Philosophy
- Make Catholic Husband the best blog on the Internet. While I’m not there yet, I made substantial progress towards improving the blog in both content and presentation. The website itself is much cleaner and more streamlined. I don’t foresee many changes in the design happening in 2016 (to Alison’s great relief). I was successful in publishing regularly and am very proud, and frankly a bit surprised, that I reached this goal.
- Make Catholic Husband self-sufficient. Goal achieved, in a big way! I started doing freelance web design and was able to completely reimburse our family budget for all Catholic Husband spending, as well as provide an additional revenue stream. This was a big goal for me and I’m so glad that I was able to achieve it.
- I’m going to launch my first iOS app this year. Well, that didn’t happen. When I got into I realized that I simply didn’t have enough time to learn how to code and maintain an app. Additionally, the cost benefit analysis pointed to a low possible return. I think I was wise to quit this goal.
- Reach my weight goal. Another miss. In fact, I’m further from my goal than I was a year ago. This is mainly due to my headaches and the medication that I take for them. It was a hard year to push forward. Look for this goal again for 2016.
- Read for 30 minutes a day. This was a mixed result. I didn’t complete 2 books per month and I was more successful in the beginning of the year than at the end. I attribute this to two causes. First, I spent more time reading the paper than books and second, my work in web design took up more of my free time.
- Double my web design gross revenue. I need to pick up 2-3 new clients each month in order to make this happen. It’s attainable, but I need to get intentional about prospecting and selling.
- Reach my weight goal by August 1st. If I stick to my plan, I only need to lose about 1 pound per week. It’s doable, with diligence. Not only will this help me with my energy and creativity, but it’ll earn lots of healthcare incentive money through our insurance.
- Become a Glider flight instructor this Fall. I have a lot of studying to do, but this is also an attainable goal and something that would be amazing!
- Publish 5 blogs per week. Same as last year, but still important. It’ll end up being 260 unique posts.
- Do something social with Benedict at least once per week. Now that we have wheels, I want to continue to socialize Benedict. I’m going to carve out time for us to do that.
- Pray daily with my family. It has been hit or miss in the past, so I want to make this a non-negotiable part of our routine this year.
- Read 24 books by the end of the year. I can do it, but I need to make the time.
Be You
We all wear masks. We instinctively alter our behavior when we believe we’re being watched in order to match what we believe other people want. This phenomenon is seen most clearly in children who are always seeking to please their parents. The problem with this behavior modification is that it can stifle out what we truly want to express for the sake of being more socially palatable or to gain a sense of acceptance.
How many times have you wanted to voice support for someone who was being ganged up on in a meeting, but you remained silent? How many times have you wanted to express your emotions transparently with your teenage children, but refrained from doing so because you didn’t want it to feel awkward? When you were growing up, do you remember when you wanted to stop being affectionate with your parents in public? As a Dad, I now realize how difficult that must have been for my parents and I dread the day my children take that natural approach with me.
In the long term, systemically suppressing our true emotions and feelings can lead to permanent behavior modifications. Ceasing to be affectionate with your children in the short term can lead to a lifelong change in relational boundaries. Not standing up for someone being gossiped about can lead to you joining in. Not being transparent with your wife can lead to a long term freeze in marital growth.
We have to move past this idea that our emotions are bad and that we should adjust them in order to make ourselves more palatable to others. The fact is, while we may think that others will like us more, the opposite is true. Look at our political system. There’s so much phoniness that when someone comes along and is open, transparent, and truly themselves, it’s like a breath of fresh air. We respect people who admit when they’re wrong, who share how they really feel, and act as the person who they are, not the person that they think that we want.
You are a unique person with something great to offer the world, but if instead you assimilate and are just like everyone else, we lose out on that chance to know you. Be the person you are and share that gift of self with the world. If you remain true to who you are, and I do the same, we can make a real dent in the world.
How Will You Use Your Fresh Start?
I love this time of year when I and every other writer on the Internet write about goals, resolutions, and fresh starts. It’s part meeting a need and part recognizing that the New Year is the biggest time-based turning point in any given year.
My question for you is, how will you use your fresh start?
Too often, we allow ourselves to be our own biggest obstacles. We believe some myth that limits our potential. We can’t be holy because we’re not a priest, we can’t get ahead at work because someone is conspiring against us, we can’t lose weight because we tried and failed. We hold ourselves back. We let the ghosts of the past limit our future.
