Several months back I got the grand idea to start a weekly wrap-up style post to share bits and pieces of my daily life and progress on my major goals for the year. I loved the idea of doing a weekly wrap up, but I’ve realized that doing it in a weekly format just doesn’t work well for me. So, I’m taking the same concept and rolling it into a new monthly wrap up instead!
(If you’re curious, you can check out my previous weekly wrap-ups here and here.)
The weekly wrap-ups were only supposed to be a once in a while kind of thing, but I’m hoping these new monthly wrap-ups become a regular feature that I put together each month. We’ll see how it goes! Be sure to let me know your thoughts on these posts so I know if they are helpful or interesting to you.
June was a bit of a rough month for me. I’m working on several different things and I feel like I have a lot of balls spinning in the air that I’m trying to juggle. I don’t know that I’ve been balancing everything as well as I like, but I’m making baby steps of progress toward my goals.
What I’m Learning
I’ve started to dedicate a couple pages in my bullet journal each month to jot down things I’m learning. These might be quotes I’ve read in a book, heard on a podcast, or even things I’ve felt God impressing upon my heart throughout my day. It has been fun to take note of these things. Here are some of the things I’ve learned this month. These are written as I’ve jotted them down, so they may not be perfect sentences or even fully developed thoughts, but I hope they speak to you in some way.
- Fear and love are enemies and cannot coexist in the same person, relationship, etc. Perfect love drives out fear. Punishment = fear. Scared people show you their worst, loved people show you their best. (Ideas discovered in the book Keep Your Love On by Danny Silk)
- The enemy of excellence is isolation.
- “I do not participate in disrespectful conversations.” (Also an idea from Keep Your Love On that I want to implement into our family conversations. Anyone can say this to anyone at any time they feel disrespected in a conversation. Both parents and children alike struggle with speaking respectfully at times in our house.)
- My thoughts, feelings, and needs are valuable and important and so are other people’s. There is no human better than another. We are all humans – equal in value. (I saw this idea several times this month in different ways.)
- Fear is not the only enemy of change, complacency is also dangerous. “The distance between comfortable and comatose is surprisingly short.” “Fear is not a dragon to be slain once, it is an ocean to be swum daily.” (Ideas from Jon Acuff in his book Do Over.)
- The Bible does not attempt to explain the cause or reasons for suffering. Suffering certainly exists, but the goal of scripture seems to be an attempt to show what God is doing because of evil and suffering. (I’ve been learning to really look at scripture for what it is trying to say/answer, not for what I’m needing to know. The Bible doesn’t attempt to answer every question we raise, so it’s important to study the Bible based on what it is actually saying, not on what we want it to say.)
- Jesus didn’t talk about a world full of evil that we need to be rescued from. He created a chance for redemption. God’s created world is good! Jesus came not to rescue us from a bad world but to redeem His creation and make it good again. The gospel is not freedom from this evil world, the gospel is the message that the kingdom of God has arrived to set things right again.
- You teach people how to treat you by the way you treat yourself (can I get an Amen?)
- “I believe in my ability to get this result, no matter how long it takes, how many times I fail, or what I need to learn.” (Some good ole positive thinking and self-talk from the amazing Brooke Castillo).
- The worst thing that can happen to you is always an emotion. You can handle any emotion. So you can handle anything. (Also from Brooke Castillo.)
- Don’t fake it til you make it, believe it til you become it. (Jeff Goins talking about his new book Real Artists Don’t Starve).
- My heart is satisfied. (this was my motto for an entire week this month when I was feeling restless and frustrated for no good reason.)
- The second you act like you’ve arrived, your willingness to work hard leaves. (I think this was also a Jon Acuff thought.)
- Empathy = understanding someone else’s needs + acting to fix them. It doesn’t actually help anyone just to understand someone else’s needs. Nor is it helpful to try to fix needs you don’t truly understand. To really be empathetic you must have both. (from Jon Acuff in Do Over).
Things I Accomplished This Month
If you’d like to read about the goals and habits I set for myself this year, you can check them out in this post.
Physical
I ran a total of 61.2 miles this month. June is notoriously a low mileage month for me. I’m not entirely sure why. I think I’m just usually quite busy and working to adjust to the summer heat makes me unmotivated to put in a whole lot of miles. I didn’t have a goal this month (other than to run daily) and I’m not in major training mode, so this was plenty good.
