Our First Month of Living Intentionally
As we near the end of January, the first month of 2016, I have to say I'm pretty excited about how well we've done at being intentional.
When I read Jenni's blog, stating that she tries to read a book every week of the year, it not only got me excited about reading a book a week, but it also made me ask, "What else do I want to be intentional about every week?"
I came up with a list of 6 things:
Serve was my word last year, but I admittedly wasn't very good at it. But this year, I am already doing better at serving than I did last year simply by being intentional about it. And it is amazing how it has shaped my conversation with Randy. Now, when we get together after our work days, instead of asking, "How was your day?" we start with, "What did you do for someone else today?"
It's awesome! And knowing that our conversation is going to start that way has made us look for ways we can serve others and makes us excited to get together and talk about it.
Rand will come home and say, "I gave flowers to a little girl today," or "I took the leftovers from today's catering job to the fire station." And I'll say, "I did your mom's laundry today," or "I thanked the guys at the park for cleaning up the leaves so the ditches won't flood," or "I called my grandma today."
One thing we didn't plan on being intentional about but that has come up is the importance of celebrating. We are going to be more intentional about celebrating the completion of work projects, anniversaries (okay, so we're already really good at that one!), others (Happy Birthday! Congrats on the new job! Good luck with your move!), and celebrating being intentional.
A cheap and easy way that we will celebrate our success at being intentional is by adding stickers to our calendar. Each item on our list of 6 things we want to be intentional about has its own sticker: puppy dog paws for our hikes, flowers for reading a book, hearts for serving others, etc. Just take a look at our calendar and see how successful our January was! (Except for the 14th. We don't know what happened that day!)
The goal is not to have at least one sticker a day, but to have at least one of each type of sticker each week. So we end up doing each activity 4-5 times a month.
A quick look at our calendar shows that I read 5 books, wrote 6 blogs (not counting this one), we went for 5 hikes and on 7 dates, engaged in 12 spiritual activities (from church to reading our Bible to joining a Bible study group), and did something for someone else 20 days this month.
Of course there will be lots of other things we want to be intentional about, but this is a great start! And we can look back at our calendar and see that we made really great use of our time!
(*Photos are from 4 of the 5 hikes we took this month.)
When I read Jenni's blog, stating that she tries to read a book every week of the year, it not only got me excited about reading a book a week, but it also made me ask, "What else do I want to be intentional about every week?"
I came up with a list of 6 things:
- read a book,
- write a blog,
- have a date night,
- participate in a church/spiritual activity,
- go for a hike (somewhere different every week!), and
- serve others.
Serve was my word last year, but I admittedly wasn't very good at it. But this year, I am already doing better at serving than I did last year simply by being intentional about it. And it is amazing how it has shaped my conversation with Randy. Now, when we get together after our work days, instead of asking, "How was your day?" we start with, "What did you do for someone else today?"
It's awesome! And knowing that our conversation is going to start that way has made us look for ways we can serve others and makes us excited to get together and talk about it.
Rand will come home and say, "I gave flowers to a little girl today," or "I took the leftovers from today's catering job to the fire station." And I'll say, "I did your mom's laundry today," or "I thanked the guys at the park for cleaning up the leaves so the ditches won't flood," or "I called my grandma today."
One thing we didn't plan on being intentional about but that has come up is the importance of celebrating. We are going to be more intentional about celebrating the completion of work projects, anniversaries (okay, so we're already really good at that one!), others (Happy Birthday! Congrats on the new job! Good luck with your move!), and celebrating being intentional.
A cheap and easy way that we will celebrate our success at being intentional is by adding stickers to our calendar. Each item on our list of 6 things we want to be intentional about has its own sticker: puppy dog paws for our hikes, flowers for reading a book, hearts for serving others, etc. Just take a look at our calendar and see how successful our January was! (Except for the 14th. We don't know what happened that day!)
The goal is not to have at least one sticker a day, but to have at least one of each type of sticker each week. So we end up doing each activity 4-5 times a month.
A quick look at our calendar shows that I read 5 books, wrote 6 blogs (not counting this one), we went for 5 hikes and on 7 dates, engaged in 12 spiritual activities (from church to reading our Bible to joining a Bible study group), and did something for someone else 20 days this month.
Of course there will be lots of other things we want to be intentional about, but this is a great start! And we can look back at our calendar and see that we made really great use of our time!
(*Photos are from 4 of the 5 hikes we took this month.)
Comments
Post a Comment