Episode #293: End of Quarter- Revisiting Your Goals!

Intro:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority, so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want. Without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting, I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table, make foods that kids will actually want to eat, mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly, and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies. Well, in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Main Episode:
Hey, friends, how’s it going? This podcast is coming at you because we are already a quarter way through the year, which some of you are very well aware of. And some of you might hearing that being like, oh my goodness, that’s crazy. Where did the time go? Maybe a little bit of both because I was very aware of it. But still very like holy cow time just seriously. Nothing makes me feel older than saying Time just flies or thinking of someone be like, No, they were just an eighth grade. And they’re in college now and all that good stuff. So I just wanted to bring this podcast to you today. And I’m going to try to keep it really short and simple. Firstly and foremost for you. So that you just got that reminder to consider this reminder to kind of check in on things we chatted a ton in January, we’re setting up all of December in January to be about setting goals and setting yourself up for a really good year. And that’s well and good and motivation is so high. And I love that I love the start of the year. I love that motivations. I love that like communal support that so many of us feel that like buzz of the new year to do that. But then the danger can be setting ourselves up for way too much and then dropping off everything.

So if that’s you right now hearing this and you’re like Brittany, I have no idea what my goal is even was because I did just shoot for the moon and it was a little too much. And now it’s my life really doesn’t look any different. I don’t feel any forward motion from the last three months, then I challenge you to maybe jot some new ones right now just jot down one or two things that you’re going to shoot for in the spring in the summer for the rest of the year. And I know that not everybody is super into putting pen to paper literally or digitally with these goals and coming up with goals. But I think there’s so much research so much in Saints writings and all of these things about striving to be our best striving for excellence. And I think that having something to shoot for is one of the best ways I also will say this has been an absolute guiding light for me as a stay at home mom, because I think a lot of things were easier to see progressing without having written down goals, where I think this might not be across the board. But I know it is for me, it would be a lot easier for me to coast as a stay at home mom, I think that it would be very easy for me to just live in this spot of okay, these are the meals I know how to make. This is the way I know how to do this. This is all I do. And this is how I’m going to do it. We’re having goals specific to my vocation. Keep me excited, keep me learning growing. I don’t want to be the same homemaker I am in 10 years, I don’t want to be the same chef who said to me lately, I don’t want to cook the same meals the exact same way or been the same place knowledge wise in 10 years. Right. So that’s why I think I’m so passionate about just having some things we’re shooting for. Whether you’re a stay at home mom or not to make sure that you’re moving forward. And I think not I think there’s so much research again to back that a sense of purpose and to work towards something and for something is essential to really just being a human person, I think where there’s a lot to mental illness So anxiety and depression, those kinds of things, I’m not at all trying to say that, yeah, if you set goals, you won’t have that. Not at all. Don’t take that from this. My point, though, is that we were made to work we were made to achieve, not to be machines, but we were made to, you know, all these things go hand in hand, you try to do something hard, you work towards something, you achieve it, you get self esteem, you feel good about yourself, you spread it to other people, you’re joyful.

