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You know the concept of "both, and?" It's something I talk with clients a lot about, but it's also something I live. Things can be hard and good at the same time. Things can be bitter and sweet at the same time. Things can be, well, things can be rough sometimes, and yet they can still be something that God is using in our lives for good. Romans 8:28 says that all things work together for good. To those who love God and are called according to his purpose, and that is a promise. That is a truth, and sometimes that's hard to see.

Sometimes life is just clipping along wonderfully, and things are great. And sometimes there are just things, just things: job stressors, medical issues, bills, seasonal affective disorder, winter. Some people love winter. Some people love spring. It's "both, and." It can both be great and be Christmas time and be joyful, and it can be hard, emotional, stressful, sad, glorious, wonderful, fabulous, exciting. It can be "both, and."

I want to give you permission to just give yourself permission. You don't need my permission, but if you need a permission slip to give yourself permission, to be okay with "both, and" which doesn't mean you love the feelings that aren't pleasant or that the stressors are fabulous, but the "both, and" can sometimes make things a bit more manageable. It's like an acceptance that, okay, right now, there's more than one thing that I'm feeling, and there's more than one thing that is contributing to this. We have physical bodies. We have relationships. We have things we have to work towards, or performances, maybe, that you're giving for the holidays or hosting. There's a lot that goes into this time of year, but honestly, there's a lot that goes into being a human, and it's a "both, and" experience as a human. We all want the good stuff, and sometimes the way we appreciate the good stuff is because we've been through the bad, so we know how good the good is, and we want to hold on to that.

I want to just give you that reframe; that good is coming. Good is God. Good is what we can trust in. If it's not good, it's not over yet. We can see good in the land of the living, and also on the other side, when we get to heaven, we can see good there. So, either way, it turns out good for us. So, if it's not good, good still coming. The story is not over yet.

Now, today, my husband and I made a decision, because as much as we have a lot of blessings that we're thrilled about and a lot of things that are going well for us, it's also been a little bit stressful. We've each had a bunch of different things that are, like, nothing life shattering, but just enough things in different areas that are making the "both, and" something very apparent right now, and we're trying to embrace the really good. But we also know that, yeah, there have been some really stressful stressors.

So, I want to play a game with you and encourage you to maybe play a game with us. The game we are playing is basically the Pollyanna game. The Pollyanna game, if, you know, the old Disney movie, is where Haley Mills' character is so positive, like, she even breaks her legs and she's like, still, everything turns out positive for her.

So, I said to my husband this morning, "What if we just don't say anything negative today? What if we don't do any negative sounds? We don't say anything negative. We just focus on the positive, turn things towards good, and just put that energy out there, right. And just say good things and speak joy, speak light, speak energy."

This past weekend I was speaking a lot of, "Oh, I'm exhausted," and I decided today to say, " Well, it's okay because I'm getting my energy back." That type of thing. That's not exactly what happened this morning, but that's the kind of reframe that I'm giving you as an example. I'm still working on getting my energy back. So, it may not be something that I am fully feeling, but it is something that I feel a whole lot more when I speak it in truth and faith and in a good, positive way rather than, "oh, my gosh, I think I'm dying. I don't have any energy to get out of bed." It's a lot better to go, "You know what? I've gotten some really good rest because I've allowed myself to take that time and just have some good snuggle downtime. And I'm taking care of myself and I'm going to get back to 100% even better, 2024. I'm going to be really healthy because I'm doing the right things now and I know everything's going to be energized and be better." That gives me a lot more oomph than focusing on I don't feel so good there.

When I stood up, I was wearing these shoes for Christmas service last night and they kind of hurt my legs. It's a lot better to say, "Wow. Christmas service last night was amazing. We had a great time. It was our middle child, our 22-year-old daughter, my husband, and myself, and we went to Christmas Eve service, even though it wasn't Christmas Eve. It was wonderful and it was beautiful. We did candlelight singing of 'Silent Night,' and it was just joyful. Then we went out to eat, and we had great time together!"

Now, I could have been, "Oh, my other kids aren't here. My son's doing some stuff with his fiancé's family. My daughter is with some friends. My other daughter is with some friends on a trip right now." It was us and one of our kids, and it was wonderful. It made possible for our middle kid to have some only child time, even though she's an adult. We had a really great time. In fact, we recorded a jokes episode for Christmas, corny jokes that's coming up on Thursday that you may want to tune in for.

If you have kids, young kids especially, you may want to have them listen in because there's just a bunch of cute corny jokes that we just share. We did this last year, and this year, I wanted to do it again. So, Thursday, you can get some happy, corny jokes if you would like to. We did that after the church service, and then we had a nice dinner and such. I could have been, "oh, but the other kids aren't here. Oh, but I miss them." which are true. They weren't there, and I do miss them when they're not here, but that doesn't mean I wasn't enjoying fully the time we had with our other daughter and fully the experience and fully the blessings and what that made possible. It made possible for us to just focus on her and for us to really hear her and for us to all have a really nice memory building time together.

Whether it's everyday life or special holiday seasons, where there is a lot going on, whether you're going through a stressful time in life, you can choose what energy you bring to it. Sometimes we forget that. Sometimes we're like, oh, this is just really hard, and that may be very, very true, but if you play the Pollyanna game, it could be, "This is really hard, but what does this make possible? But what will we get here that we didn't otherwise?"

