Jar Full of Rocks

Alrighty, here we go with bite #3.  Hopefully it will go better than the last bite!!

Eat Your Frog

What!?  First we are eating elephants and now frogs!?!?  Just like the elephant, the frog is a metaphor.

“Eat a live frog every morning,
and nothing worse will happen
to you the rest of the day.”
~Mark Twain 

So, this week’s bite is to make your daily to-do list (do your best, we will learn how to make these lists later), and pick the thing that you will least enjoy doing and get that done first.  Your day can only get better from that point on.

Tsh makes a point to tell us that eating our frog should NOT be part of our morning routine (bite #2).

I’m hoping that chewing and eating this bite will help me finally swallow the last bite!

What’s your frog??

If this is your first time here and you want to know what our bites are all about, go to the ‘Eat Your Personal Elephant in a Year‘ post.

How did you all do with your second bite?

I bombed it miserably.  I officially hate the morning and getting a morning routine was next to impossible this past week.  Each day, my morning pretty much looked like this: **alarm**, hit the snooze, **alarm**, moan, roll out of bed, feed children, get to school on time.

So, unless hitting the snooze and moaning count as being part of a morning routine, this is something I am going to have to come back to and work on.

I guess eating the proverbial elephant is alot like eating steak.  Sometimes you get a tough bite and have to chew on it for a little while.  So I’m going to keep on chewing on our second bite and move on.

How’d you do?

If you missed the introduction to my year long challenge, go to this post.

Now that we’ve got a new and shiny family purpose statement, let’s put it to good use, shall we?  It’s time for our second bite!

Establish a morning routine

I’m not going to lie.  This is going to be a hard one for me.  I absolutely loathe getting out of bed in the morning.  The alarm goes off and I roll over and hit the snooze a few too many times before realizing that I need to somehow feed, dress, teeth brush, face wash, and hair style the kids in 45 minutes or less.  It’s chaotic, it’s stressful, and it is certainly not the right way to start the day.

So, how do we come up with a morning routine?  What do we put in a morning routine? Tsh says to “pick the things that fuel you the most, and faithfully treat yourself to those things, in the same order, every day.  Choose five things, and plan to do them first thing in the morning.”

Here are some ideas that Tsh gives:

• Take a shower
• Pray
• Exercise
• Drink a glass of water
• Stretch
• Make your bed
• Read your Bible
• Meditate
• Journal
• Take vitamins
• Read encouraging quotes or a devotional
• Review your family purpose statement
• Listen to a particular song
• Sit outside for a few minutes with a cup of coffee
• Dump your brain (an upcoming bite)

The number one rule is to make sure these five things focus on you.  Don’t check your email or Twitter, don’t throw a load of laundry into the washer, and don’t pack the kids’ lunches.  First do these few things that will feed your soul.

We’ll recap this bite on Sunday.  Have a great week!!

Well, how did you do with the first bite of your personal elephant?  Did you get far on your family’s purpose statement??

The opening sentence for our’s will most likely be tweaked a little bit, but the “meat” of the purpose statement will not change.  I do feel that the things we chose are both timeless and not too general.  So, here it is:

We believe that our purpose as a family is to live to the fullest potential that God has given to us.  We will accomplish this by:

• Striving to grow in God’s likeness
• Making family togetherness a priority
• Living with a direction
• Being the light to those around us
• Having a welcoming home full of love, joy, peace, and contentment
• Being financially responsible
• Living simply
• Living healthy lives
• Being good stewards of God’s creation

I took each family value above and broke it down into what it means to us right now.  The values themselves will probably remain the same, but the interpretation of each value may change a little as our kids grow older or things change in our lives.  Here is what each value means to us right now:

Striving to grow in God’s likeness

• Raise up Godly children
• Strive to spend time with God daily
• Memorize God’s Word both individually and as a family
• Serve others

Making family togetherness a priority

• Communication
• Time management
• Meal times together
• Bible reading/memorization as a family

Living with a direction

• daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and lifetime plans
• daily routines
• meal plans

Being a light to those around us

• Show God in our actions
• Invite neighbors over once a year
• ‘See a need, fill a need’

Having a welcoming home full of love, joy, peace, and contentment

• A house that is clean enough to have people over on a whim
• Use gentle words and tones
• Uncluttered
• Simple

Being financially responsible

• Debt-free
• Have an emergency fund
• Give freely
• Educate the kids on financial responsibility (bill paying, budgeting, etc)

Living simply

• Uncluttered
• Enjoy what we have
• Quality over quantity
• Care for what we have

Living healthy lives

• Limit eating out
• Grow some of our food
• Limit processed foods
• Be active at least once a day

Being good stewards of God’s creation

• Enjoy God’s creation outside as much as possible
• Be good stewards of the environment
• Cultivate food and flower gardens

Now that we have a family purpose statement, it will be alot easier to figure out other steps in the elephant eating process.

I’ve decided to have a larger canvas made with our family purpose statement so that it can hang in a prominent place in our home.  I’ll be sure to share a picture whenever I get that done.

Feel free to share your family purpose statement in the comment section below.

I just found out that (in) courage is giving away 10 copies of Tsh Oxenreider’s e-book “One Bite at a Time”!  Go to (in)courage and enter to win!!

Pssst!  If you want to just buy the book, click on the (in)courage link above and then scroll down to the bottom of the post…there is a coupon code for a dollar off, making the e-book just $4!!!  The coupon code is good until January 10th.