Hello and welcome back to our Spring Cleaning Series!
Thank you again for joining us for this mid-week tête-à-tête. I spent the day editing YouTube videos and watching Avengers: Endgame. That movie is SO long and kind of sad, but it was pretty wonderful to be able to just sit and forget about my responsibilities for a few hours!
But all of that aside, we are still continuing our series on Spring Cleaning here on the blog. We have covered our hearts, our free time, and our actual homes. So what's on the docket for today? Our future! But how can we Spring Clean our future if it hasn't happened yet?
Now, as I always say on the channel, we cannot prevent hardship from happening in our lifetime. We cannot prevent future disaster, trauma, financial loss, health problems, or death. But this doesn't mean that the future is ENTIRELY out of our hands. Quite the opposite is true: our current behaviors, perspectives, goals, and lifestyles will have a major impact on our future.
If we want a cleaned-out future, we're going to have to start addressing our mindsets, behaviors, and goals of today.
So let's get Spring Cleaning.
Cleaning something out is all about starting fresh and new! Take time now to reevaluate and really question your current goals and lifestyle. The life you're living today will greatly affect the life you live tomorrow. We can change our future by changing the course we choose TODAY.
For some, this may mean pitching out goals that no longer fit who we are, or maybe we need to change our lifestyle. For other people, it might mean creating some smaller goals, or just ... making some goals in GENERAL! It might be time to let go of destructive patterns or lifestyles, and it might be time to start fresh and new. Remember, you don't have to continue down the path you are on today; you can invite change and move forward.
Clean out your GOALS
So let's start here: cleaning out our goals. As we age, our interests, relationships, perspectives, and ideologies will change. People NEVER stay the same, so why would we expect ourselves to have the same goals throughout our whole lives? It's kind of silly to think that the goals we had in our teen years will be the same as our goals in our thirties or forties.
I think this is why it's important to do a routine Spring clean-up of your goals: many people mindlessly charge after a single goal for years without truly admitting or recognizing if it's still a worthwhile goal to pursue.
Everything in life needs to be regularly reevaluated, including our goals. So today, it might be time to take out a pen and paper and write down your goals. What are they, and more importantly: WHY are you chasing them! Do these goals still make sense for you? What needs to change? What are you putting energy into that you really shouldn't?
All these questions can change and shift as your life and circumstances change. The key here is to not feel like a failure for crossing an old goal off your list: you're being honest and realistic, and your future self will thank you.
Clean out your LIFESTYLE/BEHAVIOR
Our lifestyle today will absolutely affect our future. The way you treat your body today will impact your body next year. The men you date today will impact your future over the next few years! The impractical college degree, risky weekend behavior, and all the questionable choices in-between will HIGHLY impact your future.
If you have behaviors or lifestyle habits that you DON'T want as part of your life long-term, then I highly encourage you to stop those habits, drop them from your life, and roll on out of there. LOL.
You don't have to be addicted to alcohol forever. You don't have to be addicted to food or stuck in a binge-eating pattern. You don't have to be a couch potato forever, and you don't have to date losers forever or be addicted to sex or hookups! You can get help today and change your tomorrow.
We shouldn't live life so "in the moment" that we disregard all wisdom and foresight of our future self. Live in the moment with your future self in mind. Don't screw yourself over with bad decisions, leaving your future self to clean up the mess. Take action now and save yourself a world of trouble.
Goals for TODAY!
Once we clean out our lifestyle and goals, it's time to create a new strategy for living. When we start fresh and new with our lifestyle and behaviors, or when we at least decide to move in a new direction, it's important to know WHERE you're going and WHAT you're going to be doing. This is when we will create goals for right now, and goals for the future.
Goals for right now are all about how you are going to live today, tomorrow, and next week. How much care are you going to give your body? What are you going to eat? When are you going to rest?
Remember that goals don't have to revolve around workouts, careers, education, and promotions! You could make it your goal to get to know your neighbors, or to save up some money, or to grow a tomato plant! You could have the goal of growing out your hair, or wearing a nice outfit everyday, or learning how to bake.
Your goals should always be about nurturing you, your life, and your natural desires. So don't worry about having "small" goals. I created goals for myself last Spring, and I'm pleased to say that I've met them all! I wash my face every morning and night, and have done much better with the housework. Those goals might sound small to you, but they make an ENORMOUS impact on my life!
Goals for THE FUTURE!
Next, for our future goals, it's important to create an overall visualization of where you want your life to head. Do you want to head to the boardroom or the kitchen? Do you want to head to the alter or to the city? What kind of life do you want to lead, and what kind of goals will get you there?
This is when you take out your pen and paper and start writing down what you visualize for your life, and how you want to get there. Our goals can be almost anything we want them to be. They just have to be achievable AND something we actually are willing to work towards.
It has absolutely fallen out of fashion to discuss goals like marriage, babies, a home to nest in, or a man to date. These goals have been laughed off the stage of society while the women who harbor them are mocked and scorned. It is no longer good or progressive to set goals for our family or relational life: instead women are pushed to just "go with the flow" and put themselves first.
But today I encourage you to ACTUALLY put yourself first by being honest with yourself. What are your familial and relational GOALS? If you want to be a wife, it's time to be honest with yourself and write down that goal. If you want to be a mother, write that down too. It's not wrong or desperate to have relational and familial goals, just as it's not wrong to have career goals!
So today I'm asking you dearest one: are your goals your own? Are they your TRUE goals? Do you have some goals that you're afraid to speak out loud because you don't want to sound desperate?
Maybe you secretly want to get married, or you would actually really like to work part-time to have time for your household, but you're afraid of seeming weak. I'm here to tell you today that there is NOTHING weak about nurturing a family, a home, your husband, and your children.
Whatever your goals are for the future, it's time to be realistic and honest with yourself. Goals are not only reserved for the boardroom or the gym: they're also applicable to our family life. You're not desperate just because you want to create a family someday: that is the most NATURAL thing you could do on this entire planet! It is more natural to pursue being a mother than it is to pursue being the first woman astronaut or whatever.
Anyways my loves, I'm off to edit more YouTube footage, but I hope you truly do get honest with yourself today. How is your current lifestyle going to impact your future? Are you being honest with yourself? What needs to change?
All the best.
xoxo,
Cait
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