So, in the spirit of living deliberately, my husband and I recently sat down and evaluated our personal values. We each sat down and wrote down what our top 10-13 personal values were. We then shared these with eachother. Next, we came up with our personal goals. We then reevaluated our values to set them up in a priority way that will enable us to achieve our goals. Does that make sense? We need our top VALUES to coincide with our top GOALS, otherwise they will never get met. In other words, if your top value is to be adventurous but your top goal is to be better at homemaking, you might have to reorder the goals or the values so you live your life in a way that will enable you to meet your goals. Confusing, but cool. Also, it’s important to know that these should be reevaluated often. You might have a short term goal that is really challenging to meet (pay off debt, loose 20 lbs, declutter house) so the personal value that you give the most attention to should be to help with that goal. Anyway, here were my top personal virtues, values, characteristics: (before I wrote down my top goals)
- Christ-likeness
- Peaceful Home: Homeschooling peacefully and joyfully
- Cheerful/gratitude
- Physical fitness: agile, flexible, strong
- Friendships: experiencing & fostering strong friendships
- Be adventurous
- Have & show compassion & understanding to others
- Earth-loving-enjoying Mother Nature – never causing harm
- Clean Eating
- Self Reliance
- Orderliness & beauty in the home
- Financial Awareness
Then I had to write down my top GOALS:
- Have a paid for house
- Weigh 125 lbs
- Have a healthy & vibrant marriage
- Keep a strong household/homeschool/family rhythm
- Do yoga 4 times a week
- Time with my lady friends
- More outdoor activity
- Become super orderly in homemaking
OK, so after having the above down on paper, I rewrote my personal values down in an order that should help me meet my goals:
- Financial Awareness (not super fun, but will help with the debt free part)
- Self reliance (will help with #1)
- Family unity
- Physical Fitness
- Friendships
- Orderliness and beautiful homemaking
- Clean eating
- Cheerfulness/gratitude
- Adventurous
- Earth-loving
- Compassionate/Understanding
Well, I am doing well in number 1 (for the most part), number 2, terrible in number 4, number 3 is going ok. Homeschooling is amazingly peaceful, considering I have a teenager, a tween and a first grader to juggle!
I wonder if this will help inspire anyone else to look at how they are living and attempt to be more deliberate in their actions and way of life. It’s so important to DECIDE what you want to be, how else can you grow into that person? We create our own lives whether we are AWARE or not AWARE!
