How do you make worthwhile year goals happen? I am excited to share one of the most life-changing practices for your marriage. Learning how to dream together again! Then adding in powerful ways to make progress towards those worthwhile dreams and goals you make together. You are going to walk away from this post knowing how to make yearly goals for a marriage that is intentional on purpose and know how to actually make them happen.
How to Actually Make Your Yearly Marriage Goals Happen
Why is no one talking about this? With 50% of all adults married, why are we not talking about taking our personal goals and then syncing them together to get more done as a team? Making worthwhile yearly marriage goals as a couple could be one of the best strengtheners for your marriage this year. This is why I am fired up to share the life changing practice of setting goals as a couple so you can have a marriage on purpose.
This practice has helped my husband and I do BIG HARD things in our marriage like pay off 80K in 2.5 years while we had 3 small kids, renovate our house and sell it for a 3 figure profit, and do a major career change as we had our fourth child. More than all of these big goals, setting aside time to create the vision and values for our family has been our true north as we try to intentionally parent our kids and run our homeschool.
I want the same thing for you! To have stories of how you ran after hard things, all the while knowing who you are as a couple and what you are trying to build as a family.
We can spend all this time making goals, but one common pitfall is not keeping the goals in front of us. Then come February, we can’t even remember what we wanted to do. I am going to share with you key strategies for ACTUALLY making progress on your marriage goals. In order to do that we are going to need to make realistic marriage goals and then a hack for remembering your goals.
How to Set Realistic Yearly Marriage Goals
In order to feel like we are making progress on our goals in marriage we need to set realistic goals. It is very true that many people overestimate what they can do in one year, but underestimate what they could get done in 10 years.
I truly believe that is because you can’t skip the law of process. In the famous book 21 Laws of Leadership John Maxwell talks about the law of process. No one can skip the law of process and have long term success. I think that is because we have to become the kind of people who can accomplish big goals and transform into that person that can accomplish the goals we set. I also think it is because we need time to develop the character in ourselves that can manage the results of the big goal we are trying to set out to do.
Who You Are Goals
So who do you want to be in one year? In order to accomplish the goals you want to reach in 1, 5 or even 10 years, who do you need to start becoming to make those goals happen? Would your goal require you to be consistent? Or reliable to gain the trust of others? Then one goal could be simply flexing the character muscle of having to be consistent.
My husband and I are currently doing the 75 Hard Challenge for that reason. This means everyday we are working out 2x a day for 45 minutes and one of those has to be outside and a couple of other things. If we miss one of things on the list, we have to start over.
75 Hard Challenge can seem like a purely physical goal, but really it is a mental toughness lab that is slowly building consistency and grit. I know that I need to grow in the area of consistency and personal discipline, so doing something hard like this challenge is helping me become a more consistent and reliable person.
What challenge can you take on this year that will require you to build out a new part of your character to accomplish it? Answering this question is the best way to start tackling realistic yearly marriage goals
Having a Marriage on Purpose
It is extremely common to float through life and especially marriage letting life just happen to us. I know that you want more than a mediocre life and marriage. This is going to require lots of intentionality. I am going to walk you through some exercises you can do in the post that will help you both figure out not only where you want to go, but also the vision and the values you want to bring to your relationship and family.
Getting More Done as a Couple This Year
I love this analogy about horses pulling weight to illustrate WHY setting yearly marriage goals together can be so powerful. If you take one Belgian draft horse, it can pull around 8,000 pounds. So you would expect that two quarter horses could pull 16,000 pounds, BUT they actually pull around 22,000-24,000. And then if you train those horses to work as a team, the 2 horses can pull around 32,000 pounds.
This is why setting yearly marriage goals as a couple is going to be so powerful. You are truly going to get so much more together if you are pulling weight together in the same direction.
Finding Time to Plan as a Couple Every Year
Try to get away for this planning time if you can. We went away for a couple of nights and got a cheap airbnb in a small mountain town so that we could take some time to plan. We try to do this sometime in December or January, but honestly anytime is a good time. Don’t just wait to get a vision for your life because you are reading this in July. Just plan through the remainder of the year.
Another idea is to get a babysitter for a day or a long evening and try to talk through some of these topics. Some yearly marriage goals planning time is certainly better than none. And this is a new habit you are flexing and building.
Some of our getaways have not been that great, but keep going. If you had 10 marriage goal planning sessions over 10 year period, 4-5 will be amazing and the rest will probably just be ok or even not so great. But the 4-5 that are amazing will be worth all the effort. So keep going!
Ideas for What to Do When Planning Yearly Marriage Goals
Looking Back Over the Past Year:
This section is where you reflect on the past year. This is done in 2 ways: remember high points over the past year and take a marriage assessment.
Looking Back with Gratitude
First, taking time and writing down some highlights from the previous year really helps you see how God has blessed you. Remember the time when someone gifted you with a trip or paid for your dinner. Remember when someone came over unexpectedly and provided lunch and watched your kids while letting you get a quick nap. These can be large, or very small.
