a week of goals

A couple years ago I thought it would be a good idea to have
an entire week full of posts about my goals. 
I have a lot of goals for completely different areas of my life, and
find it useful to separate them into categories.  This week I will be spending some time
looking at goals in these different categories once again.
Goals vs. Resolutions
I used to set resolutions for each and every New Year.  They would be the typical ones that most
people set.  Lose weight, eat healthier,
spend more time offline, read more books. 
Unfortunately, they never really stick. 
Maybe I don’t have the right attitude to make a resolution permanent, or
maybe my mind just works differently. 
Now, instead of resolutions, I set goals.
Goals are something that can be worked towards.  A resolution seems like you have to complete
it on day one.
  This, of course,
works for a few days, but then it falls off because life gets busy. 
Goals are something that I can look at throughout the year
and keep working on them.  Now, this isn’t
to say that I complete all of my goals in a year; far from it actually.  In fact, I often look at my goals as a long
term type of thing, not something that will be always finished in a year.  I constantly want to better myself, and so
these goals act as guides to where I want to be.  I set short term goals as well, ones I know
that I will be able to complete, but overall I think I set goals in order to
see where I want to be, and how I want to get to that place.
Word of the year
Last week I talked about my word of the year for 2013, change. 
And it worked really well for last year. 
I spent a lot of time making drastic changes in my life.  I am at a much better place now emotionally,
physically, and spiritually.  I really
thrived on the changes I made, and still look forward to more changes this year
as well.
I was not entirely sure I would choose another “word of the
year,” but after some reflection on last year, I decided that I did want to find
a guiding word.  This year, my word will
be balance.
It is so easy to swing from one end to the other.  Either I am concentrating on everyone else,
and forgetting about myself, or I am concentrating on myself and not able to be
as committed to others.  I need to find a
balance.  Balance with the internet and
my blog, balance with commitments, balance between time with my kids and
husband and myself.  Balance is something
that is not easy to achieve, but I hope to use it as a guide while moving
forward with my goals for this year.
Categories
Which categories will I be looking at as far as my goals
go?  Well, they are all the things that I
write about here at Townsend House.  Homesteading (dealing with my garden
and our very small ¼ acre plot of land), homeschooling,
crafting, personal goals, and finally health/foodrelated goals.  I would also love to
add in a category of preparedness,
although I am not sure I will get there. 
These past few weeks of power outages and extremely cold temperatures
have really made me re-access how prepared we are to deal with such things.
Overall, there will be many goals, and I most likely will
not achieve all of them.  I am ok with
that though.  This was not always the
case.  In fact, it is why I moved away
from resolutions to begin with.  I didn’t
want to feel like a failure.  Now,
however, I can continue to work on my goals regardless of the time frame.  Obviously there are some goals that need to
be completed in certain amounts of time, but I try not to make all of my goals with a specific date in
mind.  I give myself a little grace on
some goals, and then I have enough gumption to power through the goals that
need to be completed in a timely manner!

I hope you will join
in the conversation of goals vs. resolutions. 
And if you have written about your own goals or resolutions or word of
the year, please leave a link below, I would love to read about them.  If you haven’t written a post about it, but still
have some goals to share, leave a comment below!



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5 Comments

  1. Love this post. I like your idea of what long term and short term goals are. It's discouraging when I see the same things on my list every Jan., so the idea of seeing them as long term instead of feeling like I've failed every Jan. appeals to me.

  2. Great post! I stopped making resolutions right after college, I felt like they were just discouraging! Goals? Absolutely! I have a list and constantly am chipping away on my quest to achieve them! My biggest downfall is expecting too much – we can't be perfect, not can we do it ALL. Baby steps with my never ending quest to lead a fulfilled life.

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