Goals. Does reading that word make you cringe?! My confession...sometimes setting goals makes me cringe...identifying area(s) that I would like or need to change within myself and then holding myself accountable. Cringe. It can be hard! However, other times I find it energizing to challenge myself to be a better person. Depends on the goal and what mood I'm in :)
Cole playing with a glittery spider...I'm a bit phobic of spiders but I'll take one for the team...cringe!
While in Nursing school, I learned more than just how to be a nurse, I learned a lot of lessons that can be applied to life in general. One of those was setting and measuring goals.
Tip #1: How to create goal(s)...first, assess what it is you want to change. Then determine what you would like the end result to be, make a plan for change and implement that change. Lastly, evaluate the progress and continue the process until you reach your goal.
Tip #2: Goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely (SMART). In other words, it's not very effective to say "I want to change the way I eat." It's much more effective to say "I want to eat healthier by eating all my meals at home for one week." You see the difference?! Confession: Craig and I used to be guilty of creating overly-general goals. They proved themselves to be useless.
Tip #3: It can help to write your goals down and/or share your goals with someone. Something about seeing it on paper can really increase your motivation and sharing your goals with someone holds you accountable. I also like to assign us a "grade" based on how we are doing. This helps us measure our progress and identify areas for improvement.
Too fun not to share this one!
Overall, we feel as if we've done a good job at setting BIG goals and meeting them. But in the process of working on these BIG goals, the little ones have gone by the wayside (something about working full-time while going to school full-time and "working" part-time at clinicals all while having a newborn)! Things such as exercising regularly, eating at home, keeping a clean house, etc. just weren't as important at the time.
So, fastforward almost three years and we are finally revisiting our smaller goals. Each Sunday, Craig & I review the week ahead and have begun discussing what we want our weekly goal to be. Our first goal was to eat out less...and to make it SMART, it was to eat every dinner at home and allow one lunch "out." The first two weeks, I gave us a C and a B+. This week, we get a HUGE A+!!! This has been a long-running challenge for us and now that we have children, we want to set a good example. And the point of today's title is that even though you may not accomplish your goal on the first try, try again!
Owen loves corn on the cobb...I wish I had a pic of it after he was done!
Next week, I plan to write about being Green (aka Earth-friendly)...one of my goals that I've had for my family for a long time (and actually something that we've successfully stuck with over the years)! BTW, it's also one of my quirks :)
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