One secret we use is to have a section in our weekly meeting where we list high points and blessings from the previous week. That way when we go to reflect, we have a pretty long list to draw from. For more on this meeting, see the “Weekly Marriage Meeting” section. Do not just glance over this, take some serious time to reflect and list out your blessings.
Take a Marriage Assessment
Next, take a marriage assessment to see where you are as a couple and individual. There are plenty out there, but here is a free one you can take. Make sure you take this separately and do not influence each other’s answers. You want to be very honest as this is a time to clearly communicate with each other. The assessment does not have to be long, but you do want it to touch on the main areas of your marriage (social life, finances, and parenting to name a few).
When each person is completed, take time to go through each section and compare each other’s answers. During this time, you need to make sure you have a posture of receiving and not to be offendable. If we are hyper critical or defensive this could cause your spouse to shut down, thus limiting the effectiveness of the exercise. When you have gone through each section, make notes on where you are really aligned and where you want to improve. This will give you some easy goals for the next year.
Looking Forward and Dreaming About Long-Term Goals
Looking forward and dreaming a bit is one of the most fun parts of this whole experience. This can also be one of the most vulnerable parts. For that reason I think it is important to really allow the space to talk about what may seem unattainable and not cut down each other’s dreams. This is going beyond just yearly marriage goals, this is about lifetime marriage goals.
Avoid Dream Slaying
My husband and I have a name for being someone who crushes dreams while they are simply in the brainstorming phase: Dream Slayer. We make this horse riding sound and do a Z formation slashing motion in the area and say…”Dream Slayer!” haha for real though, this can be one of the most disheartening feelings with your spouse. There are only a handful of people we can all of ourselves with and part of bearing your whole soul with someone is being vulnerable enough to share dreams.
So be gentle with one another and have fun and think BIG! It needs to be slightly embarrassing or the dream isn’t big enough. What dreams resonate between the two of you? Write everything down you get from this brainstorm session. And this is fun just to do at the end of the day over a glass of wine by the fire, this isn’t a business meeting, this is a time to use the creative part of your brain and think outside the box.
One year when we went away we thought, wouldn’t it be amazing to pay off the rest of our debt this year. We still had 35K in debt. This was one the largest yearly marriage goals we have ever set! But we worked backwards with an excel sheet and figured out how much money per paycheck we would have to pay. Not only did we do it in a year, but we did it 3 months early! And later went on to do a debt free scream on the Dave Ramsey Show.
Thinking About Your Legacy: Writing Your Eulogy
Ok, don’t click out of this post haha. I know this sounds so odd. Trust me, writing your Eulogy before you write your 10, 5, and 1 year goals is very helpful. And this is not what people will read at your actual funeral. This is what you hope people would be able to say about you at the end of your life. We learned this practice from the book Hero on a Mission.
It is the completion of the story you and I are living. It is best to keep it one page or less, but best to keep it 3 short paragraphs. The idea is for you to read your Eulogy multiple times a week.
Here is the KEY: Laminate it and lay it by your daily reading. For me it is tucked into my journal and is by my Bible in the morning. At the end of my time journaling and reading my Bible I take 2 minutes and read my Eulogy. This reminds me of who I am trying to become.
This is part of my Eulogy I read 3-4 times a week. I will continue to edit my Eulogy over the years as the story changes and as I find more concise ways to write, but this is part of where I am at now.
Part of My Current Eulogy:
Making 1, 5, and 10 Yearly Marriage Goals
First we used the free sheets from Hero on a Mission. Then we snapshotted them, saved them as a PDF and then typed on the sheets so that we could put them in a digital yearly file.
We went away to a little coffee shop while on our getaway and sat for 3 hours and knocked these sheets out. It actually took a lot of thought, but it was a really fun practice.
It helps a TON to write your eulogy first, then to write you 10 years, then your 5 years and then your 1 year goals or plan. The Eulogy feels like looking at a country on a map, then zooming in to a state, then a town and then an address. But I think it is harder to start with a 1 year plan without knowing the part they play in the whole.
It will make you giddy to realize many of your BIG goals are possible, but it will take TIME and intention each day. If there is movement towards those goals daily and weekly, the compound interest of time is going to work for us, not against us.
How to Keep Yearly Marriage Goals Realistic for Today
After you have looked back with gratitude, wrote your eulogy aka your legacy goals, made you 1, 5, and 10 years goals it will be time to bring it all back to the present moment. This may feel a little overwhelming and really it should just a bit.
You are not yet currently the person that can make all these goals and aspirations happen, but you can become that little by little.
So this is where the real work begins. What are the tiny steps you need to take to make the 1 year goals a job that is in progress. Who do you need to become to make these goals happen?
