I’m generally in favor of New Year’s Resolutions. I like the idea of getting better as a person and trying to improve different aspects of life. This year, instead of doing individual resolutions, Blake and I had a mini-planning session and made goals for both of our businesses and our family for the year. (After reading that sentence, I feel like you may be led to believe we have it together way more than we actually do… it’s all really an organized mess but that’s one of the things we’re working on). So, after making some goals we figured out what needed to happen on a daily and weekly basis to get everything done… and alas we arrived at some resolutions.

For our own personal accountability, I’m making our resolutions public via this blog… here they are: (disclaimer: we didn’t write our specific resolutions down (only our goals) so these are the “resolutions” that come to mind… basically this is what we’re implementing to improve ourselves):

1. Morning Quiet Time Together: this is my favorite resolution and I think it will have the most positive impact overall. It’s not a secret that I’m absolutely NOT a morning person, but waking up 30 minutes early to spend time with God and Blake is definitely worth it! We spend the 30 minutes reading from The Bible or a devotional, talking about what we each have planned for the day, and then praying together. We’ve never done something like this before but I’m really excited to see how it improves our relationship with each other and with God.
2. Business Power Hour: this one applies more to me than Blake. Blake runs his/our landscape business full time so he’s working towards the goals we have for that business all day. My business as a fitness coach is only part-time but I want to maximize my success even though I can’t commit full-time hours. To accomplish that, I’m committing to a daily “power hour” – meaning I spend one hour each day doing the most purposeful tasks to grow my business. Last year was the first year I starting investing time and effort in to growing my fitness coaching business and the results were amazing (so much more so than I anticipated), so I can’t wait to see how intentional, daily activity will continue that growth trend.
3. Create a Budget & Stick to It: As we grow our businesses and grow our family this one is essential. Prior to our planning session, I created a draft of our budget. We made a few minor changes… now it’s all about sticking to it. Easier said than done.
4. Monthly Planning Meetings: Creating goals and resolutions is great, but if we don’t stick to them it’s kind of a waste of time. So once a month we are going to re-convene to see where we’re at with our goals and determine what specific things we need to do the next month to keep moving toward our goals. Also, we like going out to eat so this will give us the opportunity to do that (while still sticking to our allocated budget for “restaurants”)
5. Spread our Influence: we all have the power to influence others and make a positive impact on their livees. Sometimes we get so consumed with our daily lives that we forget to think about other people and how we can help them. With my business, I’m in a unique position to help people with their health and fitness goals (from my experience, improving your health and fitness also creates a boost in confidence, productivity, attitude and a whole lot of other great things). So for me, I would love to help a whole lot of people with their health and fitness goals this year.

One thing we really struggled with this past year was keeping our house clean – so a cleaning schedule was going to be part of the goal list as well… but then we got a Roomba. It is amazing and if you don’t have one, you should get one. Also it will knock a whole line item off your goal and resolution list.

I am really excited for 2016. I just have this feeling that it’s going to be awesome. Oh yeah, and we’re having a baby so it’s pretty much guaranteed to be awesome!