My 2016 Goals | What Are Yours?

I’ve written about my relatively new goal-making process that helped me actually keep my 2015 new year’s resolutions… well, most of them. Granted, last year, I made the goals in march, soooo I only had to keep them for 10 months. (Win! I’d highly recommend that.) Haha Going for the gold this year and making my 2016 goals in January to keep for 12 months…

I used that same process and made one specific, measurable goal in each of the following 7 categories from Zig Ziglar’s Wheel of Life. His idea behind the wheel of life is that each person has these 7 parts of their lives. This pie chart shows them all as equal but really, it’s not the right type of picture for the concept. We are spiritual beings with souls. That is our whole self. And then we have this physical body that matters for, you know, living and stuff. And we go about our managing our careers and finances. All the while maintaing some sort of relationships, whether they’re good or bad, with family and other people around us. You get the idea. You are made up of more than your job or your friends or your bank account.

I liked making one goal in each of these 7 categories last year, so I’m doing that again. But, you could definitely choose to focus on one goal in just 3 or 4 of the categories if you wanted! These categories are just to get you thinking. (Image source)

Not gonna lie, I get a little nervous to put all my goals out there! But, a friend encouraged me to blog them last year, and I think accountability of other people knowing really helped me to stay the course.

2016 Goals: Spiritual

This year, my spiritual goal is to memorize 1 Bible verse every other week, for a total of 26 verses this year. The past several years, I have kind of ‘accidentally’ memorized some verses from praying or reading them so often. Or sometimes I’ll go through a season where a particular verse speaks to me so I’ll memorize that. But really, it’s not something I’ve done consistently in a long time.

Yet, when a friend sends a crisis text message, or something too wonderful for words happens, do you know what comes to mind? Verses I memorized when I was a kid in Awana. (You should get your kids in that by the way) 😉

God’s Word, planted deep in my heart, years before I ever really understood it. And then, at the perfect moment, the Holy Spirit brings to mind the exact verse(s) I or someone else need to hear… verses that were tucked away in the depths of my memory long, long ago. God’s Word is so life-giving, friends!

I’m excited for the challenge of memorizing verses again, albeit at a much slower pace than when I was 5. The mom-brain thing is real, y’all. I’m pretty sure those Awana kids do like 3 a week. Why can’t my brain be as spongy as that!?

First 10 weeks – Psalm 127:1-5 If it’s going well, I might pick up the pace. Who knows, maybe I can hit 30 this year!?

Do you memorize scripture regularly? There’s a great book called Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian life, which has a long chapter on scripture meditation & memorization. Very in-depth & practical.

2016 Goals: Financial

We combine all our finances, so this is a combined goal of Ben’s and mine. Surprisingly, or perhaps not-so-surprisingly, we’d like to pay off more debt this year. We’ve decided not to share specifics, but we want to pay more than last year and knock out a big chunk of our remaining debt. It feels like a huge number, and it’s definitely higher than seems possible based on our current budget. But our God is big and He provided for us to pay off more than seemed possible last year. So, we figured, better make a big seemingly unreachable goal again this year!

We think we could possibly be debt-free in another 1 1/2 years… which would be 6 months sooner than our original goal. Eeek! We shall see! If you know us in person, please don’t invite us to do anything fun for the next year and a half. The answer is no. We would love to do fun things with you in 18 months when we’re out of debt.

2016 Goals: Physical

My physical goal this year is to gain and lose another 25 pounds. Jk. I mean, really though, what physical goals do you make when you’re pregnant? Get bigger. Get smaller. And that just happens naturally, so there’s not really much to be done. Haha.

In reality, my goal is to maintain my current exercise habits as long as possible this pregnancy – 2 days a week at the gym & 1 “quick 20” workout at home each week. I used to be able to get to the gym 3 days a week, but our schedule doesn’t really allow that anymore. Most weeks, I can do 2 and then pick one other morning to do a higher-intensity 20 minute workout in our living room/office/workout room/play room. (15 or 20 minutes is about all I can manage with my tiny workout buddies nearby all up in my space before I go batty.)

high knees!

2016 Goals: Intellectual

Read 6 nonfiction books + some fiction. Tom Stanley, late author of “The Millionaire Next Door,” (which I highly recommend) says millionaires, on average, read approximately 1 non fiction book a month. I’m shooting for half of that. Dream big. Reach for the stars.

Actually, I have 19 books on my want-to-read list, but I’m not sure I can realistically read all 19 this year. Maybe if I don’t watch any shows? But then again, Downton just started and I obviously need to finish that show strong. I’ve seen all 5 seasons & I’m no quitter. Plus, I’m basically a lawyer from all my Good Wife watching, so… that’s pretty educational.

The first 6 on my list this year are (click on images to see each book on Amazon*):

On my fiction list so far:

Any others I should add to my if-I-finish-these-first-then-I’ll-read-more list?

2016 Goals: Social

My/ our social goal is to have one new person or family over each month. We often meet people about whom we later say, “they seemed interesting, I want to get to know them more,” and that’s it.

Over the past few years, I’ve made a habit of often (but not always) following through on those invitations. I used to think it had to be hard to invite new people in. I’m tempted to keep my life closed – keep my little circle of people with whom I’m quite content. It’s tiring to get to know new people. And sometimes new people are messy. Or they might get to know me well enough to know I’m messy. Yikes!

But we weren’t called to live in isolation. I think about Jesus, who had his closest friends, yet went from town to town teaching, preaching, dining with, and loving all kinds of new people.

Have you read Bob Goff’s book, Love Does? (If not, you should!) He writes a lot to this end. Shauna Neiquist describes the spirit of his words (and life) better than I can:

“[When you arrive], each member of the Goff family embraces you, looks you in the eye, and says, “Welcome home.” And that’s the heart of it. And that’s how I want to live. I want to use every day of my life to make people feel like they’re home—loved, known, welcome, enough.“

This is what I’m going for too. I’m just going to copy her – “I want to use my life to make people feel like they’re home – loved, known, welcome enough.” 

2016 Goals: Career

Last year I wrote about my dilemma in even picking what ‘career’ meant. SAHM? Piano Teacher? Blogger? I ended up picking a career goal that focused on blogging because I wanted to start growing this blog and “turning it into a business,” whatever that meant.

I spent a lot of last year investigating that and taking some initial steps towards making blogging a business, and I’m sticking with it this year!

I allowed myself 2 blogging-related goals: grow reader engagement by sending one email/month to my list.

And #2 – increase profit opportunity by writing one affiliate post per month.

2016 Goals: Family

To do one load of laundry every other day for a total of 183 loads. Oh wait, mission accomplished.

Actually, family is the hardest category for me, so much so that I still don’t have a goal for this one. It’s one of the top two categories in terms of my priorities, but it’s really hard for me to turn relational growth into a specific and measurable goal. A couple bigger things for us this year will be Ben and I spending good time together amidst increased work hours, and adjusting to being a family of 5, Lord willing. But we haven’t really quantified those things. A lot of things I care about for our family aren’t really quantifiable. So, we’ll see. I’m still thinking and praying through this category and talking with Ben about ideas for family goals. I may or may not remember to update this post when I finally nail it down.

So there it is. 5.8 of my goals for 2016. What are yours?