Baby Steps

    Tomorrow is a new year.  A fresh start.  Have you thought about the goals you want to achieve in 2013?  If not, take some time and think about them.  Zig Ziglar talks about the wheel of life.  His idea is that there are seven areas that make up our lives: spiritual, physical, family, social, intellectual, financial, and career.  Think about each of these areas in your life.  Where would you like to see of them a year from now?  Five years from now?  The way to make that change happen is goal setting.  And a great way to goal set is baby steps.
     Fly Lady (who has written books and you can find her on the web too) talks about taking baby steps to get the chaos out of your life and house (Dave Ramsey does this with finances too).  She is always reminding people that your house didn't get a hot mess over night and it is not going to get better over night, no matter how much you want it to.  You have to take baby steps.  Do a little at a time.  If you don't and you try to clean your whole house in one crazy day, you will burn out and you won't keep it like that.  You need to do little things.  Then those little things add up.  They become habits and THAT friends is when the magic happens.  When you are more inclined than not to do the things you need to in order to get your house (or finances or life or or body or whatever) to the place you want it to be.  But it doesn't happen over night. 
     Let yourself take baby steps with your goals.  That is how you can accomplish the goals and not give up on them by mid-to-late February.  For example, I belong to the Y.  I am guessing that more people will be there this week and next and maybe all of January than I have ever seen there since I signed up in June.  But how many of those people will stick it out all year?  But when you try to work out like a crazy person for a month or six weeks to lose that 20 pounds and go on some bizarre diet of wheat grass and cheese (or whatever your weird diet is), you will probably burn out soon.  But if you remind yourself that you want to lose weight to look better and be healthy and that doesn't usually happen in just a month, that the action of going to the gym three times a week is good for your health and good for building your determination muscles too, I might see you at the Y in October.  :-)  You didn't lose the weight (or get a messy house or get your finances in a wreck or insert your problem here) overnight and you can't be upset with yourself for not fixing it over night.  Create small bite sized pieces to your goal and then figure out how to do those smaller things.
     If you are looking to clean up your house, visit www.flylady.net
     If you would like help cleaning up your finances, visit www.daveramsey.com
     If you would like a great place to work out, I really like the Y.
     If you need help with an eating plan, I really like www.weightwatchers.com
     Find people who know more than you do about a topic and get their advice.  As you can see from the list above, that's what I do all the time.  Find a friend who you can share your plan with, who can encourage you and keep you on track when you need it.  Have a productive 2013!!  Thanks for reading.  :-)
    

It's Gone

     I gave the Glider (from an earlier post) away.  I was a little sad, but it wasn't as bad as I thought.  Sometimes we make things seem worse than they will really be.  I am sure there will be times I miss it, but the earth did not stop when it left my house.  A family friend once said that "God will only give you the grace for the situation you are in."  He meant that we can make up all of these horrible scenarios and be freaked out and think that we could never handle ______ (whatever you are really afraid of).  And at this moment, you are right, you couldn't.  But if you were in that situation, God would be there to walk you through it.  His grace is sufficient for us.  But not necessarily for our made up things that might happen or how bad we think something is going to be.  I know that getting rid of my glider is not the most scary situation that I am worried about, but I still was worrying about it.  Knowing I shouldn't be anxious does not always stop me from being freaked out about stuff that I don't need to be upset about, but when I remind myself of that wisdom, it usually helps.   
     So, the glider is gone, but what is great is that my baby girl can use all the space in her room.  Tonight we snuggled on the floor to read.  It was different, but still great.  I need to remind myself often that different can be great.  Different can lead us to better.  So here is hoping that in 2013, I can appreciate just a little more that change can be good.  :-)  Thanks for reading.

The Last Lecture

     Today I read The Last Lecture.  Wow!  It is a short read, but it is awesome.  If you have not read it, you should.  If you don't think you have the time to read it, you do.  :-)  You can find information about it if you search on Bing for "The Last Lecture."  You can watch a video of Randy Pausch giving the last lecture of his life.  He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was invited to do this lecture.  As I read it and listened to it, it made me think about what I would want to pass on to my kids, those who loved me, those who didn't even know me.  What do I want to leave behind?
     I do not have a terminal disease, but we do not know what tomorrow will hold.  I have been realizing recently that sometimes I have a hard time living in the moment right now.  I am not saying we shouldn't plan for the future.  Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a planner.  But I want to try to be better at being in the moment right now with my kids; making the memories and enjoying the moment.  Not just looking at what is to come.  Enjoy the gift my son is unwrapping on Christmas and not thinking about the next one, enjoying the evening with my friends or family and not being stressed about what I have to do tomorrow.  I am trying to get better at that.  I am not trying to be a downer or anything.  But enjoy right now.  I know that sometimes enjoying right now is hard.  When I was up three or four times a night nursing my babies, sometimes it was hard to treasure that.  I look back now and do love that snuggling time (To be fair, I am more rested, so it is easier to look back fondly.)  When my husband and I were first married and we didn't know how we would pay the next bill, sometimes it was hard to enjoy that.  But God provided  for us every time.  I look back and am thankful for those times now.  Sometimes the stuff we are going through is hard and we don't know how to enjoy it, but try to find something to enjoy- family, a friend, a lesson learned, laughter.  God can bring good stuff from bad, search out the good.  Also, read and watch The Last Lecture.  Thanks for reading.  :-)

Happy Birthday to Me!!!

     Today is my birthday and I am having a great time with family and friends.  Thank you everyone who has wished me a "Happy Birthday!"  I will be back tomorrow with a deeper post than this.  :-)  Have a great day everyone.  Enjoy the family and friends that you have.  Thanks for reading.  :-)

Goodbye to a Decade

     So this is it.  The last day in my 20s.  It's weird.  Thirty seems really grown up.  I'm used to my twenties.  I've been here a while.  A lot has happened.  I've gotten married, graduated college, moved six times (once across the country), had two wonderful babies, made lots of friends, lost touch with some friends, made great memories, had some bad things happen, laughed a ton, loved a lot.  It's been a great decade. 
     As I have been looking back over the past month, knowing this day was coming, I keep wondering if my 19 year old self would recognize my 29 year old self.  I hope so, but I'm not sure.  I'm not who I thought I would be.  But, I'm not sad about that.  I'm glad.  At 19, I loved Jesus and hanging out with old friends and making new ones.  I enjoyed reading non-fiction books.  I loved the man that is now my husband.  I was thrilled to spend time with my family.  All of those things are still true today.  
      I also wanted to be a powerful business woman living in New York jetting around the world.  Maybe married, but for sure no kids.  I wanted things to always be fair and wanted people to have to pay whatever consequences they deserved.  I wasn't mean (I don't think so anyway), but mercy just wasn't a huge priority for me.  I did not really exercise.  I liked to sit around and talk about ideas. 
     Now I am married with the best kiddos ever.  I live in the Pacific Northwest and I run...outside...in the rain.  Anyone who has known me for a couple of years knows that is weird.  The first time I realized I was a runner, I was in shock.  I have been geocaching... a lot.  (Look it up if you have never heard of it.  It's super fun!  Treasure hunting.)  I text.  I like to read fiction sometimes now.  Not all the time, but sometimes.  I am not as worried about if something is "fair."  I want to give out mercy and grace in spades.  I still like to talk about ideas, but I know now that at some point you have to get off of your butt and do something, not just talk about things.  I have traveled internationally some, just not all the time.  Now my dream job (besides being a momma) is to help people figure out what they want and how they can get it.  Instead of jetting around the world, I am driving around town in my minivan.
     I love it!  This life that is mine.  I'm glad to be living it.  Yes, there are things that I wish I could go back and tell my 19 year-old self.  That I can relax a little more, be more gracious to others, perfection really is not the goal.  But we can't go back.  We can only go forward.  At least I have learned those things in the last decade.  It makes me think about what my 39 year old self will be like.  What other things will I have learned?  What other friends will I have?  What other adventures will I go on?  I don't know what the next decade holds, but as I say good-bye to this one and hello to the next, I can't wait to see what is in store!  Thanks for reading.  :-)

Goals or dreams?

