I'm a goal person. Every year, I set goals for myself and every year I fail to achieve the vast majority of them. I think the statistic is that by February 15th, most of America is officially off the New Years Resolution wagon. So this year, I'm doing things differently, I'm being more intentional and focused in my goals, and I'm trying to set myself up for success. How? I did three things differently this year:
1. I started using PowerSheets (by Lara Casey) and fell immediately in love. They are perfect for my list-loving mind, and they ask thought provoking questions. There are daily, weekly, and monthly check-ins you can do, but the pressure of perfection is just not there. One of the most important things she reiterates, is that small progress is progress. And I am celebrating that this year!
2. I limited my number of goals to 10. Historically I've written out about 20-40 different goals. This year, 10.
3. I am saying good-bye to things this year. This has never been a part of my goal making process, but this year, it has to be. If I'm going to succeed in more of my goals this year, I have to make room for them. I have to reject the self-inflicted pressure of adding things to my list to "do it all" and I need to spend my time differently to allow myself to focus on the things that matter most, without burning the candle at both ends.
So, here are the things I'm giving up this year. They are not going to be easy necessarily, and I probably won't succeed in these 100%, but any amount of progress will allow me the room to have positive progress in my goals for this year. So, here they are:
1. I am ditching the pressure (again, self-inflicted) to expose my son to as much as possible this year. He is 5, started kindergarten this summer, and I felt like it was time for him to explore sports and activities so that he could find what he loved. But by 3 months into the school year, he was over-booked, over-scheduled, and I was stressed. He had two nights a week of wrestling, one night of gymnastics, one afternoon/evening with his grandparents, and homework. For the first time, homework. And, running club was getting ready to start 2 mornings a week before school. Oh, and did I mention he is in kindergarten? He's 5! He had no time to relax, no time to recharge, no time to be sick, to be a kid, to play outdoors, to adjust to kindergarten, or to mom working again after staying home for 9 months. So, this new year, we are done with activities. For now, we are done. Let's all take some time to adjust to our new schedules, our new routines (there's been a lot of change at home with mommy starting to work outside the house again and daddy starting a small business), and reassess when we feel like there is room for something, that there is margin in our lives for that again. It's not right now, and I need to respect that.
2. Buying clothes in the size I "think I should be". I have this odd habit of buying things just a little too small, because I'm always just on the brink of losing that last 5-10 pounds. I don't remember when it started, or how it came to be, but doing that creates guilt about my body, my lack of exercising my lack of making healthy choices all day every day and I'm done feeding into that. (pardon the pun!) I'm going to buy clothes that make me feel good today. Period. End of story. Then when I inevitably eat that donut (or 4) I don't feel my too-tight pants ready to burst at the seams. I just enjoy the donut(s) and think about making healthier choices at the next meal. My daughter is watching me every single day, and I want her to have a strong confidence in her body, and how in the world will she ever do that if she doesn't have an example of that at home?
3. TV. Man I get sucked into the reality TV, mindless TV, and stay up way too late "unwinding from my day" in front of the TV. My husband has the TV on almost all the time, but I don't even like most of the shows he watches anyway. So, no, don't worry, I'm not giving up TV all together (hello Bachelor Fantasy League), but I am going to take a couple/few nights a week off where I don't watch TV. Creating time for myself to do other things that I want to do this year. If I don't make time, how could I possibly expect to achieve new things?
4. Sleeping in during the week. I am the queen of snoozing for well over an hour, until the last possible minute to get up, get myself and the kids ready rushing out the door. But those days are so hurried. They are stressful. They are full of yelling to the kids to hurry up. They don't leave room in my morning for someone to spill their glass of juice, to need an extra few snuggles before school, or to eat a healthy breakfast. They don't allow me to wake up to the day with a cup of tea, or start my day with time in the Bible, or work out. They don't allow me to be the mom I want to be to my kids every morning, helping them get ready at a more relaxed pace, not a frantic, hair on fire kind of pace. I have been trying to wake up earlier Monday - Friday for the first week (almost two weeks) of this new year, and have been unsuccessful all but one morning. Snooze keeps happening. And happening, and happening. So if you have any suggestions for me to be more successful in quitting the snooze button, I'm all ears. This is one that I may not be 100% successful in, in fact it's not even looking like a 10% success rate, but I have to remind myself, every small bit of success allows more joy, more happiness and more slow paced mornings (and even time to myself before the kids get up!) than I have today. Small progress = huge wins for me.
5. Comparison. This one is hard. Like really hard for me. I am so competitive by nature, and competitive about everything. Social media doesn't exactly help by setting the standard any lower. I strive to be the best mom, the best in my career, the best wife, the best friend, and when I don't measure up, I respond in one of two ways - I either go all in to achieve whatever "it" is, or I accept total and complete failure and give up. Have you ever felt like that? I hit that all or nothing point, driven by internal comparison points, and it hurts so many things in my life. There is no way I can drop this cold turkey, no way I can achieve this goal 100% of the time, but I've realized that if I make ANY progress here, I have introduced joy and contentment into my life where there was previously stress and feelings of not being enough. Any single ounce of progress here is happiness in my life, and we all know that translates to happiness for my family.
So, I thought this post was going to be a short list of 5 things I'm quitting this year, but apparently it's turned into quite the novel. Anyway, I hope I've inspired at least one person to give something up this year to create room in their life for something they want even more. And my reasons for quitting so many things this year - my family! To be more intentional about my time, to bring them each the best version of myself. So cheers to quitting something in the New Year so we can have more moments like these!
