010. For our wedding I created one of those online photo albums and the results were amazing! I love it. So, I was inspired to create one for each year putting the best of the best pics in from that year. I am starting with 2008 but decided to work on 2010 before the end of March. Sad to say, this goal just might not get done but it will have been because I got more important things done.

There you go. You now know more about me than you probably wanted to!
I hope this post encourages you to make some goals for yourself.
~Heather