-What will happen if I don’t accomplish this goal?
Last year, my private goal – the one I accomplished – was centered around my relationship with my husband and my relationship with my kids. I needed to strengthen my family relationships.
If I didn’t, my family would suffer. My marriage would crumble, and that was unacceptable to me.
My kids, specificially Z, J, and K are getting older, they aren’t little kids anymore. And I needed to strengthen our relationship as we move into the older tween and teen years. I was unwilling to risk “losing” my children because they had moved on, but our relationship hadn’t.
That was my why. That is why my other three big goals did not get accomplished, because the “why” I had for them was not as large and as important to me as this one goal’s “why”.
So, when you look at your goals for this year, for this month, or even this day, ask your self “Why” and “What will happen if I don’t accomplish this goal?”
Write down in positive terms how your life will be different when you accomplish your goal. Hold it in your mind. Re-read it periodically. Filter your decisions through it.
Whatever you focus on, grows. So focus on the positive, focus on what you can accomplish, and do it.
Now that the hype of New Year’s is over and the kids are back to their activities and schoolwork, let’s take another look at goal setting and more specifically the goal setting process.
Goals are different than new year’s resolutions. Goals are concrete, measureable, realistic, and if done properly come with a plan of action. Goals create visual and mental targets to hit. It’s hard to get somewhere if you don’t have a destination clearly in mind. Goals provide that destination, while your plan of action gives you the map to get there.
One of the first steps in my goal setting process, whether I’m setting personal or professional goals for myself or educational goals for the kids, is to take a look at the previous year.
I’m not one to dwell a lot on what’s happened in the past. It’s not productive towards moving forward. I learn from it, make adjustments, and draw a line in the sand and move on. But once a year, I look back on the previous year with three objectives in mind:
to determine what progress I did make and celebrate it
to identify one thing that needs to change the most going into the next year.
Beating ourselves up over missed goals is not productive. Just because we missed our timeline doesn’t mean we missed our goal, we can take a look at the progress we made and see how very far we’ve come and how much closer we are to the goal than we were a year ago, and we can celebrate that.
For example, last year I publically shared three BIG goals that I had for the year: debt free, fit & healthy, and an income goal for my business. None of those goals were fully reached; they are still in progress.
But when I look back, I see the thousands and thousands of dollars in debt that we paid off, bringing us closer to debt free. While I strugged with new health challenges this year, I made significant progress towards my goal of being a fit & healthy mommy. Health has to come from inside, before it can be reflected outwardly.
Professionally, the income goal wasn’t hit, and yet the foundation was laid. I made major changes in my business last year and crossed off most of my action plan for the year. When I mapped out what my business currently looks like and what assets I have in place through steady progress last year, I find myself in a much stronger position to make that income goal a reality.
Now it would be easy to look at these three big goals and say, “didn’t make it, so I’m not going to.” and give up. But that would be a waste of all that progress. AND… it’s not the full picture.
Because I had one thing, one goal last year that was the most important. I kept it private, but filtered ALL my decisions about how I was going to spend my time and place my focus through it. It was about relationships – specifically my marriage and my relationships with my children.
To me, it doesn’t matter if I hit the other goals if my marriage suffers or my relationship with my kids suffers. Dont’ get me wrong, I have put work and income before them before and the price was WAYYYY too high. This last year I wanted to continue to repair and strengthen my relationship with my husband and invest into that relationship, and I wanted the kids to know that they were just as, or even more important than the other things going on in my life.
And in that area, I totally succeeded. Goal was reached. And that is the best success of all.
By taking a look at progress made during the year, I can now set forth goals for the coming year, and identify the one thing that I need to focus on to balance out my energy and focus for the coming year.
If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to take a look at all you accomplished last year. Yeah, stuff happened, but you made progress. Identify it, Celebrate it, …. and let go of what didn’t happen. Let’s focus on what did, and what’s coming in the next year
I believe in you!
…Shannon
P.S. this works wonderfully for setting educational goals for the kids too.
A new year. A fresh start. And all over the globe people are making new year’s resolutions. Full of hope and promise, millions will spouting about what they want to do in the coming year: quit smoking, lose weight, write a book, start a business. Whatever it might be, new year’s resolutions are set with the best of intentions, and I commend that. But I won’t be joining in.
Don’t get me wrong. There are definitely things that I want to accomplish in the coming year. And last year, I set forth the year with my own list of things to accomplish. But they aren’t New Year’s Resolutions. They are part of a bigger plan – my personal vision for success – and part of a specific strategy and set of goals I’d like to accomplish.
You see, New Years Resolutions are all well and good, and are usually set with the utmost intention to meet them. But yet, in 6 weeks most people will give up and say they tried and that’s it, maybe next year. And in 4 months, the vast majority of people have abandoned their resolution.
I don’t know about you, but that’s not what I want, for me, for my family, and for my friends, clients, and readers. Each year I want to make progress towards becoming better, towards becoming the person that God has laid on my heart to become. And I wish that for you too.
This year, instead of making a new year’s resolution, map out who, in your heart, you want to be in the key areas of your life. And then pick one thing to work on – just one – that is your most important focus for the year. Then figure out what you need to do to improve in that one area, map it out.
