{ A Year of Resolutions: 2013 }

Happy Friday! I am super stoked today, as I reaveal my *dun, dun, dun, dun* New Year's resolutions! As I mentioned a while back, I was thinking through some ideas for my New Year's Resolutions. Well - I finally decided and I'm so excited to share them with you! Although, typical me - I can never decide on just one thing. I typically don't do resolutions, but something about this new year's clean start really inspired me to set goals now. Instead of making one New Year's Resolution, I'm making 12 monthly goals for 2013.

The Plan 

For each month of the year, I'll have a different goal or focus. I love making goals, and I usually get so excited about them that I try to do them all at once. But trying to do them all at once usually results in failure and frustration. So instead, I'm breaking up all my wants and goals for the year over the course of 12 months. This way, I can focus on one goal at a time for long enough to create good habits and see progress. This method allows me to set many goals throughout the year with a reasonable plan for accomplishing them. This plan also helps me shift my focus to many different things instead of focusing too much on any one area of improvement. Below is a short synopsis of my monthly goals. It's a bit long, so bear with me! 

1. Back to Healthy January: Typical for a beginning-of-the-year resolution, I know, but it had to be done after 2012's holidays. This month's goals include: a new workout plan, keeping track of meals/calories through My Fitness Pal & striving to eat healthy filling foods, keeping a water diary (in attempt to drink more water regularly), and only having one dessert a week.

2. Good Day Sunshine February: An area I want to see change in is my morning and nightly routine. I want this month to be about establishing a true routine that allows me to wake up on time and go to bed in a peaceful state. This goal will allow me to focus on waking up when my alarm goes off (instead of 10-20 minutes later - novel, I know), complete certain tasks after waking up, and have a dedicated relaxing beditme routine.

3. Marriage-focused March: This month will be all about focusing on one of my most important relationships: that which I have with my husband. This month will focus extra on my relationship and finally make all those good pins on my love board get some use. I'll also start reading The Love Dare, which dares you to do something different in your relationship every day for 40 days.

4. All-things Organized April: I'm pretty sure organization should have been my middle name, but there's always more room to get organized in my eyes. Leave no space behind, this month will focus on small organizational goals from problem areas in my house to going through my whole closet.

5. Priority in Prayer for May: I do well at prioritizing prayer, but sometimes what I pray about gets all over the place. To displace the burden of wanting to pray about everything all the time, I’m going to commit to following a prayer schedule, where I pray over one topic for that day of the week, such as my marriage or friends.

6. Stay Pretty for Summer June: While I'm sure I already spend plenty of time maintaining my appearance, I thought it would be fun to spend some extra time on it for a month. I tend to get into ruts of wearing the same clothes and doing the same thing with my hair. This month, I want to experiment with new styles and trends. My goal will be to try something new with my style (hair, clothes, beauty, etc.) every day and make sure that every day I do something to make myself feel and look beautiful.

7. Just Eat July: This month's focus is all about being in the kitchen. My goal this month will be to try new foods and recipes that I am normally afraid to try for fear of not cooking it right, it being too time consuming, and simply because I am a creature of habit when it comes to what I eat. My goal this month will be to try at least two new full-course meals each week, featuring a main dish, sides, and a dessert.

8. Worry-Free for August: Something I struggle with is worry and anxiety. The more I worry, the worse my anxiety becomes. I am always trying to tame my worry and hand my worries, fears, and insecurities over to God, but it's definitely not an easy task. This month's focus will be giving up one worry a day for every day of the month. I will focus on just one worry, such as worrying about what I eat, and for just that one day, choose to surrender it. I will outline a lot more details about this one later, but for now, it's just a worry-free month.

9. Second Half for September: Immediately after running my first half-marathon, I knew without a doubt that I wanted to run another one. I'm planning on running the Run to the Rock half-marathon in Plymouth, Massachusetts where you run to Plymouth rock through the woods! 

10. Scary Shop-Free October: I’ve done this before, but it’s always a challenge: a whole month of no shopping for myself. Simple, but still harder than it sounds! 

11. Read for November: One of my reoccurring goals always is to read more. However, the goal of "read more" never seems to mean much unless I put a number with it. For this month, I want to read a book a week for the whole month to push myself to actually make time for reading. More on what books I'll be reading later!

12. Blog It Up December: Why not take a month to focus on my favorite hobby: the blog itself! This month will be about all-things-blogging: social networking, lots of fun posts filled with pictures, and possibly taking the plunge to buy a domain name :)

Putting this all into words can kind of make 2013 seem like a daunting year before me. Yes, these are a lot of goals. But goals are what work for me and motivate me to be my best self. I hope to write about all of these goals with at least weekly updates on each month's topic. I hope to write about success as well as failure, as I'm sure each goal will not go as planned. While I have set aside a certain goal for each month, I also am giving myself the flexibility to change which goal I do for which month, in case the goal isn't practical for that month. Overall, I'm really excited about these goals. I'm sure you'll be hearing about all of them in a lot more detail when the time comes! 

• Question for you: Do you believe in New Year's Resolutions - why or why not? What goals have you set for yourself for 2013? 

*Special thanks to Shabby Blogs for the graphic.