My Vision Board for 2013

***This is a part of a series. Be sure to visit Part 2 & Part 3***

Happy New Year

Nothing like the smell of a fresh, unblemished stretch of 365 days before you, right?This post comes after a full week into the new year, but I wanted to take my time writing it because I approached coming up with my goals for this year in a totally new way. Let me start from the beginning…This new year, I went to Colorado with with boyfriend to visit his family. Since this was the first New Year that I didn’t spend with my family in a long time, it was nice to see his family’s New Year’s traditions. One tradition that his brother does every new year that I really enjoyed participating in is to decide on a word that will characterize your resolutions for the new year. I didn’t have much time to think of my word because I had no idea this was something I’d be asked to come up with, but it didn’t take long for me to decide on the word "commitment.”

Last Year’s Goals

For 2013, I just had the generally feeling that I wanted to really buckle down and commit to doing what is necessary to accomplish my goals. Last year, my goals (in short) were to:

1. Bible: Get through the entire New Testament and part of the Old Testament
2. Fitness: “Take my fitness to the next level”
3. Money: Stay debt-free and pay of my smallest student loan ($3,350) as well as start doing charitable financial acts.
4. Hair: Achieve BSL for my hair and diligently stick to a regimen
5. Blog: Grow Think & Grow Chick and start posting more regularly

I’d say I committed, overall, to last year’s goals about 50%. For instance:

1. Bible: I signed up for a “read the Bible in a year” plan on The Bible app on my iPad/iPhone but I was super inconsistent in sticking with it. Some weeks I was really good about doing my daily reading and other weeks I totally fell off. In total I read about 160 of the 365 days in the plan.
2. Fitness: I actually continued to do really good with my fitness. Even when my routine got all crazy between graduating college and moving to Dallas, I managed to workout on a regular basis. My eating habits, however, were a whole ‘nother story…
3. Money: I did stay debt free but I really didn’t do anything financially charitable like I wanted to. :-/
4. Hair: I did end up achieving BSL but I am actually shocked I managed to do that because I did not stick to a routine at all!
5. Blog: (As I slowly shake my head in dismay) I did not commit to this blog like I wanted to at all. My posting frequency was way below what I had hoped for.

So for 4 out of my 5 goals, I “sort of” accomplished them but not really in the spirit of my intentions when I first set them back in January 2012. I’m convinced the disconnect was because I didn’t really commit to them by making them an on-going priority. And who can blame me—the first six months of the year were spent trying to graduate and the last six were spent moving and getting acclimated to a new city and a new job. But for 2013, I really wanted to try something different…Visit Part 2 where I explain my goals and thought process in coming up with them...