2012: Priorities and Goals

"Lose weight".
"Read more".
"Visit a new place".

These are just three of the many hits I received when I did a search on Google for "New Year's Resolutions". I don't know about you, but those seem like pretty vague resolutions to me. They are great ideas, but are unclear and lack concrete steps to make them a reality. One thing my husband and I have been trying to work on in our life together is being intentional in all that we do. This manifested itself in our lives most recently when we decided to make concrete and attainable goals for the new year rather than weak and non-committal resolutions. We went on a date on Wednesday night with the specific plan of coming up with our goals for 2012. Here is what goal setting looks like for our family:

We first discussed and identified our priorities. Here is my priority list:

• Maintaining a passionate, strong and growing relationship with the Lord
• Maintaining a fantastic, open and honest relationship with my husband
• Training Julian in the Lord, lavishing him with love and enjoying him fully
• Staying healthy, fit and seeking to expand my knowledge
• Keeping a clean and organized home
• Ministering to people around us, especially those in our church
• Sticking to our budget and financial plan

Based on these priorities, we came up with six categories for our goals. These categories are:

• Personal
• Work (my list says Kitchen/Home, since I work in the home)
• Marriage
• Children
• Ministry/Friendships/Extended Family
• Financial

We then worked together to come up with specific, achievable goals for the last four categories, leaving the first two for us to identify individually. After prayer and long conversation, we came up with our goals for 2012. I share them with you here both to provide you with motivation to be intentional in your own life, as well as to keep myself accountable to the goals that I have set and committed to for 2012.

2012 Goals

Personal

• Exercise at least three times a week
• Read through the Bible chronologically
• Read twelve enriching books
• Drink one gallon of water daily
• Memorize twelve Bible passages

Kitchen/Home

• Attempt four new cooking projects (freezer jam, bread, greek yogurt and salsa)
• Continue to "all natural-ize" our cleaning and personal care products
• Serve fish for dinner once a week
• Create and maintain a cleaning schedule
• Do a seasonal Goodwill/garage sale sweep

Marriage

• Once a month out of the house dates with my husband
• Once a week in house dates with my husband
• Read six books together
• Encourage each other daily

Children

• Have a weekly family night
• Read from The Jesus Storybook Bible together daily
• Write in Julian's journal at least once a month

Ministry/Friendships/Extended Family

• Have one family or friend over for a meal at least once a month
• Send a handwritten note to a friend or family member once every two weeks
• Start and maintain monthly get-togethers with extended family
• Continue to teach Sunday School at our church

Financial

• Continue to tithe 10% of our weekly income
• Continue to support a missionary family
• Have once a month budget meetings

I plan to blog about our goals frequently over this year and to unpack some of them a little more in the coming weeks. Hopefully this encourages and inspires you to live intentionally in 2012!