review + preview.
Photo by: Grace Jayne Photography
Benton & I are dreamers. On any given day, we are having conversations about places we want to go, experiences we want to have, building our own home, and most importantly what we want to cultivate in our family. Don’t get this confused with being a planner. That leg doesn’t come naturally to me but dreams are never met without practical steps in getting there…achievable goals that require belief and discipline. We took a life coaching curriculum years ago that some of our friends created (see my life coaching tab for more information) that helps guide us in setting goals on a weekly basis, 90 day basis, 1 year basis and a final 3 year basis. They all build upon each other to help you achieve that final 3 year goal. The curriculum also guided us in writing out some bucket list items. This set us up to make goals based on a future desire/dream. We can talk and dream all day, but without the practical steps, we end up with just an idea. Insert direction + discipline. The two things we do to make these a reality are: Sunday marriage business meetings & our year end review + preview.
Dreaming allows you to believe for more.
Dreaming brings excitement to the unknown.
Dreaming creates an atmosphere of faith and hope.
First up: Sunday marriage business meetings
Do we always get this right weekly? Nope. Life happens and sometimes we skip a week. However, the Sundays we skip this, the more separated and chaotic the week ahead. This coming together and merging of our weeks/lives is a foundation for our home. It brings peace and allows us to be proactive and not reactive. It allows us to know the others life and how to help carry each others burdens, maybe even help anticipate needs before being asked.
So the weeks we get it right, we put our little guy down for a nap and then sit down with our goals + planners. We bring both of our weekly schedules to the table to be prepared for the needs of each other that coming week and share where we are at with our goals. We like to give each other an encouragement and a challenge for that week also. We both come with un-offendable hearts, something we try hard to cultivate trusting that the other is communicating in love. We may do this on our Sunday meeting or on a date night if we schedule that for the week but….weekly date nights don’t always happen.
Secondly: Year end review + preview
We aren’t big New Years Eve party people. We like to go to bed early and we aren’t ashamed that some nights we are in bed at 7:50. We decided a few years into marriage that we still wanted to wrap up the year in a meaningful way, so we started taking a yearly trip to Barnsley Gardens. It’s the quaintest and quietest little getaway near to home. We would go with our sole purpose to review the past year and preview the year to come. Here we bring all of our goals from the previous year and set new ones for the year to come. Just like our weekly encouragement and challenges to each other, we give one for the year as well. An encouragement we saw from the past year and a challenge or area of focus for the year to come. We set a couple of financial goals like an overall number we’d like to see in our account by the end of that next year. We set a word, phrase, or intention for the year that our weekly goals will be built out of (again…achievable goals to meet those dreams).
I share all of this because these practices have been such an asset to our individual lives and our marriage. We have actually seen the growth through the goal setting and in turn marked things off of our bucket lists. Bucket lists that include personal, spiritual, physical, mental or emotional growth as well as ways to love and serve others. I would encourage you to go through this life coaching curriculum for yourself, have weekly meetings with yourself and/or your spouse and watch the growth happen through the discipline. In all of this, never forget to show yourself grace because no two weeks are the same and life is not always congruent to how we ‘plan’.