The other day, Pearson and I watched a free webinar from The Dating Divas called 10 Ways to Divorce Proof Your Marriage which was to introduce their Reclaim Your Marriage Program. In that webinar, Tara spent a lot of time talking about goals. She talked about the importance of setting specific and attainable goals. And she especially talked about the importance of setting those goals for your marriage.

She asked us to write down what our perfect marriage looks like. I was a little taken aback by this because my perfect marriage looks like the marriage I have. I mean maybe I would change some things if I could, but then again, maybe I wouldn’t. She’s not asking us to write down “My marriage would be perfect if I were married to Hugh Jackman.” right? Also, I didn’t want to write anything unrealistic either like “My marriage would be perfect if Pearson brought home dinner every night and spent the evening rubbing my feet as I watched Gilmore Girls on Netflix.” Needless to say I had a little trouble with this assignment.

But then I talked to the ever trusty Amberly of A Prioritized Marriage. She said that she puts at goals in her marriage in two different categories. There are marriage goals and there are life goals that you set as a couple. And I completely agree.

Marriage goals might be something like scheduling a date night for every weekend this entire month. Or keeping our cellphones out of the bedroom. Or having a TV free weekend. Or having weekly couple check-ins.

And life goals you might make with your spouse could be buying a house. Or moving. Or starting a family. Or volunteering. Or becoming church leaders. Or traveling.

And then there are individual life goals that you and your spouse have and you help each other accomplish those goals. These would be things like graduating from grad school. Or getting a work promotion. Or starting your own business. Or quitting your job.

But there is one thing that these goals all should have in common. And this one thing is something that Tara emphasized in the webinar. That is that the goals are specific and that we are taking tangible steps to meet them. We don’t just write down the goal and forget about it.

Oops. If you haven’t noticed, for the past several months my monthly goals blog posts always have a lot of failure to report. Basically, I write them down in a blog post at the beginning of every month in the hopes that you readers will be a form of accountability. And then I promptly forget about them and don’t do anything on my list. It’s been really bad lately.

Yes these monthly goals are simple, short term, personal goals that probably don’t really matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. But if I am not serious about making an effort to accomplish those goals, how am I supposed to be serious about making an effort to accomplish bigger goals.

Take my job, for example. I had no career goals in my old job. That was part of the problem. I felt stuck and wasn’t going anywhere. Yes that was because I was remote and isolated, but I think if I made more of an effort to set and attain goals, it might have been different. Even though I don’t plan on working forever and we don’t know what we’re doing when Pearson is finished with school, I’m changing my attitude toward my job. I’m setting goals from the beginning in this new opportunity.

As far as other life goals as a couple and individuals go, I feel like we are in a place where it’s hard to make tangible life goals. We are waiting for Pearson to graduate. We don’t know exactly when that will be and we have no idea where we’ll be going after that. I feel like everything I want to do in life is just put on hold right now. Things like starting a family and buying a house. But you know what? I think I’ve just been using that as an excuse. We can still set these goals. It’s totally okay if the goals have to be adjusted later!

So, from now on, I’m changing my attitude toward goals. I’m going to start making big-picture S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely) goals and smaller tangible goals to get there.

Do you set S.M.A.R.T. goals? Or are you usually more relaxed with your goals like I’ve been? What’s a big life goal you’ve accomplished lately or one you hope to accomplish soon?
Thanks for reading!