For years I have chosen a “word of the year” That summarizes what I am hoping to accomplish that year. Sometimes, like this year, it is more of a phrase. 2022 for me will be the year I think about the things I would like to do more and “just do it”. Get a prompting…do it. Want to travel more…make it happen. Want to learn a new skill…do it!
I sure love that family of mine there. If there is one thing I want to do for my kiddos it is to teach them to live life to the fullest. Make the most of the time we have here and live each day with the purpose. Best way to teach it is to live it!
What initially made me think of this was the spiritual aspect of it. There are SO many times when I feel prompted to do something but I get in my own way by over thinking, second guessing and getting preoccupied with other things on my to do list…often times things not as important as the prompting I had. So listening to promptings is the top of the list of things I want to work on this year.
I also saw someone post on Instagram who said she was going to learn a new skill each month and I thought, what a perfect way to get myself to not get in my way and overthink and just DO IT. Learn/work on a new skill each month, yes! So I set those up for the year:
So many things on that list are things I have been talking about for months, or sometimes YEARS, but this is the year I stop pushing it off and actually DO! Once I started making that list I started getting all sorts of excited about small monthly goals I felt were achievable and would keep me going so I figured why not push that into other areas of my life? So I made a monthly house project list with my husband.
I also made a list of things each child wants to work on and how I can help them with that. This one is not a monthly list because we can take our time with each of these as long as needed. We do 2 on 1 dates with our kids quarterly so on those dates we plan on talking with each kid to check in where they think they are at with that goal and what we can do to continue to support them in it. I won’t post a picture of those for privacy for the kids but you can see a bit in the picture above the page…on it there is their name and what they are working on and then in pink below that is what I can do to help them with it.
As for the kids personal goals we break them down a little differently. Our church recommends we break goals up into 4 categories and it sure seems to work for them so we’re sticking with it! Spiritual, Intellectual, Physical, and Social.
For the last couple years we’ve had their goals on little whiteboards in their hallway down to their rooms but it was always a major case of “out of sight, out of mind”. I saw this idea, of using the cork boards from my friend Christine (@musiclovingmomma on Instagram) and loved it. We know have this in our dining room which is perfect because each night as we’re eating dinner we’re able to check in with if we were able to work on our goals at all that day. The difference made by having them in such a central location is HUGE! So helpful!
I have a recipe box in our kitchen that has just been used for decor up until now. Now, we have the extra index cards in that recipe box and as we pull an index card off after completing it, we will put it in the index box before grabbing a new card. This will allow us at the end of the year to look back at all the goals accomplished. If you look closely at our cards you’ll see that each of them are in a different color ink. That is how we know whos is who. Our family calendar is color coded and the same color ink is used for each kid on their index card.
As you’ve read, we all have slightly different ways of achieving our goals but the similarity is we are all making them and moving forward in life with purpose and intention. Some goals need to be checkin on daily, others weekly, or monthly or every few months…how we go about it really doesn’t matter, just that we are doing it! We’re trying. We’re improving. We’re figuring out what works for us and adjusting as needed. Don’t forget…YOU’VE GOT THIS!!!
xo,
jenny
Homestead Creations 