30 Days of Intention

I have enjoyed setting goals for as long as I can remember.  When I was growing up, my Dad would sit down with me at the end of the year and talk about the importance of making goals for the new year, and go as far as to discuss with me choosing worthwhile goals, and how to plan them out in small steps that would make them achievable.  He helped me make charts that allowed me to track my progress and have a visual reminder of what I was working towards.  I am so grateful for him taking the time to teach me about goal setting, and I credit a lot of my productivity in life to those early lessons.

For years, I did what I feel the majority of people do, set goals that start on January 1st.  Bring in the New Year with the goal of saving money, losing weight, spending more time with family, eating healthy, etc.  Now, I feel like I do fairly well at sticking to my goals throughout the year, but, I have found over time, especially after having children, that sometimes a year long goal is just too long.  I get caught up in life, taking care of the family and lose sight of my goals for a month or so.  Then, almost always I feel like I have failed because I haven’t stuck with it for the full 12 months of the year.  Maybe I am a perfectionist in that respect, but, I don’t like feeling like I have only partially completed a goal.

After becoming more aware of intentional living, I realized that there is a lot of talk about habits, and working on one habit at a time, carefully choosing what types of habits you want to cultivate to live life in a way that is best for you.  Leo Babauta of ZenHabits was one of my first and main inspirations for changing my yearly goal method to a monthly one.  For this reason, I have started this section that I am calling 30 Day Intentions.  Periodically, I will choose something that I feel will make my life more whole and will help not only myself grow, but will benefit my family and those around me as well.  I will focus on that goal or intention for 30 days and post my updates here to hold myself accountable, receive support, and hopefully help inspire others to make their own intentional goals.