You know, the other side of that is you don’t set the bar for anything you’re complacent with where you are, then you become bored, and that you become restless, you start turning towards things that are not positive, that are detrimental for your health, you feel depressed about that. You don’t look outside yourself, you’re super focused on yourself, you know what I mean? And I get that those are all were not perfectly correlated. Topics are. But I think if we step back with ourselves or with others, we can see that a lot of times that is the case. So all this to say I think goals are great. You know that if you’ve been around here since January, but pull yours back out. Pause me take a second if you did this in January. And if you didn’t, maybe go back and listen to a couple of those episodes there where we did talk about doing this and just do it right now. It does not have to be the new year. There were somewhere that I was reading in the last week about how I’m gonna butcher this reference. But I believe that it’s in the Hebrew in the Hebrew, religion or in the Jewish culture. Yeah, all my jobs right. There they celebrate the New Year in spring, I don’t know if this is still current. This is really out of my wheelhouse. And I just sound very ignorant and uninformed right now. But I remember that, at least in the past, that’s how it’s gone down. And it seems like it makes a lot of sense, like spring, the time of new birth, like all of those feelings that we get with spring cleaning and excitement. It’s very similar to a new year feeling. So it’s great to set goals for that. It’s also great to adjust your goals. So what I think might help you just like I said, first and foremost, this podcast was for you to kind of just even think about revisiting yours. But then secondly, I thought that it might. Me and with my goals, because I did share with you my goals at the start of the year. And I think that’s helpful to then see, okay, so that person did scrap that or did adjust that or is wrong, or whatever. I think you know, we’re all here to encourage each other not to compare, but to encourage and, you know, there are definitely things I’ve dropped off and things that have gone a lot better than I thought. So I’ll share those in one, pull out your goals. If you’ve done them before, kind of look through, see what maybe is just not a good fit right now. Or what was way over shooting right now just get rid of those crossing offs, you take that stress off of yourself, sometimes we just set ourselves up for failure.

But then we feel ashamed and embarrassed when we don’t achieve them when they were just really not appropriate for a season of life. Okay, so, and I know that some some of you, especially in the chasing greenness group, we showed each other our goals. And I said was some people like you are shooting for the moon, I love it. But this is a lot like there’s 30 things on here. So if that was you, and you’re struggling to get through any of them, or some of them, cut that into a third, like, even less than that, showing, again, my bad Matthew, this is just really five minutes. And I’m showing you all my errors in judgment. But if you have not set any, maybe jot down a few again, maybe hit those podcasts so you can hear how I suggest doing that. And I’ll get to what my goals were at the start of this year that I shared with you. Now I know. I don’t remember and I’ve not listened back to what I mentioned in that episode. Also, I’d like to say that my I use Audacity to record these podcasts. And it was stuck at five minutes. So I thought it was five minutes. But I now see it’s been over seven minutes. So you’re like Britany, that wasn’t even five minutes what’s going on today? Things are going well, things are going really well. I did not listen back to say what my goals were.

But I know that when I set them I had really kind of primary goals in each category. And then I had some secondary ones. So if I didn’t mention something, and I mentioned it today, you’re like, wait, that wasn’t one of your goals. I did have some secondary ones that I might that were kind of maybe more backburner goals that I’ll talk about too.

So for me, number one spiritually, I said that I knew what went really well last year was having silent time, silent prayer time. And I wanted to continue to incorporate that but I don’t want to set that as a goal because that was pretty much already habit. So that was already kind of there. But then I wanted to shoot to do a daily rosary. I will say I
filed to get myself agreed on this and probably at 85 to 90% I had a really good streak going I think through mid February where I told my husband I checked in with our goals with each other. And I was like I I have definitely started it every single day, some days, I have not finished it because I’ll either, you know, break up the decades if I got interrupted by a kid or something, or if I started it at night and I was falling asleep, you know, I had pretty much at least started it, I am probably 85 90%, where most days, I am getting it in, or at least starting it. So that’s cool. But another one that was kind of a low key back burner. One was that I wanted to redo the Bible in a year challenge because or I don’t even know if it’s called the challenge. But you know, by one year, it’s a podcast by Father Mike Schmitz, which so many of you are familiar with, then there’s also just the reading plan that you could do on your own. So I tried to do the podcast a couple of years ago, I was from January to April, then I was in the hospital for a week, and I just totally fell off between being away and then coming back and recovery and stuff. So I failed it essentially, I never picked it up and finish it. And then this year, I was very gung ho to do the reading plan by myself, I was really into the idea of having my quiet prayer time in the morning with my coffee, by linear reading instead of listening to it. So to check in on this goal, and keep everything honest and authentic here, I did like it a lot better reading it, and listening, I’m just a more visual learner. And reading it myself, I was like, Whoa, I didn’t know that happened, or Oh, I forgot about that. And the Old Testament, whereas listening to it, I definitely would zone off more. So I was getting a lot more out of it.

