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Hi, everyone. It's Natalie. I'm so glad you're here today. Did you notice that I took a week off at the beginning of the year? I skipped a podcast. I let myself do it. And I hope that you skipped some work and were able to take some time off, be with your family, and just rest. Today, I want to tell you some really important things. First of all, it was a great break. We had three of our kids, all three of them under one roof. And that makes this mama very, very happy.

We got to spend some great time together at one point when everyone was here and we have not all been together for almost a year now. We stood in the kitchen, I'll get emotional. We stood in a circle and just cried. Yep, this mom cries and that's okay. I give myself permission to do that too. And we just enjoyed the heck out of each other. It was wonderful. And you know, it really made me think of how

I can have the greatest impact on my family and on all of you. I consider you part of this family that we have in this community. During my years as a news reporter, I often felt that I was just informing people and often on the bad stuff, the negative news. We talk so much in the news now, if you watch at all, a lot of us don't, about fires and murders and politics and stuff that causes anxiety. Not things that truly make a difference. And that's where I realized I wanted to do something different. And I think that's what I have found I love so much about teaching here on the podcast and in the classroom. And for those of you who don't know, in addition to this podcast and my website in that business, I teach podcasting and storytelling to high school students. I find high schoolers so life-giving to me. I love them. They're at a time in their life where

They're changing and they're having issues, but I feel like I can have an impact and I can love on them and I can teach them and hopefully influence them and impact their lives so that they go out and make a difference in the world. Also allows me to feel like I have a tangible impact on people. One thing I noticed, however, as a journalist is that the stories, when I did stories that were about health and family,

Those stories really did make a difference. Sometimes it was a new procedure, a new surgery, a new medicine, ways to eat, exercise, all of those tips from those experts. Sometimes it was parenting tips. I interviewed a lot of doctors and a lot of psychologists, a lot of parenting experts. I felt like I was able to really show people how they can have positive change in their lives and help them understand how they can improve their lives by continuing to grow and learn. So with that, and what I learned from that is that setting goals and continuing to learn really helps us. So I thought today we would talk about last year and this coming year. I wanna start by reflecting so that we can then learn and grow. So as I get started today, grab your cup of coffee with me, find a cozy spot, let's all dive in together.

So here are the areas I'm focusing on today, and they are the theme of this podcast, Faith, Health and Family. And we're going to do an audit together, okay? Then we're going to set some goals together. Sound good? So first, and this is big, this is hard for me, let's be still. Let's give ourselves the gift of some uninterrupted, start that again. First and this is big.

This is hard for many of us, myself included. Let's be still. Let's give ourselves the gift of some uninterrupted time to reflect. Gather what you need. Maybe it's a notebook. These are the things I recommend. Some paper, a journal, a pen, and your calendar. Let's reflect on your journey with faith over the past year, and then we'll do the same for health and family. First, with faith, how did you incorporate faithvinto your daily life? Did you make church a priority? Were there any significant milestones or challenges? Write down your thoughts and your observations in your journal on your piece of paper. Maybe it's a notebook. I like having a journal that I can go back to. And pause here on the podcast if you need some time to really think about those things. So let me give you those questions once again. How did you incorporate faith into your daily life?

Did you make church a priority or your Bible study a priority, whatever that is for you? Were there any significant milestones or challenges? And those are the things I want you to write down. And again, pause if you need to here to write these things down. Next, evaluate your family's overall health and wellness from the past year. How often?

Let's pick up right there with next. Next, let's evaluate our family's overall health and wellness from the past year. How often did you exercise? And be honest, I tried three times a week and I might've said that I exercise three times a week, but often it was just once or twice. Don't guilt yourself by the way. That's not what this is all about. Just reflect and write it downvhealthy eating and what you put into your body. What did you usually eat? Write some of those things down. Were there any health concerns or issues that you wanna address in this next year? Or what were the things that maybe you should have addressed last year? For me, it's being tired. I have restless legs and it always happens when I'm tired. So I know that's God saying to me, take care of your body. Get the sleep, take care of your body. It's your temple. So,

For me, that is not being tired, getting to bed on time. I want you to be specific here and pause if you need to so you can write some of these things down. And by the way, I know many of you listen in the car. So if you're listening today and you're thinking, I can't write these things down right now, it's fine. Reflect in your head and go back and write these things down sometime tonight. Maybe save the episode and do it when you do have time to be still and reflect. And then finally, let's reflect on some relationship issues and relationships in general? Have they grown? Have they changed over the past year? Do you have some new friends that have come into your circle that have been a blessing to you? Or maybe some people who are not a good influence that you're thinking, I'm spending a lot of time with them, but they're not helping me grow. It doesn't mean that you should cut these people out, but just reflect on your relationships in the past year. Also, how did you communicate with the people you love?

