I can't remember the last time I made a New Years' resolution. I really don't like the idea of making them because they feel more like wishes that probably won't come true. If I'm calling things what they are, I made several resolutions this year, however I am talking to myself about them in terms of goal setting. Even though setting goals and making resolutions are the same thing, using the term "goal setting" helps me feel like I will achieve them rather hope I might be able to stick to through February. I'm pretty sure February is when most people let go of their New Years' resolutions. I think there is a study or something.
Winter is a good time for me to set goals because I do a lot less. I don't tend to do much or add much to my life when going outside is less of an option. Instead, I make plans for what I will do when it is warm and light out again. I am very lucky to live somewhere with a short winter. Here is my schedule: I wake up and go to work, I go home and spend time with the children until bedtime, and then I go to sleep. Every other Tuesday I go to a Bible study and every Sunday I go to church. There is a lot lacking in this schedule.
As I was thinking about what I want to change, I read this article, which helped me solidify my goals. Here is what I plan and why:
1. Pray in the morning. Right now, I pray at night. I pray with the children when I put them to bed, I pray when I go to bed, and I pray when I can't sleep. The truth is, that I really need help in the morning before my day starts. When I went through the inventory Jennifer described, many of the areas in which I desire change will be affected by seeking help in the morning. Prayer in the morning is the first step in improving my relationships with my family, with God, and putting myself in a place where I have the strenth and discipline to change other areas of my life.
Accomplishing this goal will require me to develop new habits. First, waking up at a fixed and early enough time to do this, and second, remembering to pray without charging off into my day. My first step to achieving this goal is to set an alarm.
2. Read the whole Bible this year. I like reading the Bible, but I haven't read the whole thing in a long time, and my study over the past few years has be sporadic and only occasionally helpful. I plan to mostly follow a chronological schedule with one exception; I am skipping Genesis for now. I started reading Genesis a few days ago to give myself a "head start" for the year and I realize Genesis is the reason I rarely get very far when I pick up a Bible and plan to read from the beginning to the end. Call me strange, because there are several books that are less interesting to me, but I was looking at the schedule and realized that if I can get to Leviticus, I'll be engaged enough to finish and the biggest hurdle to being that engaged was Genesis. So I'll read it in last as part of my sprint to the finish. The funny thing is that if I stick to it, I will probably finish long before December.
3. Take a specific action to improve my relationship with my husband at least once a week. Is that vague enough? Don't worry, I actually have a more specific plan, but I have reasons for not publically sharing exactly what I plan to do just now.
Neither Izzy nor I have reguarly done anything intentional about improving or maintaining our relationship for a long time. Things are by no means bad, but I had hoped for a higher bar for my marriage than "not awful". So I plan to do something.
4. Intentionally pursue friendship twice a month. I am lonely. I have good friends, but none of them live nearby anymore and they are all also working moms. This means I don't see them or talk to them often. As a working mom, I don't get nearly as much time with my children as I would like, and it is hard for me to give up time to pursue other relationships, but the truth is, I need friends who I see somewhat regularly.
In the last year, I haven't had much opportunity to spend time with people outside my family and I realized that I forgot how to make friends. I have met a few women who I would love to be friends with, but I am out of practice when it comes to making friends of the people I meet when I'm not thrown together with them by circumstance. For only the second time in my life, I find if I want friends, I need to make an effort to go out and get some. I'm going to try and do that twice a month starting this month.
5. Build a built-in bookshelf/cabinet in the living room. I have been talking about doing this since we moved into our house. Our house is a three bedroom, two bathroom home that used to be a one bedroom, one bathroom home. The original bedroom is now the living room and there is a large space in the wall where the closet used to be. This spring I plan to make it a bookshelf/cabinet.
Depending on the success of this project, I have been inspired to consider building furniture. After the built-in comes this printers' cabinet:
http://ana-white.com/2012/10/plans/printers-triple-console-cabinet
6. Replace my dishwasher with a cabinet and paint my kitchen walls and cabinets. We only used our dish washer for about a month. For the last four years, it has served as an inefficient storage area. It is past time to replace it. Our cabinets are also faded and need to be treated and I am tired of orange walls in the kitchen. June sounds like a nice time for this project. I even got gift cards for Christmas to make it happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment