Well friends, this is it!
Your NEW page!
Your fresh start!
It’s God’s gift to you: a brand new year, waiting for YOU to fill its hours and days and weeks and months!!!
This day never loses its freshness to me. “His mercies are new every morning,” but I feel like they are especially new on January 1st. God set rhythms and calendars into place for a reason. He gave us weeks to live by, months, seasons and years… all to mark our time, to look back, and to look forward. And it’s SO good to do just that.
I’m going to begin this post by recapping my 2016 goals, and then I’m going to give you the two MOST important steps you can take in preparing your goals for 2017, ending with my 2017 goals. Ready?
2016 Goals: A Recap
CHECK = I completed my goal!
GOAL CHANGE = I changed the original goal to work better for me
** = Incomplete
– Launch the Nancy Ray Online Shop this spring CHECK
– Re-read my 12 most life-changing books CHECK
– Read 4 new books CHECK
– Host the Nancy Ray Book Club CHECK
– Run a 10K CHECK
– Run a Half Marathon (hopefully with my sister and the NRP team!) CHECK
– Have weekly family Sabbaths CHECK (there may have been a few missed weeks here, but overall I feel very good about this one!)
– Have family dinners twice a week**
– Raise $30,000 for ministry** I gave it my all and raised $10,373 !
– Implement 12 “Duty Days” in 2016 – 1 per month (thanks Katelyn for this helpful blogpost!) GOAL CHANGE: I turned my “duty days” into weekly to dos which worked better with my scorecard system!
– Save $30,000 for a new home CHECK
– 12 month marketing plan CHECK
– Write Contentment Challenge E-book CHECK
– Memorize monthly Bible verse (write on our chalk wall)**
– Take my team members to lunch each quarter** (I did this the first quarter only)
– Finish Milly’s Baby book by her 1st birthday CHECK
– Hire a Nanny CHECK
– Create new promo films for NRP CHECK: Watch it here!
– Revise business mission + policies CHECK
– Revisit family photography CHECK
– Celebrate my 30th birthday by doing something fun CHECK
– Attend 6 C12 Groups CHECK
– Continue church Connect Group involvement CHECK
– Join the Worship Team CHECK
– 1 Sugar fast each quarter**
– Implement Pay for Performance Sheets CHECK
– Complete another Contentment Challenge CHECK
– Introduce accountability aspect to Weekly NRP Team Meetings CHECK
– Plan a family vacation CHECK
Of the 29 goals I set for 2016, I didn’t reach 5 of them, and I only changed 1. That’s pretty strong! To honestly assess where things went wrong with the ones I didn’t reach, I either got lazy (sugar fast and scripture memorization), busy (didn’t take my team members out to lunch like I should have, family dinners 2x week), or I gave it my all and still came up short (raising $30K for a ministry).
For the ones I DID reach, I will say this: It took a lot of planning every single week. It took a lot of self discipline to train for a half marathon and complete another contentment challenge and launch an online shop. It took commitment to join our worship team and the ability to have hard, good conversations about things that needed to change. Most of all, it took prioritization and planning.
Take some time and assess your 2016 if you haven’t already. Ask yourself: what happened? Where did things go wrong? What did I do right?
