A New Year....

and with it comes new goals.

I love the start of a new year. A time to get ones life organised, set some goals for things I want to achieve this year and just get excited about what life has in store. Even though I don´t always achieve all that I set out to do at the start of the year I do at least try and that´s what counts :-)

So this year I have been thinking about what goals I want to set. I came up with a few....

Goal 1 - is about my spiritually goals. For me this is the most important part of my life. This year my goal is simply John 3, 30 - He (Jesus) must become greater and greater and I must become less and less. Sometimes there is just too much Laura in my life and not enough Jesus!! So my plan is to work on that this year! I want to put my will to the side and follow His will in every area of my life. 

I have chosen a few books of the Bible I want to study as well as a few different themes so I don´t think I am going to be bored anytime soon! 

Goal 2 - Shut up - Sorry, I don´t mean to be rude...I just want to learn to be slow to speak and quick to listen. Most of the time I am just the opposite so that is something I want to work on in 2016!!! 

Goal 3 - Get healthy

My motto for the year is this.....

This can work in all areas of my life...spiritually, physically, emotionally.

So today I started to put this motto into practise in the hope that it will help me achieve goal number 3 - to get healthy.

 I was sooo tempted to eat unhealthy stuff at work but I kept saying to myself...."Laura your future self will thank you for not eating that chocolate!" I even printed the motto out and hung it up at work. It really helped me stick to my healthy eating. 

On the way home today I did something else rather amazing! I went into the Gym and booked a time, on Monday, for a free trial. Once again it was the motto that motivated me! I really didn´t want to go to the Gym but I drove there anyway after work, I sat in my car and held a meeting with myself. I said "Laura, you get out of this car and do this! Your future self will thank you." and that helped me get out of the car and go into the Gym to book the trial!! 

It actually sounds really good. It´s called LOOP and it is more of a fitness place for people like me - unfit,  and a little chubby. (All the other fitness places seem to have all these skinny, beautiful, got it all together people, training in them! haha)

So at LOOP, all the equipment that you train on is in a circle. You have 45secs on each thing, when the bell goes you move to the next piece of equipment. You go around the circle twice and in that time you will have trained and trimmed the whole body. It takes 24 minutes to get around the circle twice. There is a 5 minute warm up machine that you start out on and a stretching area for when you´re finished. I think I could do this!!! So I get a free trial on Monday and if it goes well then I will sign up. This is my new goal for 2016. Get healthy and hopefully in the process get rid of some of the extra kilos that I am carrying around. 

Goal 4 - Learn the Violin. I have been taking free lessons on Youtube and now understand how all the notes work on the violin. I am trying to master how you hold the bow and how to play it on the strings. It´s so much fun. I might post a video one day soon although I am a bit dubious about doing that because if André Rieu sees me he might just want me to join his orchestra and I am not sure I want to travel the world just yet!! hehe 

Goal 5 - Go for more walks and enjoy the wonderful nature around me. (Take my camera and capture some of that nature!) 

Goal 6 - Keep working on my friendships. I want to keep in touch with my friends both near and far. I am good at keeping in touch with my different girl friends that live close by, but I need to be better at keeping in touch with those friends that live further away, especially those in other countries. 

Goal 7 - Invite more people home for dinner - tea/coffee. This was one of our goals last year...to entertain more. I think on the whole we did pretty well, although in the middle of the year life got a little busy and we didn´t have as many friends over for dinner as would have liked, but we take the challenge up again this year and lets see if we can do better. 

Goal 8 - ARK!! which stands for.....Acts of Random Kindness. I want to do more of this in 2016 - it´s so much fun to surprise someone with an act of kindness:-) More of this in 2016!!

Goal 9 - Be a Barnabas. Barnabas was a man in the Bible who was good at encouraging others. That is another goal for 2016 - to be better at encouraging and building others up. I want to be the type of person I would like to meet! :-) 

Goal 10 - Read some good books! (and get a new Kindle) 

So that´s my list all wrote down so I can look at it whenever I need to remind myself of what I wish for myself this year. Hope you all have a fantastic 2016 and my you achieve some goals of your own!