January 1st is truly just another day on the calendar, but it’s also Day #1. Instead of being limited by your past, or attempting to overreach with a long list of unrealistic resolutions, I invite you to try using focus. Choose two things or areas of your life where you can really dive in and make a huge impact.
What’s better: attempting six goals and failing at all of them or focusing on two goals and making lasting impacts?
I believe that the two areas where you can really make a difference are spiritually and physically. If you can get your spiritual life and your physical health both on point, you’ll naturally see movement in other areas of your life. Holiness and health combined can improve your marriage, improve your relationships, improve your creativity, improve your career, improve your finances, and improve your intellect.
Instead of chasing too many goals, focus on your spiritual health and physical health and in six months you’ll notice how much of an impact those two dynamics have on your entire life.
What Great Things Will You Do in 2016
I’ve asked you how you will use the fresh start that the New Year gives you, but today I want to ask you a different question. What great things will you do in 2016?
Achieving greatness requires two things: planning and execution. No project or goal achieves its objectives without a detailed plan. No plan brings results without execution.
A plan is more than just a commitment. A plan shows you how realistic your huge goal is. If you set a goal to lose 40 lbs, you’ll quit. But if you set a goal to lose 40 lbs and then plan on losing 1 lbs per week for 40 weeks, you realize just how possible it is.
Having a plan to lose 40 lbs is great, but if you have your fancy plan and keep eating the way you currently do, you’ll never make it. Execution requires discipline. But there’s a hidden gem in execution. It requires zero decision making. The decisions have already been made in your planning! So you don’t need to decide if you should eat that cake or go for a walk on any particular day. The plan says cake is only on Sunday and walks are every day, so execute!
We get tied up in the belief that we can’t achieve great things, that planning is a bore and execution is a straight jacket. The reality is planning helps us clarify the vision, the execution helps us meet the objective and together, we achieve greatness.
You have the perfect opportunity today to dream big, make a plan, and set it in motion so that in December you’ll have done something truly great with the time that you’ve been given this year. So the question remains, what great things will you do this year?
Cutting Corners is Weak
Personal integrity is a key component to success. In fact, America’s millionaires rated integrity as the number one reason for their success. Laziness is perhaps the greatest human vice. We have so much potential, the power of our minds, the dexterity of our hands, and a multitude of tools that to take all of these assets and not use them for anything is a waste. Our time and our days mean something, though in the moment that may not be entirely clear. Laziness is more than just complete idleness, it’s also cutting corners. It’s acceptable to acknowledge our tendency to find easy ways out. Half of the battle is knowing just who your enemy is. Instead of cutting those corners, and inevitably losing, do the job right.
Consider the corners we all like cutting. We skip exercise, indulge on ice cream, and gain weight. We skip doing the dishes one evening only to find the kitchen overwhelmed the next day. We go easy on our work at the beginning of the month only to have to play catch up and work three times as hard at the end of the month to make our production goals. Cutting corners only hurts us. It may not hurt now, but eventually, it will.
Life as an adult out on your own gives you dignity. Certainly we each innately have dignity as human persons, but there’s something special about having the ability to work and support yourself. Many times in my working life I’ve recognized and appreciated the gift of honest work and have prayed a simple prayer of thanksgiving for that grace. All jobs, whether they be mowing your lawn or washing your car, all the way up the line to your most important project, deserve to be done with the same degree of diligence. The projects that you complete are a personal reflection on you. So if you consistently turn out shoddy work on the job, you’re liable to get fired. If, however, you are known for diligently completing high quality work on time, you’re liable to get promoted.
Your name is put on every project that you complete. The question is, are you willing to associate yourself with that finished product? It’s a lesson that we all learned very young. Our parents counseled us about the danger in cutting corners. It’s a violation of our integrity, it’s a lie, and it ends up hurting us and our reputation in the end.
The New Year Slump
It’s about that time of year when people hit their New Year slump. The grand plans, resolutions, and goals have encountered the first wave of resistance and most will return to their old ways. To expect a perfect journey is unreasonable and, frankly, was more crazy than the goal to begin with. Resistance provides the opportunity to reinforce the “why” behind what you’re doing.