fHowever, I will say at this point of March 28, when I’m recording this, I have totally stopped. And I struggled with this a little bit about two weeks ago, because I was like Brittany is this discipline issue, and you just need to get back on and catch up. Because I was at that point only, you know, a little bit behind, like still catch up still striking range. And so I was trying to like decide that okay, is this just you’re being lazy, and you need to finish something that you committed to or started. And I actually think I might be justifying this because it’s hard to know for yourself. But I think that it’s just not the preferred way that I like to read the Bible. And what it was doing then was kind of making me not want to read the Bible because it felt like a checklist. And that’s that’s so my personality guys, if you know me, I struggle with making things just a checklist and not doing them. Like with an open heart and taking it when I’m supposed to take in and whatnot. So I don’t know, this is again, I could just be making excuses or justifying but I think this is actually growth for me that I realized I don’t enjoy it because it feels forced. And it feels like I have to do this. Go to this chapter do this thing. The time restraint of trying to do it in a year, which I know I’m sure Father Mike Schmitz has said like don’t You don’t have to do this in a year or whatever. But then when I wasn’t doing it that like week or two, I actually missed reading the Bible. At some point, I thought it was like, Man, I miss reading the Bible, but it was like I just really want to happen and read some Timothy or something. And, again, I tried to like wrestle with is this a character flaw then that you just can’t, you know, you can just always go the Bible and read your favorite things, I get that. But I do have a desire to read the bible cover to cover because I don’t think I’ve ever successfully done that. I’ve read a lot of the Bible of study the Bible, but I don’t think I’ve done it in that way. I think I might revisit this a third time and just go myself through the Bible from start to finish not trying to do a reading plan, not trying to accomplish it in a year. And I don’t know if I’m gonna start that right now. Or if I’m gonna do that at another time, but I do know I love reading the Bible. And that took the fun out of it for me and the joy out of it for me. And I didn’t like it just wasn’t I don’t think I don’t think it’s for me. We’ll see. I don’t know if they’ll go back to that. But that’s one that if you know it was written down as a secondary, that’s getting crossed off. Okay, for me, physically, I’d written down to get outside. And as a secondary goal to incorporate mobility work, I am still doing both those things, not too much to say about them. I have only fallen more in love with outside time and being outside for myself and for the kids. So I keep prioritizing that and mobility work I’ve absolutely kept in the rotation for myself. For the chasing greatest workouts, it’s just huge. And I feel I still feel really good. I said that in January that I felt the best that I had in a long time just from November was our moment, our mobility month and chasing greatness and then I kept it going from November and that just continues through now it’s been really great to keep in some mobility stretching type days. Okay, number three, I’d written down to read 23 books and to learn 50 Italian phrases. Okay. Number one. I was telling some of the you my friends, like in person and emails and things and we were chatting about books that I really realized very quickly at the start of the year why I stopped reading fiction and I thought Yes, part of it is because I don’t like starting fiction books and then becoming appalled at You know, thematic elements that I didn’t want in there, and then I have to just close it anyways, and I wasted my time with. So I thought that was really why it was like, okay, I’d read more fiction if I had recommendations, things like that. Yes. And no, I discovered very quickly, probably January 4, that I cannot read fiction because I have absolutely no moderation in fiction. And I it’s just not even like a temperance issue of oh, just put the book down, like, I won’t be able to sleep if I don’t finish the book. So I was starting books at 10pm. And just finishing them at 3am. And just then, you know, struggling through my next day and whatnot. So, and I know a lot of you relate to those who are avid readers. So I have well blown past my 23 books at this point, I was writing them down. And I just stopped because like, we’re definitely clearing 23 I do have to still make sure that I have a really good rotation going and working through a spiritual book for Lent, introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis to sales. And I really am enjoying that loving that, actually. So I’ve been doing that. But that’s more during my prayer time. And then I usually have one nonfiction in the rotation, whether it’s a marriage book or finance book or business book, and then a fiction, but I have been letting since January, the