I have a goal of working to be able to do 50 full pushups in a row by the end of the year. I’m talking the “manly” no knees variety. I’m adding 5 pushups a month. I try to do my monthly number of pushups each day. I miss a few days here and there, but doing it most days helps me build up the strength and consistency. I can now do 25 pushups in a row! For July, the goal will now be 30.
This month I ran the Sunburst half marathon. My husband was also running and found me on the course around mile 6. We decided to run together for a while. I had mentioned to him that I have been wanting to finish a race together someday. We are usually trying to beat each other, but I thought it would be romantic to finish together holding hands. Around mile 10 of this race, my husband started getting really bad leg cramps. This is something he struggles with a lot, especially during the longer races. He was hoping to be able to walk (and drink) it out, but it wasn’t happening. So we ended up walking most of the last 3 miles of the race together. It was nice to just relax and enjoy each other’s company. But I completely forgot about my “finish holding hands” dream so we finished next to each other, but no romantic displays of love. 🙂
Spiritual
I keep track of the days I have an actual quiet time/devotional time each month. If I don’t track the things I’m trying to develop as habits then it’s hard to know if they are actually becoming a habit. I’m happy to say that I had my devotional time for 28 out of the 30 days in June! I only missed on the days we were traveling away from home.
Intellectual
I started this year reading a lot and then I took a bit of a break to try to focus on other things, but I’ve learned that I just love reading too much to put it off altogether. This month I finished 3 books.
The Boxcar Children (I’ve restarted listening to audiobooks in the car with my kids, so we started with this one and they loved it. This was one of my favorite series as a kid, so it’s fun to go through them again with my own children.)
Also, my one thing for the #WMBStreakChallenge was to write at least 500 words every single day. I’m proud to say I made it. I have tried so many times to write every day, but have always struggled. It feels so good to have finally found success with this goal. I’ll be continuing to write each weekday now that the streak is over, but I’ll give myself the weekends off (and likely holidays and vacation days).
Looking Ahead
Physical
I have no races scheduled this month and I’m very excited about that! I ran a lot of races already this year and my husband ran many of them with me. Our “race budget” was getting a little painful. I am planning to do another half at the end of August, so I’ll be ramping my training back up to half marathon levels, but otherwise, I’m taking it pretty easy this month.
I mentioned before that I’m working to get to 30 pushups in a row by the end of July. I’m also hoping to get back to working on my pull-up strength. In January I broke one of my toes trying to do a pull-up, so I’ve been a bit scared to get back into it (Yes, I know that breaking a toe doing a pull-up takes some real talent in the clumsiness department.)
I also had a goal of doing some heavy weight training with squats and deadlifts this year. For now, I’ve put that goal on hold as I realized I’m not confident enough to lift heavy without a spotter and I actually don’t like working out with other people around (it’s my me time!). I’m working on coming up with a different strength training plan that doesn’t involve lifting heavy, something that fits my interests a little more.
Intellectual
My goal is to read 4 books this month. I’ve already finished two and I’m close to finishing three others so I think I’ll far surpass this one. Summers are made for reading I guess.
Environmental
“Environmental” just means my surroundings when I’m talking about my goals, which usually just relates to some form of keeping my house clean, which is a struggle for me. This month my goal is to go to bed with a spotless kitchen at least 15 times. This might sound ridiculously easy to most of you, but it is a struggle for me. I love waking up to a clean kitchen but I also love relaxing with my kids after a long day of work and cooking, so we usually don’t clean up well after dinner. I’m really trying to break that habit and spend a few minutes each night cleaning up the kitchen instead of saving that task for the next morning.
Financial
My husband and I are going on a little vacation at the end of the month for our 10th Anniversary! I am so excited. We’ll be spending a few days at a bed and breakfast on Mackinac Island up in Michigan while our kids stay at their grandparent’s house (my in-laws). I anticipate that this will be a really fun trip for us, we’ll be bringing our bikes so our plan is to go on daily runs, hikes, and bike rides to explore the island. And the goal is to make this a cash trip. We are getting close to paying off the last bit of our credit card debt, so I’m not trying to add to it. I’ve been working hard to add to our vacation category in our YNAB budget for a while and I’m not expecting this to be an expensive trip, so we should be fine with this goal.
What about you?
What did your learn or accomplish during the month of June? Are you making progress toward your goals? What are you aiming to complete this month? Let me know in the comments!
Join the discussion!