Each year I set goals to help me focus on my priorities and grow as a person. I spend an hour or so each month looking back at what I’ve accomplished that past month and planning specific steps I can take to move forward during the next month.
Professional
1. Add high school certification to my teaching license (I’m so excited! After passing my PRAXIS test and submitting all of the necessary information to my state board of education, I am now certified in grades 6-12 English!)
2. Develop a remediation curriculum for middle school English (I teach a 6th grade English remediation class at my school. I also tutor after school and teach summer school. I hadn’t found a curriculum that I really liked for this group of kids, so I decided to make my own. It is working well so far!)
3. Add 10 products to my Teachers Pay Teachers store (I have now added four new products. If you are a teacher or homeschooling parent, check out my post on selling on Teachers Pay Teachers!)
Spiritual
4. Pray the Morning Prayers at least 4 times a week (ongoing)
5. Read through the New Testament (I have finished the Gospels and am now in Acts.)
6. Read 3 spiritual books (I have finished two: In the Heart of the Desert by Fr. John Chryssavgis and The Way of A Pilgrim translated by Olga Savin.)
Family
7. Do one family outing a month (We keep our outings fairly simple. This month we all went to a park and out for ice cream!)
8. Have one date night a month (in or out of house) (In April we watched a movie while enjoying wine and cheese at home.)
9. Watch 12 movies on AFI Top 100 list (We have watched 6 so far.)
Personal
10. Complete the 30 Day Abs Challenge
11. Run a 5K
12. Publish one piece of writing (I submitted my first guest post to Money Saving Mom. Check it out!)
13. Read 100 books (38 so far! I’m definitely on track to complete this goal this year. When I started this challenge I thought it might be too outrageous. Now I’m excited that it seems completely reachable!)
You might notice that I have no blog related goals. That is because I had no idea that I would be starting a blog when I made my goals in January. I was actually even a bit scared to write down my goal of publishing a piece of writing.
When I shared my goals with my husband, I was a little embarrassed about that goal. However, he completely encouraged me to pursue my writing, which eventually led to launching The Orthodox Mama. I am so glad that I did!
Moral of the story? You never know where you may end up when you set goals for yourself!
How are you doing on your goals for the year?
(This post contains affiliate links. Please see my disclosure policy.)
(Linked to Small Victories Sundays.)
Sarah, I absolutely love the way you’ve set up your goals! It has to feel so good to be able to cross them off the list! I love your goal of having a family outing once a month. My husband works full time and is in school full time so we have put things like that to the side lately. I think we need to make that a goal for us, too.
Congratulations on your first guest post, that is amazing! I’m headed to check it out now. 🙂
By the way, are you using a plugin for you comment notification system? I like how there is a drop down menu with the option to receive a notification only if someone replies to the comment.
Have a great weekend!
-Amanda
Thanks, Amanda! I learned everything I know from Crystal at Money Saving Mom (pretty much my blogging idol!). It felt kind of silly at first to make having a family outing one of my goals, but we can get so busy sometimes that a whole month can go by before we know it. By having it as one of our goals, we make sure to schedule time to play together as a family. I will check on my comment notification and let you know if I have a plugin.