The last few days I have felt pretty stressed out. Don’t get me wrong, life is great, but I have been debating back and forth about what I want out of 2014. I failed miserably on a few of my goals for 2013. That always stinks, right? I am trying to figure out what I have time for in my life, and what I need to put on the back burner. There are a lot of things in my life I know I need to do better, find time for, and make sure I do each day! So this week I have spent a lot of time thinking about what those things are and how I can do all that I want in life, but also all that I know I need accomplish.
In church the other day a lady was giving a lesson on the word “Progress”. The word Progress means: forward or onward movement toward a destination. She had us all discuss our goals we worked on last year. A lot of us mentioned we didn’t reach our goals. Then she asked us about the process of working on those goals and how our progress was? It hit me hard, and really got me thinking about the word “progress”. How often in life do we feel like we are failing because we didn’t make our goal, or we didn’t accomplish all that we wanted to in the year. We are so hard on ourselves. Sometimes to hard. That night I was talking with my husband and kids about our goals for 2013 and that we didn’t do a few of them. I started feeling down again when my wonderful husband started rambling off a huge list of great things we did do in 2013! I was floored. I had been feeling pretty grumpy about mine and my families goals I didn’t look at the HUGE amount of progress we had in 2013. We accomplished so much as a family, and if it weren’t for my husband and his positive outlook on life I would probably still be mulling 2013 over in my head feeling grumpy about it, but instead I feel great about all the progression that we made and look forward to 2014.
I decided that I personally couldn’t be mad at myself either and just be happy that each of my goals helped me to progress in life. And the great thing about them is, I can keep working on them. I am not perfect, none of us are, so if we don’t reach our goal in an allotted amount of time, it doesn’t mean we can’t keep striving to reach the goal and become better! For instance, I had a goal with my family to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year. We didn’t even come close, but the important things was we read every single day! I realized that we probably should have made a goal that made us stretch but not stress. It’s important for us to work hard and stretch ourselves, but not stress out over the goal. There is joy in seeing progression, not joy in stressing that we will never accomplish our goal.
I still am going to make a few goals for this year. Setting goals is important, and helps us to work hard, stretch ourselves, and improve and have progress in our lives. So because I don’t want to stress, I am going to make goals I feel like I can accomplish, but that will stretch me a little! Life is about moving forward and not staying where we are! If we don’t make goals and work on them then we aren’t progressing. I thought of 6 categories or areas I want to work on in my life; Spiritual, Physical, Friends, School, Home, and Hobbies. I have made goals, and we have made goals as a family, but they aren’t goals that if we don’t finish by December 31st next year we will all be depressed. They are goals to keep us on the path of moving forward! I am excited to work on them this year and look forward to whatever else 2014 might bring!
Here is a fun printable that I made for our family. We laminated them so that the kids can put them by their beds. That way they can see them daily and be reminded to keep moving forward and work hard to achieve something.
The Top one here is the one we used for our family goals, and then the boys used the bottom one for the personal goals.
Download Free Printable
What do you do as far as goals and resolutions for the new year?
I keep notebooks very similar to this and it really helps me to stay on track. Great post.
Awesome ideas! This was an excellent post on having goals to work towards. My problem is that I had the same goals for years and each year I could make some progress on some of them. I decided this year; I have the goals memorized so I don’t need to put them on paper. However, I do have about 10 projects I would like to complete this year. I know that the only way this will happen is to actually schedule a time each day to work on one at a time. Hopefully I can do that. I am what you call a Side Tracked Home Executive.
Thanks for sharing your goal lists; I think they are awesome.
Blessings for all you do and share.