     It's that time of year again.  Christmas has come and we are all looking to the new year.  People try to figure what what their resolutions will be for the coming year.  This may sound like just semantics, but I stopped making resolutions four or five years ago and started setting goals for the coming year.  When I would make resolutions, I would think of things I would really like to have happen and then somehow hope that over the year they would.  My resolutions were the dreams I wished would come true.  Like magic.  Lose weight.  Read more.  Spend more time exercising.  Do _______.  Most of the things did not actually happen when I made New Year's Resolutions. 
     But when I started setting goals, things actually changed.  Dave Ramsey often says, "The difference between a goal and a dream is a plan."  (I don't know if he took the quote from someone else, but he is the only person I could find it attributed to.)  When I started making a plan for the things I wanted to change to actually change, they did.  It was a little bit at a time, but they did change.  Baby steps.  I want an action that I have not done ever or hardly ever, like exercising, to just happen.  Guess what?  I don't just wake up and decide, "Ok, I will actually start to exercise."  I wish I would do that, but it was not how it worked for me.  Someone asked me to be in a 5K for a great cause, so I decided that I actually needed a plan to make that happen.  Not only that, I decided that for ME, just for ME, I wanted to run a half marathon.  I owned the goals.  I wasn't just running for my friend; it was for me too.  I had a specific goal in mind. 
     I did not want to pass out part way through either race and need medical attention, so I found a plan to train and I followed it.  That's the other thing, for my goals to actually happen, I have to follow the plan.  I had mini goals that I had to do each day and each week.  I had to actually go running for 10 miles in the cold and rain.  Even when I didn't want to, I did it.  The goals each week were measurable.  I had done them or I hadn't.  It was that simple. 
     The plan I found for running was a beginning plan for running a half marathon.  I didn't choose one of the plans that wanted me to run 10 miles in week 4.  That would have been bad.  I probably couldn't have done that.  (As a side note, I did 6 miles in week 4 and that still seemed a little crazy.)  I made sure that the plan to achieve my goal was attainable and realistic for me.  Right now, I have two kiddos that I stay home with, so training for a marathon isn't very realistic and I wouldn't want to train for half marathons all the time, but every now and then is realistic for me in this stage in my life.  And I had a time line, I couldn't just show up at the half marathon and pretend that I had prepared.  It wouldn't have been pretty.  There was a deadline each week that I had to meet to stay on track.  November 25 was going to happen.  There was a time table. 
     Running is just one example of goal setting and not dreaming.  So, when you are thinking about goals for this next year, remember that they have to be your goals.  You can't try to be healthier because someone else wants you to or to read this-or-that because your friend thinks it would be great or take up a new hobby for your family.  All of those could be great reasons to think about setting a goal, but ultimately, YOU have to own it.  YOU have to want it!  Because when the rubber meets the road-it is going to be YOU that you have to talk into actually following through with your plan.  Your goals need to be SMART-Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.  Think about what you want your life to look like...Dream and then make a plan to achieve that goal.  What baby steps do you need to take?  You can do it!  Find someone to encourage you and then go make your life what you want it to be.  :-)  Thanks for reading!  :-)

Merry Christmas!!

     My family and I had a fabulous Christmas!!  I hope that you enjoyed your Christmas day.  We had lots of adventures as the kiddos played with their new toys.  :-)  I can't wait to make lots of memories with the things they got today.  Most importantly, we started the day talking about Jesus and why we actually have Christmas.  Presents are awesome, food is delicious, and Santa is fun, but if it weren't for a baby born thousands of years ago, who came from Heaven to earth to die for me and you, we wouldn't have today.  Make lots of memories this season, but remember that Jesus loves you and wants to be your friend, your Lord, and your Savior.  Thanks for reading.  :-)