If you both want to run a half marathon by the end of the year, but you all currently don’t even run. First you both need to be people who run and even before that walks frequently.
Example of How to Break Down Goals
So breaking that goal down, it could be that if you aren’t running a lot you could walk 45 minutes every day of January rain or shine. Then in February you could run 10 minutes of your 45 minute walk everyday. In March, you could run 15 minutes of your 1 hour walk per day.
On and on…the progression may feel painfully slow, but as you slowly increase your running time while you slowly increase your walking time. You are becoming the person who consistently runs. And half-marathoners think of themselves as consistently runners. That is who they are, so running road races is what they do.
Even better though, if you both make the commitment to walk 45 minutes a day either together or separate, there is a health pressure there to keep your word not only to yourself, but also to the other person. And if your spouse gives up, you keep going. They may need to continue to see its possible in order to keep going.
Ultimately though we can’t make our spouse reach the goal, we can only control ourselves. There will be times in your marriage that your spouse challenges you, so be that for your spouse and keep going.
Ultimately though we can’t make our spouse reach the goal, we can only control ourselves.
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Weekly Marriage Meeting Keeps Us On Track
If the yearly team meeting is what gets us on the same path, the weekly marriage meeting keeps us on track. Let me be honest with you, this meeting is one of the highlights each and every week. This meeting will help you stay aligned as a team and help you reach your yearly goals. It is a family business meeting. That’s right, as a family, couple, or even single, you are a “business.”
You have income, expenses, and various decisions to make that radically alter your future. To succeed, you must run your “business” successfully. The key we have found out is to start the meeting on the right foot. For us it is a marriage devotional. This helps you zone into the meeting and resets your feelings toward your spouse. From there, the meeting covers a variety of topics from finances, checking in on last weeks goals, remembering high points and low points from the week, planning your upcoming week (make sure there is a date night!), and finally setting new goals for the next week.
This is not a meeting for the kids to participate in. This meeting is about alignment with your spouse and pulling together as a team. Here is our Weekly Marriage Meeting guide for you to download with instructions!
Planning a Yearly Marriage Getaway
Plan a trip away and consider getting an airbnb with a little kitchen. Doing some planning before you go will help a lot. Plan some food to eat in, so you can rest and not waste tons of precious time going out to eat. This trip will be a mostly stay-in kind of trip, so packing a cooler of food will help a lot. Even making some meals beforehand will help it feel more like a vacation once you get there.
Print all the sheets you want to go through or make sure you both bring a computer. We used the sheets from www.heroonamission.com
Then find ways to take breaks between filling out the sheets to go for a walk, sleep, read or just enjoy each other. It can’t be business the whole time.
Top Tips for Keep Getaway Fun and Productive
- Prepare! Do your homework on what you will need to make the get-a-way or time together as restful/ productive as possible. This could be packing plenty of snacks, tea, or anything that helps your settle into a place.
- Make sure there are activities that are fun. This can be a neat restaurant, hike, or just about anything. Yes, this get-a-way is about planning, but taking time to just have fun is key.
- Do not have too much fun, yet a least.… As noted, you want to have fun, but make sure you work first. It is easy to just want to go have fun and not dig into the assessment and goal sections. Take the first day to focus and get the time off on a solid footing before taking a break. The last thing you want is to take this time and not come away with goals.
- Make it easy to stay inside. If you are like us and active, really try to set yourself up to stay inside. We do our meeting during the winter when it is cold and we must have a fire place. This way it creates a great ambiance to stay indoors and not feel the pressure to go outside and explore.
- Disconnect! Unplug the TV, put your phone on “do not disturb,” and just overall focus on your time there. In our daily life, we are pulled in so many directions with ads, social media, news, and entertainment. Take time to detox from it and focus on your spouse.
Other Ideas for the Getaway:
- Get an airbnb with wood burning fireplace and bring a bunch of wood
- Pack some fun drinks, coffee, tea, honey and creamer
- Print all your sheets out before you go and consider getting Hero on a Mission book as a guide through the process
- Bring some chocolate, a box of brownie mix or some fun treats
- Bring a good fiction book to help you click your brain off and rest
- Pack a bathing suit and go use the pool or hot tub
- Bring workout clothes and move your body after sitting so long filling out the sheets
- Have sex to connect and increase how unified you feel
- Make a “parking lot” sheet for all the things that pop into your brain, but that need to wait until the end of your time to talk through
Tell Me Your Big Marriage Yearly Goals
Tell me one of your big yearly marriage goals below in the comments. I genuinely want to know and there is something about making your goals public that helps you take action on your goals. And make sure to share this post with another couple who you would love to see do BIG things this year and with their life. Sharing is caring!
Pin for You to Come Back to Year After Year:
Other Posts That Could Be Helpful to You:
- 25 Ideas for Getting Into the Word This Year
- 10 Habits to Help You Become a Healthier Woman
- 5 Ways to Get Out of Debt Fast!
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