love week: goal setting in marriage

Hi, friend! As you're reading this, my man and I are sailing the seven seas (okay, just one sea) celebrating our first wedding anniversary. In celebration, I wanted to have a few of my favorite ladies write about love and marriage while I'm away! Without further ado, here is my lovely friend, Amberly, from A Prioritized Marriage!
       

It's a new year and with that comes goal setting and self improvement. Every year, I set goals to help me become the best me and the best wife that I can be. (I share my wife related goals as part of my Marriage & Relationship Goals series on the first Monday of each month.) Some of my favorite goals to set however, are the ones that I set with my husband! Setting goals as a couple is just as important as setting goals for yourself and the goals that you set together will help keep your marriage a priority and help you as a couple, work on the areas of your relationship that may not be as strong as some of the others. Whether you set goals together for the new year or as part of your anniversary traditions, these three tips will help set yourselves up for success when you do.

Communicate Openly

When you sit down to set goals together, you both have to be willing to share what is on your mind and be open to the things that your spouse has to say as well. Chances are, you will both have different ideas about what areas of your relationship are lacking and need improvement, but this is not the time to disagree. Discuss and write down all of the potential goals that you can set together and don't say no to any of them too early on in the game.

Start Small

After you've got your list of potential goals put together, break the big goals down into smaller ones so that you're not taking on too much at once. For example, if you decide together that you want to improve your finances and one of the things that you've decided to do is pay off all of your debt, focusing on the big picture can be a little overwhelming, but setting a goal to pay off a small, amount of that debt each month is achievable. If a goal seems too big, find a way to make it happen, one step at a time.

Reevaluate Often

Every month, I look at the Marriage & Relationship Goal that I set the month before and use my successes and failures with that goal to help me set the next month's goal. You can do the same with the goals that you've set as a couple. You can sit down and look at your goals yearly, quarterly or monthly. Decide what's working and what isn't and use that to adjust the goals you have been working on and set new ones. Don't give up on your goals if they aren't working, find a way to make them work!

Have you set goals as a couple this year? What sort of goals did you set?

Amberly

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