Last year, I only set 4 simple goals. Mostly, because I knew that there’s no way I could have a Year of Rest and have a long list of goals. It was good for me, but I am so ready to get back to more formal goal-setting and to get back to our Monthly Goal-Setting Updates here. I’ve missed those!
Here are the 10 goals I have for this year:
Personal Goals
1. Run 3 miles in 30 minutes — I took up running again this year — as part of my fitness plan that my nutritionist put together for me. I’ve never been skilled in the running department, but I’ve started to really enjoy it and am wanting to push myself here and be able to easily run 3 miles in 30 minutes. Right now, I can run a 10-minute mile, but it’s really pushing myself. So we’re working on building up my endurance so that running a 10-minute mile is simple!
2. Make it to Phase 4 of the nutrition plan — I’m currently almost finished with Phase 2 and am so excited to start Phase 3. My nutritionist says that I’ll feel 10 times better than I feel now when I hit Phase 3. It’s hard for me to even imagine that since I feel SO amazing now, but he’s been right about pretty much everything else so far on this program, so I’m going to trust him!
He thinks that at the rate I’m going and progressing, I’ll be able to start Phase 4 by mid-2017! And I guess that when I hit Phase 4, I’ll feel absolutely and utterly amazing!
3. Read 48 books I already own — I didn’t read as much in 2016 nor did I set any reading goals because I let myself have a lot more time to rest, feel, think, process, sleep, and just slowly go through one or two books at time. I wanted to see what that felt like… and I realized it was good for a year, but now I’m anxious to get back to more reading and having a few books going at once! I decided to challenge myself this year to focus on reading books I already own.
So I picked 48 books — a stack of 12 books that were old Christian reprints, a stack of 12 books that were story driven, a stack of 12 books that were about improving your life, and a stack of 12 books to encourage me in my Christian walk. My plan is to try to read one from each stack each month. We’ll see how it goes! (By the way, my top 10 reads from 2016 post is coming this weekend!)
Marriage Goals
4. Go on a 4-day completely unplugged trip — Jesse and I went to Hawaii earlier this year and it was downright incredible. I left my computer at home and didn’t get online or on social media the entire time. It was BLISS!! We walked for miles on the beach, I fell in love with the ocean, I read 10 books (!), we scouted out the cheapest food options (because the food is SO $$ there! But never fail, we found a Subway we could walk to a few miles away from our hotel!), and we just had so much fun together.
We’re planning to do the same sort of trip of this year, but we’re going somewhere different. We’re currently saving up and looking for deals so that we can do the trip for just a few hundred dollars like the Hawaii trip! 🙂
(If you look closely, you’ll see that the dates on The Confident Mom Household Planner are off. I think I accidentally printed a page from another year. But I just adjusted for this week and will make sure that next week I print off the correct page for the correct year!)
Family Goals
5. Go to South Africa as a family — Our kids have been begging to go back to South Africa and we’ve set a goal to make that happen this year. We’re hoping to find a great deal on tickets like we did last time during a timeframe that works for our friends in South Africa. The kids are already getting really anxious thinking about it (and of course, Jesse and I are, too!!)
Financial Goals
6. Sell our 3 rental houses in Kansas — So, we loved having rental houses and it’s been a great investment for us (we paid cash for them and have turned a profit on them pretty much every single month we’ve had them!), but we have decided that we’d like to sell them (and hopefully turn an additional profit when we sell them) and put that money into our house savings. Then, once we’ve purchased a house here, we’ll start saving to invest in local real estate.
7. Save up to pay cash for a house here in TN — As I mentioned above, this is something we’ve been mulling over a lot this past year and thinking through and have decided to start saving aggressively for in 2017. We currently have around 15% of the total amount we’d like to save set aside in our house savings fund. By selling our rental houses, we should have about 75% of the total amount saved… which will mean, we should be able to save the additional 25% needed this year if we careful and strategic.
And yes, homes in this area are much more expensive than Kansas!! We could move about 30 minutes away and homes would go down significantly in price, but we love this area and we love being so close to our church, to the kids’ school, and to other places we go to on a weekly basis. We’ve also decided we’d like to buy something that would be our “forever home” and would give us enough space to have offices + bedrooms for each of the kids.
**Not listed specifically, but very important to us: We decided to take a leap of faith and significantly increase our giving this year. We didn’t feel comfortable listing the details of that as a goal here publicly, but we wanted to acknowledge that this was happening. Because honestly, it’s our heartbeat and one of the number one reasons I blog and have a business — so that we can give generously to causes and people near and dear to our hearts.**
Business Goals
8. Release 2 courses — We have plans in the works for me to release two full-fledged courses on two different topics. More coming on that in the next 3-6 months!
9. Start 3 new blogs — More on this coming on Monday! I can’t wait to tell you all about what’s coming and what’s changing here. And I promise I haven’t up and lost my mind… this is something that we’ve spent a lot of time talking through and sitting on and making sure was not over-committing. I think when I explain it all, it will make sense to you, too — and I hope you’re excited about it like I am!
10. Learn YouTube/iMovie — I already told you about this goal! You can follow me on YouTube if you want to watch me learn! 🙂
2 Habits I’m Working on Developing
I decided to choose two very specific habits I want to work on in 2017. Both of these are ones that will make a big impact on our home and family for me to be consistent with. I’m going to use the habit tracker at the back of my new Brilliant Life Planner to keep tabs on my daily progress on these. I think this system will really encourage me to make this a priority!
- More compartmentalized work schedule — This is one way that I’m saying “yes” to my family. I’ve done a lot better this year at having a compartmentalized work schedule, but I want to get even better at it in 2017. Which is why I’m putting it out here and making it a habit I’m tracking every single day. My official work times starting on Monday will be: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. = Work Time, 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. is Unplugged Family Time. We’ll see how this goes!
- To bed by 11 p.m. — My actual bedtime is 9:30 p.m. so I can get in a good 7-8 hours of sleep and still wake up by 5:30 a.m. But I’m giving myself a little wiggle room for the occasional later night or for weekends. Which is why I decided to go with 11 p.m. — because I think it’s a little doable longterm and I’ll probably have more success and consistency if I give myself a little grace here. 🙂
What are YOUR goals for 2017? Tell us in the comments!
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