What challenges, what conflicts did you face in your relationships? Have those relationships, the people that you're close to, maybe even in your family, improved or have they suffered? These are all just questions. You don't have to answer it specifically, but things I want you to think about. Who do you need to pray for? What relationships do you want to be praying for in the year ahead? So we can sweep these hard things under the rug.

Like many of us do all the time, or we can reflect on them and improve them, pray for these things and see where God's leading us with our relationships. Not everyone needs to be your best friend, by the way. You can pray for people, you can have relationships, and they don't have to be the people that you spend time with every day or every week. Okay, now that we have that done and you paused and you've done those things, let's set some goals. There are many ways to do this, but I like to keep it simple. I'm focusing again on faith, health, and peace and family here in the podcast today. You can add more if you want, but let's start with faith because when we prioritize faith, everything else falls into place. Remember Matthew 6 33, but seek first his kingdom. I know we get caught up in making things happen and setting our own goals, but time and time again, I have found, and I hope you know that putting on that faith lens first, talking to God first, and making that your priority before you set all of your goals will help you more than anything. If we stop trying to do it all alone, we won't feel so alone. So let's talk about ways to come up with your faith goals and to make them attainable in the new year. First of all, start by thinking about your current relationship with God. Are you spending time in prayer and in the Word?

Are there any areas of your faith that you feel like you could improve on? Well, let's write those things down and please be specific because we can't accomplish things if we're not really specific about these things. Pause if you need to here. Next, brainstorm some actions or habits that can help strengthen your faith. This could

This could include things like attending church every week. So many of us got out of this habit during the pandemic. Talk about the enemy at work. We stopped going to church. Joining a small group or a Bible study. Maybe it's volunteering at your church or reading a devotion every day. My two favorites, by the way, I'm gonna pull them up here if you're watching on YouTube, but I'll put the links in too, are My Upmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers and New Morning Mercies by Paul Tripp. And again, I will link both of these down below if you're watching on YouTube and in the show notes if you're listening on the podcast. I love these. And sometimes I'll give you a little example here. It's literally a five to 10 minute read with a verse and some ideas, but they're so inspiring. And both of these are listed for each day of the year. So it gives you somewhere to go every day. You don't have to just.

Open up or follow. You can just open it up to the date and it gives you one page in a devotion. Once you have a list of potential actions or habits, let's prioritize them based on their importance to you and how they align with your current relationship with God. Then we're going to set SMART goals. What are SMART goals? I knew you would ask

This means that your goals should be clearly defined, have a way to track progress and success, be realistic and achievable, align with your overall goal of strengthening your faith, and have a set deadline for completion. So let me give you an example. If one of your areas for improvement is prayer, you could set a goal to pray every night before bed for 10 minutes. This goal is specific, that's the prayer, measurable.

We gave it 10 minutes. It's attainable. Yes, you can realistically commit to 10 minutes every night, and it's relevant. It aligns with improving your prayer life, and it's time-bound because you're going to do it every night. Another example could be setting a goal to go to church every Sunday for a month. So and you could do that for the whole year, of course, but I'm giving you an example of a month. This goal is specific. That's attending church. It's measurable every Sunday for a month.

It's attainable because you have the ability to make that decision to go every Sunday. It's relevant because it aligns with strengthening your faith and it's time bound. It's one month that you're gonna set that goal. Don't be discouraged by the way, if you don't meet a goal right away. The key is persistence. It's continuously working towards improvement. We're not gonna be perfect, but we're gonna be persistent and we're gonna keep working towards it. Be sure also,

This is really important that you're celebrating the small successes. And also, this is a tip that I have to work on because I like to keep my goals to myself, but I encourage you share these goals with someone. Maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a neighbor, maybe it's your husband. I'm doing some of these today. Be aware. I am giving you some of my goals today. You can hold me accountable to these because I know by sharing them with someone or with all of you,

that you can write me back, you can DM me, you can send me an email, whatever it is, and say, Hey, Natalie, I'm holding you accountable to those goals that you said you were going to set. And I'm going to tell you about those in just a minute. So here are a few of my faith goals. And then we'll get on to health and family. First of all, attend church regularly with sports, with homework. We travel a lot. This is really hard. And I travel, I think some of you know, because our kids are in different parts of the country and one plays college lacrosse.