There are all sorts of roadblocks to success, but only the diligent win. Instead of viewing the slump as a roadblock, see it as an opportunity. Plans always work out on paper, but translating them into real life can be quite messy. What things do you need to tweek and change in order to get moving again?
Goals are long term and nothing is a bigger threat to success than poor short term decision making. Think long term, make decisions based on the long term, get back out there and win.
Grading Your Performance
It’s a good idea to think about your performance as a man and husband in terms of a grading scale. In days past, while you were still in school, you had some subjects that came easily to you in which you easily achieved an A with little effort. In some other subjects, you had a natural ability, but had to apply yourself more and may have hovered in the B range. Finally, there were (hopefully) a few areas where you truly lacked a natural ability and had to really work hard to achieve a commendable grade. Life really is no different.
Understanding where you’re strong, and focusing attention where you’re weak can elevate your game. No one enters into a marriage with the expectation that they’ll be a failure. No man says “I do” with the full intention of being a deadbeat or a loser. We all aspire to something greater. We want to be that couple that has a 50 or 60 year marriage. The truth is, when you first get married, you’re really quite bad. It’s not you, necessarily, it’s just a whole new reality. Think back to when you were first married, you may have been going through the motions of what you thought a good husband was or what a good husband does, but you were lacking the “why” behind those actions. Now, as time passed and you and your wife matured within your marriage, the dynamic shifted and you both better understand one another. While time is an ally in helping you to both mature, it presents the danger of complacency.
That’s where grading your performance comes in. I try to go through this process on a regular basis, or anytime I feel like Alison and I are getting out of sync. It’s all about overcoming the natural inclination to place blame and instead to accept responsibility. I want to be honest about where I need improvement because I want a 60 year marriage and I know that the joy, happiness, tranquility and strength that a good marriage can bring to a family and a community is only possible when I do everything within my power to live my vocation faithfully. When I’m honest in my evaluation, find resolutions, and then focus on achieving those outcomes, Alison, and our children, are the real winners.
In order to effectively gauge your performance, it’s necessary to be hyper observant in your daily live. Marriage happens in that reality: the daily experience. If you’re not carefully paying attention to your behaviors, attitudes, and reactions to situations, you’re not going to be able to find areas for improvement. Oftentimes these observations lead to brutal truths about yourself, character flaws, and past hurts. We all have to confront the uncomfortable in order to move on to greener pastures. Analyzing your responses, especially in times when you’re stressed, frustrated, or reacting poorly to a given situation can help you to identify trigger points and chain reactions so that you can better contain yourself in the future.
It should be noted that evaluating yourself is as much about celebrating the good things that you’re doing as it is about correcting the things that need to be fixed. The fact remains that you are doing some things very well and exceed not only your peers, but your wife’s expectations. Those good things that you’re doing should be reinforced, and the underlying actions and principles that result in your high marks should be duplicated in areas that could benefit from them.
The unexamined life is truly not worth living, but even more likely is the fact that your wife has zero interest in staying married to the man of her wedding day. She married you because she wants to share a life together and to grow old together, not stand still with a young, wild, and slightly immature man while she and the world keep spinning. Keep doing good, understand where you’re falling down and grow in those areas. Then you’ll both benefit from a rich life together.
Discipline Trickles Down
Alison’s schedule around Holy Days is always a little tricky. Our parish generally offers sufficient Masses, but they don’t offer evening Masses on Holy Days (or Sunday). That means that we can be legitimately scrambling to get to Mass. This year, her schedule meant that we needed to go to Mass on December 31st, instead of January 1st. While praying before Mass, I decided to ask for a gift for the new year. I thought about plenty of options, but settled on one that I thought would bring about all. I asked for the grace of discipline.
Discipline is something that we all love to hate. It forces us to do things that are good for us when our laziness or fear try to keep us down. It brings about tremendous benefits and, executed over time, takes you to where you want to be. Discipline is the mature version of us making a decision and not letting the immature version of ourselves call the shots.
I thought discipline was the perfect gift because it can’t help but trickle down into other areas of our lives. If I’m disciplined in my daily routine, I’ll be disciplined in my prayer life. If I’m disciplined in my exercise plans, I’ll be disciplined in my eating habits. If I’m disciplined in my financial life, I’ll be disciplined in my spending. The heart of all success is discipline.
