New Year, New Goals {2015}

We are 7 days into the New Year and it feels good to me! I have ready many blogs and statues that say, “I don’t make New Year’s resolutions,” or statistics about people who make resolutions and don’t stick with them. I am the opposite. I am all for goals for the New Year: goals that are measurable, attainable and realistic.

There is just something about a fresh start. For our family, it is not just about moving forward, but also reflecting on the past. How is one to improve if you don’t reflect, write goals, and work to attain them?

We sit down at the end of every year and write in our family journal highlights of the year. We write the positives and the “get betters” of the year. We also write down what we want to work towards for the coming year. We revisit these goals and post them for us to see and be reminded of them.

This year we decided to put our goals into four categories: Faith, Family, Finance & Wellness.

Faith

I feel this is the area I always have the most room for growth. I improve every year in my walk with the Lord, but I have to remind my self each day to show more grace, have less fear, and to hand over my worries. Specifically as a family we would like to get more involved at our church by attending Sunday school after service, increase our tithe and do a weekly family devotional. I was reading Jesus Calling each morning on my own, but after I had Max the frequency of that decreased so I will also incorporate that back into my day.

Family

We are busy people. We have an extremely hard time saying no and over loading our schedule. A big goal for us in 2015 is to just be a little more and stop overloading our lives. For us this means at the beginning of every month we will sit down and choose one weekend that we will declare “An Unplanned Weekend”. This means we are not making any definite plans until the weekend comes. We will do things and hang out with friends, but we want to take one weekend a month to not have to be anywhere or have to do anything. In addition we want to take a family vacation (or two), have one-on-one dates with each of the kids and we want to finish The Five Love Languages which we started before Max was born.

Finance

2014 was a big spending year for us. We bought & renovated a new house, purchased a new car, and had a baby. We’d like 2015 to be a “save more, spend less” kind of year. Moving is expensive, and renovating is even more pricey. Although my house is not completely decorated, I am fine with slowing down the process in order to not spend as much. Our other goals include: starting to save monthly for Max’s college (we set this up on Monday), adding another investment property, giving more to charities (we have a specific number we want to reach this year), and completing the 52-week savings countdown in addition to what we already save each month. Although we plan to do the 52 weeks in reverse order (starting with $52 and going down to $1) because we always tend to spend more at the end of the year with the holidays.

Wellness

This is the area we are usually pretty good at already and would just like to improve even more. We would like to complete two races as a family. This could be the kids riding in the stroller or even letting Claire out to run for segments of the race. W would always like to make a goal to always have her in an activity that promotes movement whether it be swim lessons, gymnastics, or whatever else we can find. The most difficult and biggest goal for 2015 in the area of wellness is to cut down our processed food. By the end of 2015, I’d like to say that we eat 80% unprocessed food. This means reevaluating our cereal, bread, snack & cheese choices. I am looking to a few bloggers for help: Real Fit Real Food Mom, Real Mom Nutrition, and 100 Days of Real Food. When it comes to this goal, I am taking a different approach than I have in the past. In the past I have gone through my refrigerator and pantry and thrown everything out that didn’t fit this mold. Well that is too drastic and unrealistic. Instead, each week I am going to try something new that helps this goal.

My Personal Goals

Our family goals are going to take a lot of work and I am ready. I have also written down just 4 personal goals for myself:

1. Better my time management: Although I am a stay-at-home mom, I am busy (hence the unplanned weekend goal). Whether it be teaching at the gym, making time for my blog or just doing household tasks I need to get better at managing my time. I do not want all of my other stuff to take away from my main job: being mom. By bettering my time management, I hope to be more present with my kids and enjoy the small things more.

2. Grow my blog: This is sort of ironic given my above goal. Blogging takes a lot of work and having a successful, well read blog takes even more work. If I can better my time, I think my blogging tasks can be more intentional which will grow my blog- that is the plan anyway.

3. Simplify: Less is more! Have you read the blog Living Well, Spending Less? If not, you need to! If I simplify my life and my stuff I will have more time for what matters most to me: my faith, my family & my health. I will also probably have more money. Simplifying will help me meet all four of our 2015 family goal areas. I don’t need all the clothes in my closet and I don’t need to add more. I don’t need anything- I have everything I need. Less is more… and I will live by that in 2015.

4. 3 unassited pull-ups & 3 half marathons- Simple as that for my fitness goals. In one of those half marathons, I would like to break my PR which was a 1:43:26 in September of 2013 (one year after I had Claire).

So there you have it: I have written specific goals for my family and myself in order to continuously improve upon the person God wants me to be. I take this year to grow as a Christian, a wife, and a mother. I will live big, but with less.