So maybe you're making Christmas dinner, and you burn the green bean casserole. Hey, what a great memory. Remember the year that mom burned the green bean casserole, and the fire department came? Right? Or, oh, wow, I did a horrible job on wrapping these gifts. But you know what? It's the thought that counts, and I never said I was an artist, and I hope you like it anyhow. And maybe it gives you some laughs, because I really don't do so hot at how I wrap things, and they're kind of comical looking, right? So maybe it's just okay.

Maybe everything has a silver lining, or many things have a silver lining. And I think that it's up to us to look for the silver lining, to speak the silver lining, to be energized by the hope and the silver lining of knowing that if it's not good, it's not over, that we can find humor and we can find good things, and we can appreciate simply by refining our focus on what's good, pure, lovely, and true.

So, while I may be tired today, I'm excited, because today I happen to have the day off to relax or to work or to clear my head and pray it's okay to put energy out there, take care of yourself, and realize that in the "both, and," we still have a choice of where we focus, what we speak and how we let the positive energy be a light instead of letting the darkness be the focus. It doesn't mean that there aren't some shades of darkness; it means that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

So, if you want to play the Pollyanna game with my husband and me today, or through the Christmas season or for as long as you like, that's what we're doing right now. If I end up burning something or don't get enough of something for the holidays, for the company that's coming or whatever, it's no big deal. No one's going to remember next year at this time anyhow, unless it's a great memory. Like I burned the green bean casserole!

Now, we talked in the last episode about kind of reflecting back before we think about our new year's resolutions and our goals and the things that we're going to do. Today we're going to actually talk about goals. In that vein, I want to explain that there is something called SMART goals, and you may have heard of them, SMART. 

Each letter has a word for which it stands: 

S=Specific

M=Measurable

A=Achievable

R=Relevant

T=Timely

Now, there are sometimes variations of those words, but those are basically it. If you take each one, they can help you have good goal setting.

"Specific" means being as detailed as possible. You want to be as detailed as possible with everything in there that can tell you so specifically and succinctly what the actual goal is that you're trying to achieve. So, you might want to make a car payment and you're trying to figure out how to have that much money. You wouldn't just say, I'm going to make my car payment. You would say, I am going to raise $500 by the end of the month so that I can pay the car payment. You want it to be as specific as possible. You may even want to say how you're going to raise it by increasing my work hours, 3 hours a week. Then you really have something to sink your teeth into as you take action.

"Measurable" is something that says, basically, here is how I will know when I get there. If you look at the goal that we just said it would be, did I make the $500 by the end of the month to make the payment?

"Achievable" is something that if you're making minimum wage and you're only able to get an hour a week, that's not going to be achievable.

Therefore, it's not very "relevant" or realistic because it's not going to be able to help you get that goal very easily because we need to make things doable based on where we are in time and the circumstances that we're in.

Then "timely" is the last one, which is where we already threw that into the specifics and that timely is end of the month...maybe January 30th or 31st. We want to make sure we have all of those elements in there.

Now, that's a pretty standard way to do some goal setting, but what I like to do with it is change it a little bit to give it a little more power.

With specific, I try to throw all those goodies in there like I just shared, but then I like to also look at what is needed. What do I need? Is it possible for me to do this? What do I need to be able to achieve this? For instance, you don't have a job, then you need to get a job first, right. It's very important to have the tools that you need to be able to do it.

Another question I like to throw in there is what could go wrong so that we could plan for things that might not be foreseen that easily when we're making these goals. What could go wrong is maybe the boss is shutting down for the whole month of January because they're renovating the shop or changing processes at work, so you're not going to get that many hours. 

So, what do I need? What could go wrong and what will I do? Go back and say, okay, let's rework this goal for making allowances for the things that might come in or the things that I don't have access to that will allow me to realistically hit this goal and make it something doable.

To go back and revisit the goals is the really big piece. You don't want to just say, okay, I didn't hit that goal. Like so many people this time of year, make a goal of getting in shape or losing weight, and those are fine goals. Be more specific about them, such as I will lose five pounds by working out three days a week for 15 minutes at a time walking on my treadmill at home. Now, if you don't have a treadmill, then that's a need and that's not going to work, but if you do, you put that all together.

But let's say that you're looking at, is this working or not? Before you give up, you may want to say, well, what's not working about this goal? Okay, well, I have it in my schedule that I'm going to do it at 6 every morning, but I actually don't wake up until 7. Well, then you need to rework the goal.

The big thing is to keep the goal front and center in writing, revisit it and tweak it as necessary. Because as things come up that you weren't aware of, rather than chuck the goal, find out what got in the way so that you can revise it. Revamp it so that it does work for you. Instead of trying to get on the treadmill at 6 when you don't wake up till 7, either go to bed earlier the night before so that you can get up and do it at 6 or put the time you're going on the treadmill later in the day.

Sometimes you might need to rearrange when things happen. You might need to tweak other things in your life to make the specifics possible. When you really look at it and ask yourself what is working, what isn't and what will I do now? It helps you not to throw out the overall goal because the goal is likely something very good for you to try to achieve. Don't throw out the goal. Figure out where in the process you're going off track and what you need to revise. All right, that's it for today. I hope you have fun looking towards the new year and designing your goals. Go take on the day!