I love the saying, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” We have today to hit our goals, to implement our plans, and to check off our to do list. We can’t fix yesterday, and we can’t work on tomorrow. While January 1st is a huge psychological turning point, truly your alarm clock going off is just as much of a fresh start.
I need to inject discipline back into my life because of the stability, diligence, and productivity that it brings. Laziness and idleness starve my creativity and drain my energy. The best way to fall asleep is when your body is tired and your mind is at peace because you used the day to the fullest. Work on discipline and watch it bear fruit across all areas of your life.
When to Quit
Around this time of year, I’m always excited by the potential of the new year. I have a long list of things I want to try and do, and inevitably I start running at all of them, at the same time. While the new year is a great time to add some things to your life, it’s also the perfect time to pare down activities that aren’t producing results.
Productivity and focus are as much about being diligent with what you take on as they are about quitting. Too often we get lost in our pride, intransigent to our calendar’s pleas that we let go of some things. Whether you’re single or married, the day still only has 24 hours which means that every minute you dedicate to one pursuit, another pursuit sits idle. The finite amount of time in the day is the biggest reason why you need to be willing to cut certain activities or goals from your life.
Choosing what to cut and what to keep is a major decision. It’s made that much harder by the fact that you’ll have to face down a lot of emotions. There will be some projects that you should keep moving forward with but that you’ll feel the urge to cut. Laziness and inaction are always advocating their case. Ignore them. If it’s important, even if you haven’t seen progress recently, keep pushing. Projects that need to be cut are the ones that have little potential for success or that don’t deliver a good return on investment.
Here’s an example. For years now, I’ve wanted to develop mobile apps. I have no programming experience, but assembled the tools and coursework to get me on my way. A few months into learning how to code, I was making steady progress. As a part of my learning, I immersed myself in the world of developers, listening to their conversations and understanding the nature of the market. I came to the realization that I was going to sink a massive amount of time into learning how to code, more time each year learning new coding languages, more time into programming the app, and a significant chunk of my daily workload into customer support and new feature implementation. All of this time was going to be dedicated to what would likely be very small returns, less than $10,000 over the lifetime of the app. So I could sink a ton of time into a project with dim prospects, or I could work really hard to build up my web design business which was waiting and ready to go.
You’re going to face decisions like this all of the time, and January is the perfect time to clean out your to do list. Get rid of the stuff that’s getting in the way of doing work that matters. Add in more things that will propel you and those around you to greatness. Be brave enough to quit.
2016 Goals
2016 is officially here! As is my tradition, I wanted to share with you my goals for the upcoming year. Just as I did last year, my goals are balanced across all areas of my life: financial, spiritual, intellectual, career, social, family, and fun. Sharing them with you is a great way for me to stay accountable to them. I began my goal planning at the end of November and started actually working on my goals in mid-December.
Before sharing my 2016 goals, I want to go over the results of my 2015 goals.
Here’s what’s up for 2016.
What’s going on in 2016 for you?
Preserve Your Energy
Negativity is the biggest drain on our energy. Every day we encounter plenty of rabbit holes to go down; negative news stories, clickbait links, and even entertainment programs. I’ve just decided that it’s not worth it to waste my time and energy on things that I have no control over and that are just going to bum me out.
We need to be conscious of how we spend our time and energy, two of the most precious and finite resources that we have. If we waste them away on things that will create anxiety, we lose more than we could have ever hoped to gain. Prioritizing our time and consciously choosing to spend our energy on positive thoughts and activities are the best things we can do for ourselves.
I like to have a running list of the things that I need to do each day in order to be successful. My list includes reading, eating well, exercising and a certain amount of work. I limit my unscheduled time in order to help me stay on track with things that I know yield positive results. For example, if I had three hours of free time each day, I might waste them binge watching Netflix. Instead, if I take those same three hours and give 1 hour to exercise, 1 hour to work, 30 minutes to reading, and 30 minutes to free time, I can relax knowing that watching Netflix isn’t going to hurt me somewhere else. I’ve never finished a book and said to myself, “I wish I’d spent that time watching TV.”
We only have so much energy each day. Spend it on things worth doing so that tomorrow you’ll wake up a better person for your wife, your family, and yourself.