And so I'm traveling a lot on the weekends, but I'm setting a goal that we will go to church. If I'm in a different part of the world, then I can still attend even if it's online or my hope is to just find some new churches and to go because we'll learn from that and it will continue to feed my spiritual need, my heart, my soul on Sunday mornings. So it's a habit that is so important and it, again nourishes us in a different way. It also helps build our faith community. Next for me is being in the Word every single day. I told you that I love these devotion books, but I'm being honest here. There are mornings where when I usually do this, I need 10 extra minutes of sleep, or I think I do. But really, I know that if I'm getting up 10 minutes earlier, this, being in the Word, those 10 minutes are so much more important.

Than 10 minutes more of sleep. That's not really going to help me throughout the day, those 10 minutes of sleep. However, I did make sleep a priority, but for me, that means getting to bed a little bit earlier, not setting my alarm or pushing the snooze button. By the way, I started a note app on my phone, or you all probably know if you have an iPhone, and I know all other phones have this too, that there's like a notes section. And I started a notes on my phone. And when I think of an issue or a concern or something in my life that I'm struggling with, I do a quick Google search for some scripture around that. And I throw those verses into my notes on my phone so that then later at night or first thing in the morning, I can look back over those notes and just reflect and think and apply those pieces of scripture to my life and how they can help me or offer me comfort. I'm really big on Siri. So a lot of times, I think a lot of us have gotten this way.

It's so much easier. I just talk into my notes and I say the issue and I say the scripture and that helps me remember it. So maybe those are tips that would help you too. My third goal for faith is incorporating gratefulness. This is a game changer. I've talked about this so many times on the podcast, many times in depth. I did a whole podcast on this, another episode. You can listen to that in episode 131.

Even scientifically, we know that gratitude changes everything, but it is a habit. Being grateful over complaining is absolutely a habit. So go back and listen to episode 131. I think you'll like it. Okay. Let's move on to health goals. This is so specific for everyone. I totally get that, but let me touch on it briefly. Balance will always, always benefit you. As a health reporter, I've covered it all, you all. Diets, illnesses, exercise, the most successful health plans, always, always incorporate balance. A few episodes that you can go back and listen to that I think you'll really like and can help you with your health goals. Episode 94 with Hope Pedraza, episode 107 on gut health and inflammation, episode 103,

And then episode 130, I know I'm rattling these off very quickly, Eat to Beat Disease with Dr. William Lee. That is my most downloaded episode ever on the podcast. All of these I will put in the show notes or down below on YouTube. You can click them at your leisure whenever you feel like you've got a couple of minutes. Most, as you know, most of my episodes are 30 minutes tops. So great for a car ride or a quick walk or doing laundry to inspire you and give you ideas in your health journey. And by the way, my favorite way to listen to podcasts is when I'm on a walk or sometimes at the gym, especially health topics. I love listening to health topics when I'm at the gym. It just inspires me and it makes that time fly by. I also have a few resources for you that I think you will love. They are free to download and they will help with your health journey as well. And they include the very popular grocery list for the Mediterranean diet.

Why the Mediterranean diet? Because time and time again, in my time as a health reporter and here on the podcast, people bring up the Mediterranean diet. And I think it's because it is so well-balanced, easy to cook with the Mediterranean diet. They're foods that everybody loves. We get olive oil, we get salads, but we also get clean proteins. And so I created a list of Mediterranean diet foods. It's a grocery list for the Mediterranean diet. You can download that for free and the next time you're at the grocery store, bring that up, buy those things. I think you'll like that. And then another free download for you that I created is the hunger fullness scale. This came out of a podcast episode last year, may have been the year before even, but it was so popular. Do you eat because you're hungry or do you eat because you're emotional or you have another need?

Sometimes we don't even know the difference between that. So this download is the hunger fullness scale. And it's a way that you can determine if you're eating for nutrition or if you're just eating out of emotion. And you will find both of those on my website and again, here in the show notes. My health goals, by the way, keep me accountable. Get to the gym at least three times a week or at least do a workout at home. And that doesn't mean I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna do it. Something about going to the gym makes me do it. But when I say I'm going to go downstairs to my basement gym, it's so easy to get out of. I've got a treadmill, I've got a bench, I've got some free weights, but when I actually take the time to go to the gym, I get it done. So I'm going to do that three times a week. Hold me accountable. I'll start talking about it a little bit more.

My second goal, focus on protein in my diet. This has been a big one for my whole family with a growing teenage boy, my husband, who's trying to get, he's been back in the gym more than me. And for myself, it just helps. So breakfast, lunch, and dinner, 30 grams of protein. That's my goal. And I've been pretty good about it. I've got some great new recipes. I need to share those with you and put them on the website to get all of that into my diet three times a day. My next goal for health, water, water.

