By Ashley McIlwain

I was watching one of the popular New Year’s Eve shows while awaiting midnight, and something struck me as interesting. The network was telling its viewers to weigh in on what they wanted more of in 2013. Hands down the leading choice was to spend more time with family.

That tells me that the one thing getting neglected the most is family, which is a sad and sobering reality. At the same time, I was encouraged to know that people still crave family time. Deep down we all have the desire to be in relationship, especially with those we love. Yet, because we know they love us, we often tend to give them the scraps leftover from everything else that demands our love, time, and attention.

As we kick off another year, it’s the perfect time to take a closer look at what it would take to truly spend more time with our family. It definitely entails more than the desire. It requires action points and determination.

Get Serious

Have you ever tried to lose weight? Eat healthy? Exercise more? Like many New Year’s resolutions, most of these things we say we are going to do don’t actually get done. Why? Because we can’t just say or think about doing them; we actually need to come up with how we plan on doing them.

Almost two years ago now, my husband Steve and I decided to clean up our diet and get healthy. So, I came up with a way to make that happen. First, I bought new cookbooks with healthy recipes, carved out time to do meal planning for two weeks at a time, and stuck to those meals. Secondly, we both used an app called My Fitness Pal to track our food intake as well as our exercise. For exercise, we signed up for a couple of 5Ks so we would have a goal to work toward, and came up with a running schedule to get in shape. These simple actions took a goal from just a hope to an success. It changed our lives, and we really did see the results.

Why I’m telling you this is because saying you want to spend more time with your family isn’t enough! You’ve got to get serious about making it happen. Figure out what it would take to actually accomplish that, and set those things in motion. Plan out ways to keep yourself motivated, accountable, and on track.

Organize

One of the best ways to accomplish a goal is to organize yourself. A great starting point is to identify the specific goal you want to achieve. Next, jot down a game plan for how you can go about achieving that goal. You might want to include some potential “threats” to look out for. List out some ways you can keep yourself accountable. Then, identify some rewards for completing your objective. Here’s what your paper might look like if you were scrawling this all down:

Goal:Spend at least 1 hour a day of meaningful, uninterrupted or distracted time with my family for the next 3 months.

Plan:

  • Make sure to get home from work on time each night – by 6:30 pm
  • Let everyone know that we will be having dinner together Monday through Friday.
  • No cell phones, TV, computers, or anything else that will be a distraction is allowed during that hour together.
  • Take time to ask each person what’s been going on with them – that day, big picture.
  • Plan game nights or family outings like a baseball game.
  • Create a calendar specifically to check off when at least 1 hour has been spent with the family to track progress as well as list out upcoming activities you are doing together.

Threats & Accountability:

  • Busy schedule!
    • Take a look at the calendar to prioritize obligations. Eliminate anything that’s unnecessary.
    • If something is coming up that will prevent my family time from happening, plan accordingly to spend that time together during another block of time/day.
    • Have my husband help me to stay on track through honesty.
    • Cell phone, TV, computer distractions.
      • Put them on vibrate and in another room when I am done with work.
      • Only take phone calls that are emergencies.
      • Remind myself that it will all be waiting for me tomorrow J

Reward:Place a dollar in a designated bowl for every night that we successfully spend an hour of quality time together. At the end of 3 months, we will take that money and put it toward a fun weekend getaway to San Diego.

This is just an example of a potential plan of attack to make your goal a reality. Organizing yourself can really set you up for success.

Reap the Rewards

What’s so great about setting a goal like spending more quality time with you family is the payoff. You will never, ever regret spending more time with your family. Like little seeds of love, your relationships will blossom and grow stronger with each moment you sow into them. The beauty of it all is that you can never spend too much time with your loved ones.

seedsoflove

If you crave that family time. If you are dying to connect with those you love most. If you just want to love and be loved, then here is your chance. Make it happen. Take the time to set that goal, plan a course of action, and go after it with gusto. The only way you will get more time with you family is to make it. Time will never just appear, and relationships will not miraculously grow unattended. You’ve got to set that time aside, and you’ve got to invest love, time, and energy into those precious relationships. Then? Prepare for harvest!

Copyright © 2013, Foundation Restoration.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No reproduction allowed without written permission from Foundation Restoration and/or the author.