I’ve always struggled to set goals. Goals to me have always felt like giving yourself an opportunity to fail. I tend toward being more of a free spirit who drifts through days just dealing with what is directly in front of me. This isn’t necessarily a horrible way to live, but it does lead to many missed opportunities. I’ve realized that we are way happier as a family when we intentionally make time for the things we really want to do.
I have made peace (mostly) with the idea of setting goals and even being okay if I fail to meet them. That is all part of the process of becoming a better version of myself.
I wrote earlier this year that we set the goal to spend 300 hours outside in 2020. The original idea to spend 150 hours outside came from Leah McDermott at yournaturallearner.com. Because we set and met that goal, I decided to get pretty ambitious and double the goal for this year.
Here is the breakdown. If you want to spend 300 hours outside during the calendar year, that averages out to about five hours per week. That still seemed attainable to me even though I knew we would spend less time out in the winter. We can definitely make up for it the rest of the year.
As of writing this post, we are at 75 hours outside for 2020! I’m pretty pleased with that considering the crazy spring we’ve all been having. However, that puts us behind the pace to meet our goal by about 25 hours. I’m not worried about it though because we can plan to spend lots of time outside especially since the weather finally broke here in PA! Here are three specific actions we can do this week to get out of the house and into the fresh air and sunshine
1 wash and tune up our bikes
2 go for a ride on the rail-trail
3 do the Trail Family photo scavenger hunt
We have also had the added blessing that our trails have remained open during the crisis. Our local parks recently re-opened also, much to the delight of the kiddos.
Don’t be afraid to set goals for your family. Instead of thinking of it as an insurmountable hurdle and sure failure, think of your goals as the third base coach that is cheering you on as he waves you through!
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