fiction just blow the other ones out of the water, because I just hear through them. So funny. But yes, I blew that one away, but I need to kind of change the school to then be maybe like, I don’t know, five is too low, but say five nonfiction books, and three spiritual reading books or something like that, because I need to pick it up. I’ve This is the only spiritual reading book, I’ve been trying to also go through this very slowly, because to me, like a lot of this seems like one thing a day. But anyways, Oh, I did a Mother Teresa book to this year. So I’m jamming on some things. But anyways, oh, fiction is hard. And secondly, I’ve definitely not learned 50 million phrases. Me learning Italian this year, which I shared with you is probably going to be a real reach goal. Because I really don’t think I have any brain power left to give to any other areas of my life, as is evident by you listening to these podcasts probably half the time like, yep, that’s evident. I
have learned my colors, I have learned numbers one through 10. I think that’s about it, there’s a couple of things that I already knew. So I can’t really count that. So we’ll see, I’m going to try to see this, I shouldn’t say try, I should say I am going to but this is just like one of those. This is why it’s a secondary goal. didn’t really think it was highly appropriate for my phase of life with you. Like I just don’t have the time to give to it. But I’m still going to try for the 50 I will still try. And then lastly, under family was to read three books with Ben, my husband, and to keep my phone away with the boys more. And I’ve definitely we’re working on both of those. The first one, we he and I started a severe mercy together at the beginning of this year, we’re still only about halfway in it. We had a couple of weeks. And they were we didn’t read it all. And then it’s usually looks like two or three nights a week we read, I don’t know 20 pages or something. So we’re about halfway through. We’re both loving it. I’ve already read it before he I would highly suggest it if you haven’t read it. He’s really enjoying it now this time around. And it’s fun. I this was a real hiccup for us. I won’t go into it. You’ve probably heard this a bunch of times but of like how do you read books to others that you both have a copy you talk about it this that right now. It’s just a fun, I actually hate reading out loud. And I usually hate being read too. Because I do my mind usually does wander for whatever reason we switched. I started out with me reading it now he reads it. And I actually really look forward to it. I’m like, Oh, are you reading me or book tonight, I love just getting to, like snuggle up and just have to listen and not be reading to people like I do for a lot of the day with the boys. So it’s really nice. We, like I said are still working on number one. But we have the two other books lined up at least we’ll see how we do. And the phone with the boys a lot better. I think it still varies day to day. But I really appreciate when it’s away from me and I haven’t checked my email 17 times and split my decisions actually helping my peace a lot. And I used to feel like I was getting a lot done if during the little two second breaks, I real quick check my phone. But really, it was not helping anyone out. It would make me snap. You know, in response to a kid if they asked me something right when I’m checking something, or I would just say I have done this so many times. There’s probably seven of you listening to this who I owe a text to because I’ll look at the text you then somebody interrupts me before I answer and then I just never answer and I need to just save those things for certain times. This is a hard thing to track and judge but I would say this is probably like an 80% rate to have. It’s definitely improved. Could I say I only check three times a day morning naptime and night. I don’t think I’m totally there. And you know that I can continue to work on two. So that’s it. That’s my accountability check. And thank you all for coming to my group therapy session today. Really, this was just for me to you know, check in with myself but no, I hope that this is encouraging to you that you can see that Yep, it’s okay to scrap some and say I’ll return to this later. It’s not for me right now or this is not for me ever. I don’t like it, whatever you tried. It’s only about to be April, we, we can, you know, change it anytime we can switch course of direction. So think of a couple things that are really important to you that you want to improve. Maybe it’s seeing friends once a month, and you’re currently not doing that maybe that goes on your list or a monthly date night with your spouse. Maybe it’s putting your phone away with your kids, whatever it is. Don’t think that because it’s April, you can’t start over right now. It’s, there’s no magic of January. All right, we can pick up and have a really great second, third and fourth quarter of the year as well. Alright, leave you thank you so much, and I will talk to you next time.

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