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January 7, 2016

What Failure Taught Me in 2015

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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I’M BACK! I’m so sorry I’ve been away for a little while now… I wanted to soak up every minute of break with my family, friends, and Stephen before I had to get back to the grind. There is a long list of things that I plan to blog about in the upcoming months and year and there will be some very exciting updates in the near future! I just want to say a sincere ‘thank you’ to you all for coming along with me on this journey and for being so very supportive. I hope that you enjoy and continue to enjoy reading about these snapshots of my life, products, recipes, and lessons learned.

I’ve been thinking for a while now on what I want to talk about to start off the New Year and it seemed pretty simple… Goals. One of my first posts last year was about my goals for 2015. Now, I want to make it clear that this blog isn’t just peaches and sunshine. I don’t hesitate to share the “downs” in life because I am a human. I will fail, I will not like some products (I may hate them in fact), and I might not reach some goals no matter how hard I try. That is life and this is partially a lifestyle blog so here is the ugly truth about my goals for 2015…

  • Run 5 marathons in 2015 – only ran 4
  • Finish at least one “fun” book every month (textbooks not included) – completed this until July
  • Finish the entire Bible – completed only 15% of it
  • Publish two papers on my research – one written and in the editing stages, still need to write the other one
  • Finish my literature review – 75% of the way done
  • Save $40 a week – ACCOMPLISHED! 

So there you have it, folks. I only reached one of my goals for 2015. I think some people might look at this and think, “Why did you have so many goals?” or  “You only reached one of them!?” or “You’re a failure.” HAHA! That one made me laugh… Anyway, I can’t deny that looking back on these I got down on myself for a while. Then I thought about all of the things I HAVE done and realized that I needed to give myself a pat on the back. I’m not going to go into all of those details because I feel slightly vain doing that (maybe I’m not… I don’t know, either way I’m not doing it) but I will say that I still need to be proud of myself for everything I’ve accomplished and battled through in the past year. These accomplishments have made me proud of my “failures” in 2015. Now, that DOES NOT mean that one shouldn’t strive to reach goals and not be upset if they aren’t achieved. The emotion that comes along with “failing” is not necessarily a bad thing. I believe there is a correlation for most people: the harder one tries to reach a goal, the more upset they will be if they don’t. Like I said, I was pretty upset with myself but I’ve realized that the work put in so far to one day say, “ACCOMPLISHED!” is something to be very proud of.

I think it’s very important to have a balance between pressuring yourself to reach goals and being proud of what you’ve accomplished. Another way of saying it, find a balance between pushing as hard as you can while going easy on yourself. Seems pretty difficult, doesn’t it? I think so.

Maybe my goals were unrealistic? Maybe there were too many? Maybe I just didn’t push myself hard enough (I suppose I could’ve sacrificed more sleep)? I don’t know. What I do know is that setting these big goals in 2015 drove me to at least attempt to accomplish them. I wouldn’t have 4 more marathons under my belt if I hadn’t set the goal to do 5 in 2015 or I wouldn’t have 75% of my literature review done if I hadn’t set the goal to finish it before the year was up. Set your goals as large as you want, really push to reach them and be proud of yourself at the end of the day for what you’ve done, goal accomplished or not. Like I said, the harder you push yourself the more upset you might be if you don’t reach them BUT you will also have more reason to be so proud. 

This brings me to 2016. I think I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do exactly but for now these are my goals.

  1. Successfully defend my research and get my masters in Food Science and Technology. YES YES YES! It is so close I can taste it.
  2. Get a job. Prayers, please! I have applied to three and now I’m just playing the waiting game.
  3. Run a marathon in Alaska and Hawaii. I want to do these this year because they will be a bit more pricey so I want to check them off now. I also want to experience these races with my parents and make more memories with them.
  4. Complete a triathlon. Half Ironman?
  5. Complete courses 1 & 2 of my Bible readings.
  6. Buy a car.

Financial goals:

  1. Save $80 a week.
  2. Save all grocery “savings”.

WOAH! Okay, the last three might be a little surprising and seem like “hefty” goals but my poor Duckie (my little Volkswagen Golf… haha) is on his last leg and I have 7 weddings (yes, sev-en so far! SO MUCH LOVE!) all up the east coast to drive to this year so I’m going to need something more reliable. I pretty much know exactly what I want so it is just a matter of me saving every penny. I am going to write a post about saving $80 a week and my grocery savings in the next couple of days because that can be one post in itself. Be on the lookout for that!

So there they are, my goals for 2016. Have you set goals for the year ahead? Maybe they are small things you want to accomplish on a day-to-day basis or maybe they feel so large that you won’t be able to reach them. Either way, you have accomplished the first step to reaching those goals which is setting them. Here’s to a great year ahead of finding the balance between pushing ourselves and being proud of ourselves, many highs and lows, striving to be better, and pushing to reach the smallest and largest of goals.


with joy
jordan jean

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