“It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life does not lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy of life lies in having no goals to reach.”

-Benjamin Mays

100 is such a great number. While I make new goals and evaluate old goals many times during the year, I was especially inspired last December to divide my life into its primary areas and make goals for each. I prefer listing each area of life out on a piece of paper as opposed to creating a long laundry list of goals for many reasons. Most importantly, you see all the areas of your life. When you’re making goals for family, you don’t forget to make goals for career, or home. When you’re making personal goals, you don’t forget to make health goals. This keeps things balanced, because a list of career goals prominent in your vision blots out the goals for another area of life, by the law of Out of Sight Out of Mind. (That’s a law, right?)

There are many different ways to section out your life. A lot of people use 9 sections, but I was enamored by the √(100) and the 10 areas that BohoBerry sketched out on her Level 10 Life blog post. The ten areas are almost exhaustive, to the point of overlap, and I wrote them down in no particular order:

1. Spirit

2. Family

3. Business

4. Home & Stuff

5. Giving

6. Training

7.  Finances

8. Marriage

9. Recreation

10. Personal

Once I had chosen the 10 areas, I set about making ten goals for each. I loved this video about goal-setting by Jae Lyn, and I’m following a lot of her recommendations, like setting your priorities, having accountability partners, and, my favorite, set at least one goal that seems unreachable to you. I set both specific and vague goals and throughout the year I create specific ways to achieve the vague goals and breakdown the specific goals into bite-size steps. I recorded my 10×10 goals in my bullet journal so that they’re always with me (another tip from Jae Lyn!).

For the first ten days of 2016, I am going to release one section of goals. Today, the first!, I am sharing my Spirit goals.

January 1st: Spirit

1. Make every Ladies’ night study

These small gatherings of women are so uplifting and deepening, they’ve become an essential part of my life. The ladies who gather here create a judge-free zone, where difficult or obvious, harrowing or silly questions can be asked freely. There’s no excuse for me to not make these a priority.

2. Keep a prayer journal

There are a lot of opinions out there about the impact of writing down your prayers to God. I wrote out one prayer in 2015 and found that it took more effort, more faith, more communication on my part than the typical, lying-in-bed-right-before-I-sleep-catch-up-on-the-day-hi-God-sorry-we-haven’t-talked-yet prayer.

3. Be there when the doors of the church building open

Pretty self-explanatory.

4. Make spiritual routines

Start every day with prayer and God’s Word. End every day with prayer and God’s word.

5. Keep a gratitude journal

Lots and lots of people have testified to the mental change of being thankful for their blessings. While I try to maintain a theme of thanksgiving in my prayers every day, writing down what I’m grateful for gives me a record of these items, a visual representation of my gratitude, and keeps me accountable to being grateful every day.

6. Complete prayer letters for New Year

My husband and I started the process of writing out our prayers for some friends and family for the New Year. (Hey, as long as they are sent out in January, I count that as on time!)

7. Have specific prayers for the major players in my life

It’s hard to go through the entire Finucci roll call in every prayer, especially if, and let’s be honest, I’m in a rush or I’m praying for a very specific thing. I want to spend quality time in 2016 devotedly praying for just each important person.

8. Take a spiritual retreat

When I was little, my mother used to take all the kids away for a weekend where we would read, study, and pray over a specific topic as a family. It is a short time of re-centering on God and maintaining the conversation about God in your relationship with whomever you travel with.

9. Pursue quiet time

This is a vague goal, yes, but it ties in to another one of my goals, which is to try the Miracle Morning routine, which includes the element of silence. I often struggle with keeping myself so busy that I don’t spend any time being prayerful, peaceful, or centered. I set this goal to address that problem.

10. Finish ongoing study of prayer

The ladies and I are currently studying a large list of prayers in the Bible. This study started in December and is spilling over to February. I want to finish this study strong.

 

Stay tuned during the first ten days of January for the next nine sections of my goals!

What are your spiritual goals in 2016? Share below!