Smart Habit Saturday – My Goals

May Goal/Habits:

1. Identifying my goals and what is keeping me from acheiving them; and
2. Cutting projects into more managable pieces.

I promised last week that I would come up with a list of 3-5 goals I want to work on as well as reasons why I haven’t been able to make them habits in the past. I think that if I got started on a list of all the things I want to accomplish it would go on for a mile or two. So, I’m going to start with a few of the essentials. Right now, some of my goals are to:

• Establish a daily routine.
• Spend personal time daily in my scriptures.
• Have purposeful family time each week (Family Home Evening).
• Spend more personal time with my hobbies (reading, scrapbooking).

Figuring out the reasons why these things have not become habits in the past was a little bit trickier for me, but here is what I came up with.

• Daily Routine – I am good at making plans, but bad at putting them into action. I like to think about different ways to do things, but struggle with the actual doing. There is no lack of ideas or wants in this area, but there is no consistency or self-discipline so no habits have been formed.
• Scriptures - I tend to have an all-or-nothing approach to goals and once I slip-up I don’t ever go back. I will set a goal to read scriptures daily and once I miss a day I feel like I’ve failed. Perfectionism tends to get the better of me in these situations.
• Family Home Evening – This one is tough. I want to say it hasn’t become a habit because my husband is inactive in the church at the moment, but when I think about it I realize that we’ve never really made an effort to do FHE, even when he was active. We spend time as a family, but we’ve never made the effort to focus on the quality of the time.
• Hobbies – I don’t put any importance on these. My family, my calling, and my home come first. Since I have a hard time keeping up with those I rarely get around to focusing on myself.

Wow, that was harder than I thought it would be. I look at that list and see someone who lacks consistency, self-discipline, realistic expectations, focus, determination, and value for themself. I also see someone who wants to improve their situation, develop a closer relationship with God, and become a better person. There is a lot of work to be done, but I know that with some help I will be up for the task.

During the coming week I will be thinking about small steps I can take now to start to work on these goals so that this time they can become habits.

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