It is step #29 of our Be Intentional Challenges!
We hope it has been wonderful, productive and life-changing so far.
As a reminder, the 30 Be Intentional baby steps are designed to get you on the right foot, the right track and give you energy, efficiency and organization which will propel you into a life that is able to develop an overall financially smart, happy and frugal home. We encourage couples and families to do these challenges together so the whole house can function well!
As the 30 steps go along, we will be focusing on 5 areas for the Be Intentional Month:
- Self
- Home
- Budget
- Schedule
- Frugality
See the full list of baby steps HERE.
We are now nearing the end and since we have almost come full circle, we want you to gather the family around and have a quick meeting! What will this meeting be about…. well….
Baby Step #29
Find and fix those things sabotaging your baby steps
Have A Family Meeting To Review, Discuss and Figure Out How To Solve The Biggest Obstacle Preventing You From Doing These 30 Challenges
As we are coming to the end of the 30 day challenges, one of the last things we encourage you to do is to sit down as a family on the couch, even at the table during a meal – whatever it takes and find the obstacles that are preventing you from completing your challenges. Even if you are a single person, go through this with yourself and decide how you can improve, what you need to eliminate/change to make it happen, etc.
Then after you discuss your progress and changes you need to make, be committed to keeping those changes and following through. These are excellent lessons and habits for your kids too as they prepare for a productive, but less stressful, and successful future!
In the course of the 30-day challenges, here’s obstacles that we have found and fixed:
- How a Television show is sabotaging our Be Intentional Plan
- We have also decided that we will reserve all of the other tv times to Friday nights. It is too difficult for us to “wind down” and get to bed on time with watching tv after the kids go to bed. Per the recommendation of a friend, we invested in the Brain Games books which has been a great way for us to wind-down and relax in the evenings instead. Remember we can watch our favorite television shows on our own time without cable or DVR with using our Roku and Hulu Plus account
- We realized that we wanted and needed more family time. So we are adjusting our schedule to where we actually work less (getting the same amount of work done in less time) and spend more time together as a family after working hard during the allotted times. So, adjusting our lives and productivity (which the 30-day challenges help you to do so that you can get more done in a short amount of time) so that we can accomplish more in less time and then have more intentional family times.
- Spend less time online. Both of us enjoy the social sites, especially Facebook. But we often find that we get sucked in really easily and we think we are only on for 5 minutes…. but then in reality it is 20 minutes or more! So instead of cutting it out, we’ve decided that we will allow ourselves to get on, but to set a timer. This has really helped us not lose precious time!
- We also had a really hard time with our 5:30 wake-up time and we were really struggling to hit it (even though we use to for many months last year, we just can’t seem to this year). So we set a new wake up time goal of 6am which gives us 7.5 hours of sleep and that seemed to help so far!
One final thing….. we also have a Facebook Group where you can engage in discussions, receive encouragement and talk to others that are participating in the challenges too for more ideas! Head to the Be Intentional with The Thrifty Couple Facebook Page HERE and ask to join us there! You can also invite friends and spouses too!
Photo Credits: MetroLife.org, StLouisChildrens.org