Tag Archives: goals

5 Great Products/Ideas to Start Your New Year Right

Leave a reply

I love that God gifts us the gift of new beginnings. New years and new days, fresh starts, a chance to begin again. The beginning of a new year is just like the beginning of a new day—a fresh start, a chance to begin again.

There are different views on the new year. Some people love making goals and resolutions for the year; some people think they’re a waste of time. I am solely on the writing down my dreams and goals for the year side. I love writing down what I want to accomplish for the year with God’s help, and I love looking at that list at the end of the year to see what I was able to accomplish.

No matter which side you fall on, we can all agree that the new year is a great time to push reset.

Some Great Resources for This New Year

If you want to get your year off to a great start, here are a few ideas to get you started.

Daring to Imagine Bible Study.

I finished the end of last year and the first few days of January with this Bible study from youversion. It really encouraged my heart and my creativity. I feel like it’s a great study to kick off the new year. If you want to be encouraged and inspired by what God could do with your life, check out this study. Just download youversion on your phone, if you haven’t already, and look for the plan Daring to Imagine by Rick Warren. You won’t be disappointed; I promise you that!

A Simplified Life.

I read this book by Emily Ley during the last few weeks of last year and loved it! All of Emily Ley books are great, and this one is no exception. I read several of her books last year, but I think this is a great one for a brand new year. It’s all about simplifying your life. She teaches you how to do that by decluttering your home, schedule, calendar, and making time for what’s most important. It’s both really practical with checklists and ideas, and inspirational—which is why I love the book. I think it’s the perfect January book!

Find your word for the year.

My word for the year is more of a phrase. I chose joyful and grateful spirit from Galatians 4. I want my focus this year to be a joyful and grateful spirit, to be joyfully grateful. So many of the problems we have could be taken care of if we simply chose to be grateful for what we’ve been gifted and chose joy. If you haven’t chosen a word for the year, Dayspring has a great quiz you can take. I’ve done that in years past and loved it!

Faithfully Stepping Journal.

If you don’t already journal every day as a part of your morning, I can’t encourage it enough. I use these journals every single morning for my morning time routine. It helps me stay on track every single day with my prayer life and my Bible reading. You don’t have to use these journals, but at least use something to write down what God is teaching you each and every day. It will stay with you much longer; I promise.

A to-do list.

It doesn’t sound like an amazing new year product, but it has the potential to change your life. Commit every day to writing down a list of what you need to accomplish for the day and sticking with it. I recommend using the spiral notebook system if you don’t already have a plan. Even if you don’t accomplish everything on your list for the day, at least it gets you accomplishing something. Very few days do I accomplish everything on my list, but it gives me a direction time and time again throughout the day.

These are just a few simple ideas to help get us back on track in this new year. What ideas do you have for a brand new year?

Pursuing Your Dream, Part 2

Leave a reply
quote by Harriet Tubman

So I wrote Pursuing Your Dream, Part 1 all the way back in March. My plan was to get this post out next. The next week, COVID happened and we went into quarantine. In the middle of a crisis, I didn’t feel like this post was appropriate. I put it on the back burner. So give that post a quick read if you want.

The first post was about finding your dream and choosing to pursue it. This second post is about continuing with your dream.

Continuing with Your Dream

Do you know what comes after starting your dream? Continuing with your dream. It’s awesome to establish your business, create your first product, and make your first sale. But then reality sets in. You have to keep creating. Then you have to figure out sales tax and income tax. After that, you have to put money back into your product or business. Then there’s dealing with people who don’t care for your product. It’s during this time that we are tempted to give up on our dreams. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s worth it.

When the output is more than the income, when you don’t sell enough product to make a profit, when somebody complains or criticizes what you are creating, when you feel like this business will never get off the ground… that’s when we are tempted to give up on our dream.

Why Continue?

Matt and I are pursuing our dream of writing and creating products. I blog here at Faithfully Stepping and write non-fiction books as well as fantasy books, and I’m loving it! I am so fulfilled by writing.

With that said, though, Matt and I are not getting rich on the books we’ve written. We pay more for editing than we make in sales. So why do we do it? Because it’s how God has gifted us, and we love writing! Writing gets us up early, keeps us up late, and leaves us bleary-eyed and tired. Yet, we’re doing what we love, and we have goals in mind that we are striving for. That’s how a dream is. On good days, it will motivate you, so you don’t have to motivate yourself.

Encouragement to Not Give Up

One of the verses that has become a huge encouragement to me is Micah 7:7.

But me, I’m not giving up. I’m sticking around to see what God will do. I’m waiting for God to make things right. I’m counting on God to listen to me. Micah 7:7 MSG

Too many times we give up on our dreams, give up on seeing God do something amazing with our lives for one simple reason. We don’t stick with it long enough to see the dream come to fruition. It’s not enough to start something, we have to stick with it.

Keep Pursuing Your Dream

Let me take it a step further. Have you tried your hand at a dream and it failed? Have you seen your dreams crash and burn and then given up on them? It’s really easy to look around and see everybody that’s doing a better job than you. I get it. Believe me!

There are very few people who have actually become a success overnight. It takes hard work and discipline and sticking with it to become successful.

Jim Rohn says,

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”

Jim Rohn

If we want to keep our dream alive, we need to put some habits into practice and stick with them. It’s not enough just to pursue our dream, we need to develop the habits and practices to keep that dream alive.

Five Tips to Help You Not Give Up on Your Dream

  1. Get up early. Entrepreneurs know that successful people get up early. The best book recommendation for this is The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.
  2. Learn to find extra pockets of time throughout your day. If you are just starting to pursue your dream, chances are you are still busy full-time with other work. Maybe it’s a full-time job, parenting, homeschooling, or something else. Most of us don’t have time to focus one hundred percent of our time on our dream. Because of that, we have to learn to get creative and find pockets of time throughout our day. Jessica Turner calls these the fringe hours. Her book The Fringe Hours is a must-read.
  3. Refuse to listen to negativity. There will always be people who don’t like your particular business or product. We have to choose not to listen to that negativity and let it discourage us. We need to choose to ignore criticism or it will cripple us from moving forward. If there is something we can learn and change from the criticism, then do so. Otherwise, ignore it and move forward.
  4. Remember why it is you started. Whether you started because you need extra income, you want to help people, or because you just love your product and want to share it with the world, don’t forget why it is you started.
  5. Picture your success. Form in your mind’s eye what success looks like to you. Then keep that image before you, especially on the days you want to give up. We have to have something that motivates us to keep going.

Other Resources

If this post got you thinking about wanting to start something of your own, but you’re not sure what, Money-Making Mom and Fringe Hours are both great books to get you started. They are both loaded with ideas.