This is a different kind of blog for me… But, it is something that I have been learning, and I wanted to pass it on. For some this may be a new idea, and for some of us this may be a good reminder of something that we already know. Whoever you are, my hope is that this will be beneficial for you today.
What happens when your values do not match your reality? What do you do when you notice that the things that you want in your life do not match the reality of your calendar or your budget?
About a month ago, my wife and I realized that we both felt that our life was tossing us around a bit. We had several things that we wanted to do, both individually and as a family, but we felt like we just didn’t have the time or the money to make them a reality. Have you ever felt like this?
After we realized this, we came up with an idea that was pretty simple. Each of us, separately, took a couple moments over the span of several days to write down the values that we wanted to guide our lives and our family. We each prayed through and thought through our lists, and the following Saturday morning we sat down and looked at our lists together. After working through them, we identified our shared values that became our “official” family values.
But we didn’t end there…
From there, we each brought our calendars along with our family budget to the table and we asked the simple question; “Do our calendars and our budget reflect these values?”
Our answer was… “not really.” Is there any wonder why there was a disconnect and discontentment in our lives? The things that we wanted to be and to do were not reflected in the way we spent our time and our money.
So, we cleared our monthly calendar and budget and we stared from scratch… which was both difficult and liberating. As we added to our calendars, we made sure that the things we valued were represented. As we added to our budget, we made sure that we were adding the things that supported our values.
One of my favorite things about this was that we were not only saying “yes” to the things that supported our values, but now we had the point of reference to be able to say “no” to the other stuff. This gave us the ability to do more with less. What we realized is that it was not that we didn’t have enough time or money, rather it was that we were not using our time and money as well to take us where we wanted to go.
Honestly, it was a huge moment for our family. If you have never done anything like this before, I strongly recommend giving it a try. You may find yourself making some positive changes toward a more value-driven life-style.