I absolutely love sharing my goals because it helps to hold me accountable for achieving them. It’s hard to believe that many of goals of the audacious goals that I’ve set and shared here have now been achieved. And many of the goals set have not even been attempted. #justkeepingitreal

I know how challenging it can be when it comes setting goals and achieving them and my hope is that by sharing my goals with you, you’ll be inspired to set crazy goals and make 2019 the year that you achieve them! 

So let’s start with some goal-setting basics in case you’ve never set goals before:

1. Give yourself a deadline. You can use December 31st as the deadline, but I highly encourage you to give yourself deadlines that are spread throughout the year. The reason for this is that if you if you’re not careful you’ll inadvertently give yourself permission to “not do anything” about your goals until the end of the year. Which means you’ll waste 80% of the year not making any progress towards your goals! 
2. Break out your goals in categories. I was hesitant to do this as I was afraid it would complicate the process. But it actually made getting my goals accomplished doable! You get to pick the categories that you want but just make sure you’re picking categories that matter to you. You’ll see my categories below. 
3. Be realistic. Okay, so I’m the queen of setting way-to-big-for-my-own-britches kind of goals. So this is something that I’ve been working really hard on when it comes to my goal-setting – being realistic. For instance, our original goal was to pay off our home by Dec 31, 2018, but after a unusually cold Dec 2017 – Feb 2018 and a $450 natural gas bill (yes, you read that correctly), we knew we had to get our windows replaced (they were the original single-paned windows from the 70s). 
4. Give yourself grace. You need to give yourself grace if you don’t achieve your goals or you fail to achieve them in the timeline you set. Here’s the thing with goals – some goals you’ll achieve super fast and some will take you longer than you ever even imagine. So when things don’t go according to plan, give yourself grace and move on. Every little step towards achieving your goals is bringing you closer to finally checking them off your list. Keep going!

My 2019 Goals

Spiritual:

• Complete Bible Study on Romans. 
• Read the Catechism cover-to-cover (in 2014 I read the Bible cover-to-cover and I’m super excited about finally attacking this massive book this year!). 
• Complete Lenten Devotional study during Lent 2019. 
• Regularly attend the Bible Study meetings with the Women’s Group at church (I have been so flaky with this!). 

Business: 

• Write a traditional book proposal. 
• Find and get signed with a literary agent. 
• Create 3 new digital product offerings. 
• Get to 10k Instagram followers by June 30th.
• Get to 30k email subscribers by Dec. 31st. 

My awesome planner (anyone else loves planners as much as I do???)

Financial:

• Write Wills (yes, we totally have not done this yet…shameful, I know.)
• Update my Life Insurance policy.
• Get Life Insurance for Pat. 
• Save $10,000 towards the eventual purchase of new property. 
• Max out my retirement contributions for the year. 
• Pay off the house by January 31st!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉So then we’ll be 100% DEBT-FREE!!!!!!

Marriage:

• Take an away trip just the two of us (we really loved our fishing trip to Tybee this Fall when it was just the two of us so we really want to make getting away just us a reality.). 
• Read Sacred Marriage. 

Motherhood:

• Go through books 1 & 2 of the Harry Potter series with the kids (I’ve actually never read Harry Potter so I’m planning to borrow the audio versions from the library so me and the kids can both experience them at the same time). 
• Go on one one-on-one date with each of my children this year. 
• Read The Whole Brain Child. 

Household:

• Tear off and re-do our massive back deck (our back deck was super dangerous because the handrails were all rotting away so we’re finally getting that taken care of this year)!
• Get exterior of house painted.
• Remove the dead trees on our property. 

Me:

• Go on silent retreat (I’m super duper excited about this goal and I’ll be sure to share it with you via Instagram stories!)
• Use spa gift card (true story, I’ve never been to a spa but I received a spa gift card so I’m determined to use it this year)
• Get hair cut 3x this year (I’ve been so bad about only getting my hair cut once a year so this will be a challenge for me!)
• Stop being so critical of myself (I’ve been giving myself a lot of negative self-talk here lately so I really need to focus on not being so awful to myself.)

Okay, so I’m sure that none of those are that impressive, but I’d LOVE to hear your goals for 2019! I love cheering y’all on! 

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