Why am I so bad at drinking water? Are you all like this? If I focus on it, if I keep, but look, I have coffee with me right now, not a water bottle, but I will get to it. If I have a water bottle with me all of the time, I drink it. I just don't always think to bring it with me. So that's my goal here in the new year is at least a hundred ounces. That's my goal of water a day. And I keep a big jug with me. I try to carry it with me, but sometimes I just get lazy and I don't want to carry it into school or I don't want to carry it in my car. That's another thing. If I keep it in my car, I pick it up at a red light and I drink it. Another tip for you though is when you're drinking water, don't just take a sip. If you're going to go to the trouble to take a drink, again, I'm drinking coffee right now. If you're going to go to the trouble of taking a drink, take 10 sips when you take that drink of water. That'll help you every time you do it.

Okay, so that's one of my goals, and I think it's a good one for all of us, obviously. As for family goals, let's move on to this. I love this topic. Goals as a family, goals we can set to nurture as moms and improve our family relationships. So I've kind of divided it into those two things. My family had a really great goal setting dinner. It actually wasn't something we planned. In fact,

It came up pretty spontaneously when we went out on New Year's Eve. We went out for Mexican on New Year's Eve, pretty early, and it ended up being such a beautiful night. My 19-year-old, who's away at college and back, she had set these goals that blew me away, both of us. My husband and I were like, oh, who's this kid? She sets goals, but she had such perfectly aligned goals. And it was one of those reassuring moments as a mom, where you're like are they learning all of these things that I'm teaching? And then all of a sudden her goals, they were so specific in her major, in her health, in career goals, all of these things that she set and we all just sat there like so impressed. We were so inspired. But my point in that is that when you do sit down, you can bring it up. It doesn't have to be a big formal dinner race. Say we're all going to set goals tonight. Just bring it up more regularly at the dinner table.

And don't feel like you missed a window if you didn't do this on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. In fact, I love the idea that it's something that we do throughout the year. Month of January is a great time to do it, but year round is even better. So the SMART goals work great for kids, and it's a good way to start goal setting and that process. Maybe your goals for your family are having dinner together three nights a week with busy schedules. That can be hard for a lot of people.

Maybe it's going to bed by a certain time. We've got that goal of 10 o'clock every night. As a matter of fact, I'm trying to push it even earlier, but with a teenager with a lot of homework and sometimes practice schedules at night, we're really shooting for 10 o'clock every night. It's also going to be putting the phone at least 10 feet away. These are some of our goals. 10 feet away from the bed at night. Let me tell you a story about this. And if my husband's listening, he's going to laugh about this and he's going to say, you don't sleep with your phone across the room. Well I am now because a couple of nights ago, my charger died. My phone died. It happened to be on a weekend. I slept like a baby. I slept better than I have in months. The phone actually did die in the middle of the night. But when I woke up feeling refreshed.

I got about an hour more sleep on a Saturday and it didn't ding in the middle of the night. I didn't have this fear that when I woke up in the middle of the night, I saw that the phone was dead. I put it back down because I was so tired. I slept great. So my new goal is the phone's going to go 10 feet across the room. And what's really great about this is that with my kids call from across the country, I'm still going to hear it. And by the way, I have the settings in my phone. You might want to try this where my emergency contacts will ring through, but nothing else will. And that means it doesn't ding, I don't get text messages, I don't get any alerts, and if other people call me, it doesn't come through, but my emergency contacts do, and that's my parents and my kids and a few other people. But otherwise, it's across the room. My alarm still goes off. Bonus, I actually have to walk across the room to turn my alarm off. It's a really hard thing, but it's good.

So I would encourage you to do that. That's one of my goals. You can all hold me accountable to that and ask me, is your phone still across the room? I promise you're gonna sleep better without your phone right by your head. And yes, leave it at there. I promise you're gonna sleep better with your phone without your phone nearby.

Okay, so recapping, faith, health, and family goals. Set SMART goals, which are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. And I have a gift for you that I hope will help. I have a gift for you that I hope will help you with these goals this year. It is 20 activities for strengthening your faith, health, and family. It's actually a list that you can download for free with some really fun ideas for ways to do this together as a family. I think you're really going to like it. It's on my website. It's also linked down below and in the show notes. I hope that this has helped you in some way. Please reach out if you have comments or questions. And I just want to thank you for being here, for being a part of this community and for listening each and every week. Be sure to share this with someone you think could use it and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Have a great week everyone. I'll talk to you soon.