Welcome to my monthly post where I share an update on how I’m doing on my goals for 2017. I hope that this post inspires you in your own goal-setting journey!
It’s February 1, 2017 which means it’s time for my first goal update for 2017. I’ll be sharing a recap of each of my goals + an update on how I’m doing on each of them below. (If there’s no update listed, I have no update to report. Hopefully I’ll have an update next month!)
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.
February 1st update: I started in on an more intentional running regimen — varying between easy runs, long runs, progressive runs, and HIIT workouts + intentional warm-up and cool down. My nutritionist is a runner so he is putting together a run training schedule for me each week!
This month, I’m averaging about 2.2 miles in 30 minutes. I could push myself and do more, but my nutritionist is encouraging me to not push myself too hard, too fast and instead to slowly build up my endurance. So I’m trying to take my time and not get impatient. Because I know that slow and steady wins the race!
2. Make it to Phase 4 of the nutrition plan — I’m currently working through a 4-phase custom nutritional plan with my nutritionist. I start in Phase 1 back at the end of August 2016. 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!
February 1st update: I started Phase 3 two weeks ago!!!! This means I get to introduce back in quite a bit more foods and have more wiggle room as far as what I can and can’t eat. Plus, it means that I’ll be eating even more — which is crazy because I feel like I eat so much right now. 🙂
I love how my tastes have changed so much in the last few months. I crave healthy foods almost all the time and rarely have a desire to eat something that isn’t something nourishing. I even like celery now — a food I couldn’t stomach before!
I think one of the biggest things that has changed is that I’ve really made taking care of my health a top priority in my life. And the benefits and results of that are pretty 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.
February 1st update: I’m so excited because I read 11 books and ebooks in January (see all 11 books and ebooks I read here)! Yay! It feels so good to be back to reading again!
The 4 books I read from my shelf from the 48 books I picked were: Candles in the Dark, Grace Not Perfection, A Trip Around the Sun, and The Giver. Of those 4 books, The Giver definitely was the one that impacted me the most profoundly. I wrote more about it here.
Marriage Goals
4. Go on a 4-day completely unplugged trip — Jesse and I went to Hawaii last 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!
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.
February 1st update: Our renters moved out in one of our rental houses this month, so we just got the house put up on the market! I’ll keep you posted.
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 2 new blogs — I shared more here about the big changes that are coming to the blog in 2017 — including two brand-new blogs I’m launching late March or early April!
February 1st update: We are hard at work behind the scenes getting CrystalPaine.com and YourBloggingMentor.com set up. I’m so excited about the designs and can’t wait to unveil them soon!
10. Learn YouTube/iMovie — I already told you about this goal! You can follow me on YouTube if you want to watch me learn! 🙂
February 1st update: I’ve had fun editing and publishing YouTube videos and feel like I’ve made a lot of headway in learning tricks and strategies and what works.
I have a long way to go, but I’m having so much fun! I also decided that publishing a video 5 days per week (what I was initially planning) is too much for my schedule. Instead, I’m shooting for 2 videos per week. That seems to be a good pace for me! You can watch my recent YouTube videos here.
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 using 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 are: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. = Work Time, 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. = Unplugged Family Time. So far, this has made a huge, positive change for our family and for my sanity and productivity and I’m so grateful and excited. I hope to do this even more consistently in February!
- 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. I didn’t do this perfectly in January, but I’m celebrating that I hit the goal 16 nights! And I’m hoping that I’ll be even more on target in February!
How are YOU doing on your goals for 2017? Leave a comment and let us know!
