Monday, January 3, 2011

Relational Goals

So this one is all about people! Life would be easier without other people, but it sure would be boring!!


One thing I have learned over the many moons of my life (just call me Meemaw now!) is that you have to be intentional about your relationships or just like everything else in your life, you may not end up where you wanted to be.


For example, there are friends of ours that we have wanted to get together with for several months. We keep saying we should get together, but our schedules never seem to gel. Really, we should put something on the calendar even if it is two months out, or it will be six months from now and we will be saying we should get together soon.

The second issue I seem to struggle with is communication. I know I am bad at answering email and responding to voicemail (really I only check voicemail about once a week). Having been on the receiving end of that, I know it is frustrating. So if I have neglected responding to you, I apologize right now!

2011 Resolutions:

1. Choose one family member or close friend to focus on for a week. This will involve praying for them, sending them a note, making a phone call, etc. Tonight before bed I am writing their names on small slips of paper and putting them in a basket by my computer. Every Sun night, I will pull out the next name and tape it to my desk. (yeah for action steps) This is an experiment to see how this one works. I'll let you know how it is going in the next few weeks.

2. Communication. If that isn't the root of most difficulties, whether work, family, marriage, church, etc. I don't know what is! For MOPS, I am supposed to respond to email and voicemail within three days. I usually do pretty good with MOPS stuff (I think), but my personal stuff...not so good. I listen to the voicemail, read the mail, read the email or facebook message and then think I will respond later only to get distracted later and never follow through. So like Creative Memories says, I am starting today, staying current, and then work backwards to "catch up". So if you sent me something and I didn't respond...send it again and it will go to the top of the list!

3. My family. I'm adding this as another area for me to work on. I want to have my "chores" done by the time the kids come home from school so that I can have time to sit and work on homework, read that book, play that game (as long as it isn't monopoly!) and just be with my kiddos. Because this as a goal seems a bit overwhelming, I decided to start with a day...Wednesday...and make sure that every Wednesday is reserved for my kiddos. Hopefully by May there will be more than one school day afternoon like that.

3 comments:

Trish D said...

I really like the idea of setting aside one afternoon/evening for kid time. Going to try to work that into our schedule, too!

Pat Iverson said...

Thanks for doing some posts again ... I like your thinking! Plus, you give me some great ideas for my own life. Love you!

marnmic said...

Great resolutions, Jennifer. I may snag a few of those resolutions for myself.
I will share one with you. We have a family email. I usually start it on Sunday night and I send a group email to: my parents, my siblings and their spouses, and some of our nieces and nephews who are old enough to want to stay in touch via this kind of communication. We just update them from our previous week and then give details for the upcoming week. Sometimes we wish early birthday or anniversary greetings via this email. It's been a neat way to stay in touch. After I send the initial email, they just hit REPLY TO ALL, and we keep going through the week. We're going on our third year of emails. :-)