As a mompreneur, I have been known to take care of everything and everyone around me, literally, while at the same time, ignoring my own personal needs and wants. I have lived by the mantra that love is sacrifice and if I love my kids and hubby I would do whatever needs to be done and not worry about its impact.
In my entrepreneurial life, I tend to take care of my employees, sometimes ignoring my own needs. Between 2008-2010 when our business was struggling, I literally paid 100% of my employees' insurance premiums from our personal savings. It left us broke. Thank God we bounced back. But there again, I placed other peoples needs first. For 2015, times are changing and my mantra is ME FIRST!
The following goals are my own personally, but anyone, particularly mompreneurs, can benefit from my self analysis.
Social Goals
With ME FIRST as my mantra, my primary social goal is to get out more. Sometimes 6 months would go by and I haven't even gone to a movie because I am so busy. What kind of life is that? For this New Year I intend to go out more with family and friends. In addition, I intend to stay in touch, particularly with my aunts who are getting up there in age. Finally, I intend to exert more effort to be a kinder person. No, I am not by nature a mean person. However, I can be a bit short with people...my entrepreneurial tendencies has me so accustomed to expecting efficiency and effectiveness in business life, that socially, I tend to address people in a manner as though I am expecting them to hurry up all the time. For instance, at times, I hang up the phone without saying good bye.
Awful, I know. So in a nutshell, my social goals are:
- Get out more,
- Stay in touch with family and friends,
- Be kinder.
Home Goals
I am by nature a home body. I love being home and I love taking care of my home and my family. Despite this, there are somethings that I need to improve in this area. These things may not seem to fit the Me First ideology but because I love home so much, they do, in my case.
One home area that must improve this year is communication. Though this may seem like a social goal, it is in my home category because I am speaking specifically about communication with those special people in my home, my husband and kids. I yell too much. So this is the first thing I need to quit doing.
Also I need to protect my family's personal time. Sometimes with the telephone and electronics like computers, smart phones, i Pads, etc. a family can communicate with people outside of the home more than they do with those within. Hence, it is my goal that we have
no call time zones.
In addition there are two other home areas that come to mind. One of which is my kids educational pursuits. As a mompreneur, work has no end. Hence I sometimes neglect what the kids are doing academically. This must change. Just like I plan in every other area, I need to make sure that I continue to plan for them in this area.
Another area is bedtime. Our family needs to be more vigilant in maintaining our bedtimes. This last year we were all sleep deprived.
2015 Home goals are:
- Improved Communication, specifically no yelling,
- Improved family time, specifically implementing no call time zones,
- Focus on Kids educational pursuits.
Health Goals
As I consider the importance of sleep to our family, health goals come to mind. Every single year I tell myself that I am going to loose these last 15 pounds. Well instead of focusing specifically on the weight, I will instead institute new health habits and let the weight take care of itself. My new habits for this year are:
- No eating after 6 pm,
- Green Juice Smoothies at least 5 times per week,
- Drink at least 8 glasses of water per day,
- Bedtime by 9 pm 5 times per week,
- Eat a salad at least 5 times per week,
- Toning, walking, and strength training exercises at least 5 times per week,
- Be in the now, focus on the present moment.
Work Goals
While I tend to slack off on my health goals, (I know this is unfortunate) I tend to be a stickler with my work goals. There isn't much that I have to do differently this year. If I had to be specific, I would say that I need to create more structured schedules that are broken down by quarter, month, weeks and then by day. The most important of these is my Daily To Dos. I will create Daily To Dos for each and every aspect of my work life. By doing so, I would instead be focusing on the habits that would generate success. This has been and will continue to be my strategy.
- Create quarterly goals,
- Create monthly goals,
- Create weekly goals,
- Create daily to dos.
Personal Goals
As a very spiritual person, the area of my life that impacts all others is my spirituality and thus spirituality is my number one personal goal. I intend to be a better steward of God's resources by making sure my energy and efforts are not squandered.
Also, I intend to be a good steward of my time. It is so easy to waste time with superficial stuff. Relaxing isn't wasting time. Instead, I define wasting time as doing anything that you are not fully committed to doing, whether economically, spiritually, socially, etc. So if you are watching TV with your kids and playing scrabble at the same time, this is time well spent; it is not wasteful. But if you are doing a favor for someone begrudgingly, then that time may have been wasted. It all depends.
Also, I intend to spend some quality time pursuing some of my favorite hobbies. I love to do crafting such as crocheting; I love to read and I also love ancestral research. Activities such as these fill my cup, metaphorically speaking.
The following personal goals, as alluded to, are critical to maintaining a genuine sense of happiness in my life:
- Read 100 books in 2015
- Improve my crocheting technique by making a specific type of garment
- Add at least 100 people to my family tree
- Write out my to dos the night before so that I can structure my days better
- Focus on stewardship in all ares of my life.
I am not going to hope and pray that my goals are accomplished. Instead I am going to DO. Achieving goals is not a mysterious phenomena. It is a day by day, second by second, pursuit. My habits become me and they will thus ensure my success.
What are your habits for 2015? We still have several more days in January. Share your thoughts below; you can still grow and learn with us in 2015 and beyond. We look forward to you subscribing to this blog and sharing with us.