And don’t give up. Success isn’t about perfection, arriving, or getting it right all the time, it’s about moving forward and growing into who you are meant to be, in whatever way that means for you.
Just remember, you matter – and you matter to more people than you realize. This can be your best year ever. Cast your vision of success and work towards it. Believe in yourself, the dream in your heart, and have faith. You can accomplish amazing things with God’s help and the willingness to keep moving forward.
I hate to fail. When I’m working on a project, my motto is usually “failure is NOT an option”. And that works well for me. Most of the time.
But it also means that I’ve had to learn – the hard way- that somethings are just not going to get done and let go, and accept it as a learning experience and not a failure.
Well, in the last six weeks, I’ve fallen on my face – big time. It feels like smacking hard into the floor or a wall. And I’m not happy with it, and definitely not happy the fact that I might of let others down. (I hate that almost as much as failing.)
But, in another way, it’s a good thing, especially the timing. December has always been a time of reflection and planning for me, a time to look at where I am, what I’ve accomplished in the last year, and where I want to go.
Because of my big fat SPLAT, I forced myself to set aside my normal planning and goal setting until I could recover, make things right with those that I needed to, and move forward again.
Now that I’ve done that, I find myself looking at this as a lesson and reminder that I am not perfect and never will be, but God’s timing and plan is.
The world didn’t end because I went SPLAT! Instead I realize that I need to do a better job at recognizing who I am, what my priorities are, and scheduling work and life in such a way that embraces that. Just because I can do something, doesn’t mean I should.
It is these lessons that come from falling down, that make them successes not failures. Because if I can learn from my mistakes, then that makes me better able to serve my family and others.
Sometimes we have to fall down to look from a new perspective at the opportunities before us. As long as we don’t let those falls keep us down, and we learn from them and pick our selves up and move forward, we’re succeeding. We’re growing, and we’re better able to serve those around us.
If I’ve let you down in the last few weeks, I’m sorry. Please forgive me.
The life of a homeschooler looks different for each family. Each family has its own routines. Some are more relaxed, others are very scheduled, and then there are those who are in between.
Here we are a mix,depending on whether it’s a full school day, light school day, or unschooling day. Today at our house it’s a light schoolwork day, with a play date, and a bunch of errands schedule. Plus a couple key deadlines looming this week for me. So what does our day look like?
Since I needed the car today, my day started at 6:15 to take my husband to the mass transit bus stop. Instead of going back to bed like I normally do, I decided to take the quiet time to get in some extra work and mapped out some thoughts for a coaching client.
As the kids started waking up, we talked, laughed, and spent some time together. Everyone was up by 8:30, which is very unusal for us. Usually my morning risers are up by 8:30, while K is usually up later because she and I stay up much later at night. But today it is necessary to be up and going much earlier in order to meet the commitments of the day.
This morning K made biscuits for breakfast, while I worked and answered questions from Little E and Z. J and K then started in on their chores and schoolwork.
K is on trip preparation duty for schoolwork this week, so she’s gathering things up and prepping things for me, and helping me with some adminstrative details. As a teenager, one day soon she’ll be doing this all on her own, so part of her education is to be proficient in all the things that go into putting together a road trip and running a household. All this goes under the category of Home Economics, entrepenuership, personal finance, and technology.
J is working on Fractions, reading, writing, and later will listen to an audio book while doing his chores. Plus he also has responsibilities in preparing for the road trip. Just not as many as K does.
Z and Little E and I will work on their reading a little later this morning. But right at this very moment they are watching Go Diego Go rescue some animals while I write to you. Both are studying animals, and I’m not really up for Animal Planet this morning (Little E’s favorite TV privelege!). So Deigo is a good compromise for TV Schoolwork.
Lunch is in the refrigerator defrosting. About 11:30 I’ll go down and get that going, after I get all the kids through their baths. During bath time, I’ll be working on some client work.
Around noon, I’ll ask the olders to start gathering up the library materials that we need to return, and remind K to renew anything that needs to be renewed. She does a great job as my libary assistant, and helps keep our library fines down and me on track with library visits.
We have a playdate with friends we haven’t seen in a while scheduled for this afternoon. Between their schedule and ours, especially since we are both WAHMs, sometimes it’s hard to get a visit in, so we’re looking forward to visiting in person.
After that it’ll be the libary visit, and then a stop off at the bank to take care of the weekly banking.
It’ll be a early dinner tonight. I’ll get that going and leave it for K to finish off while I go pick up my husband. Then we’ll be back to eat and get the kids ready to head off to youth group and AWANAs. While J, Little E, and Z are off at church, K and I will go do the grocery shopping for the Fall Road Trip.
Then it’s family time and then bed time at 10. I’ll talk with Greg, squeeze in another 2 or more hours of work, while K listens to her audio book and has her quiet time.
And then tomorrow begins another day, with different, at-home all day, schedule. But that’s part of balancing life as a work-at-home, homeschooling mom and staying sane – creating a schedule that works for you.
…Shannon
P.S. As you can see K plays an important role in keeping my life balanced. It is part of her education, her training, but it is also something we pay her a small salary for. A couple years ago, when she started taking over some of the work her daddy used to do and doing it well with a good attitude, we decided then that she should be compensated for it, and that works out well for both her and I.
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