The Sweet Life On A Budget

  Last year's word was Pragmatic. This word has served us well this year.     As our families' schedules intensified and diminished our free time, we made more pragmatic choices throughout the year to help manage all of our obligations.  However, this did not feed our souls.  We recognize that slowing down and living a simply abundant life will elevate our quality of life, which we are craving.       Our family’s schedule will continue to intensify, limiting free time and elevating our stress levels in the upcoming year.  This makes it extremely important to guard our time and carefully choose what we do and how we interact with our world.        Therefore, this year I am claiming my phrase of the year to be “simple abundance”.   We will simplify our lifestyle while living a luxuriously abundant life.  This will take careful planning and eliminating activities and tasks that do not benefi...

  I pick a Word in January each year that I find inspiring for the new year.    This year I picked the word Pragmatic because making choices based on a realistic situation assessment produces more positive results than choices based on what you want to happen.   It is great to have dreams, but they are only dreams until you break them down and devise a plan to achieve them.  Over the year, I will slow down my decision-making and remove myself from life drama.     I will take steps to remove myself from the work and church drama by not getting involved in as many issues.   I will carefully select the causes I will support and get involved in.      As part of embracing the word “pragmatic”, I will study stoic philosophies and logical decision-making.    This will be a process, and strengthen over the next year.  In addition, I have been dreaming about getting another certification but have moved slowly to complete ...