What do you value? What is the culture of your family? By clearly defining your values and setting goals based on those values, you will be able to align your life and achieve the things you want most.  This episode clearly outlines the way I set goals for myself and my family to reach our dreams.  You can too! Play In A New Window Download             Show Summary I grew up in a goal oriented family.  When I was young, my mom worked part time for Franklin Day Planners.  My parents were also big fans of Stephen Covey.  Franklin merged with Covey, and then it was Franklin Covey that my mom worked for.  I think i got my first Franklin Day Planner when I was about 10.   My parents taught me about how the Franklin Covey day planner worked.  You first determined what your values were, then you set long term goals based around those values.  You broke the long term goals down in to short term goals, and the short term goals got broken down into daily tasks.  Each built upon each other to help you reach those long term goals that coincided with what you personally value. My dad is also famous (well famous in our little world) for a talk he gives on The Wheel of Balance.  He talks about a wheel made up of 6 different areas Mental Social Physical Spiritual Family Work He talks about how each of these areas need balance in our lives.  If one of them is missing or one is inflated more that the rest, the wheel won’t turn smoothly.  We get stuck.  So as a youth, I set my values and long term goals based around these 6 areas.  And I still do today. Because of these goals, I was able to achieve just about anything I set my mind to as a teenager. For example - I value my testimony of Jesus Christ and His Gospel.  Some of my long-term goals I set when I was a youth was to Be worthy to enter the temple (for either marriage or before a mission) To be married in the temple Read cover to cover and gain a testimony of all 4 sets of scripture (Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine & Covenants) Get my Young Women Medallion Graduate from Seminary Then I would break those down into short term goals. So I would make a goal to read The Book of Mormon by a certain date Then my daily task was to read so many chapters each day. Those things fulfilled my “Spiritual” spoke on the wheel.  Other goals that I had that went along with my values were Maintain a certain GPA Go to Brigham Young University Participate in Swim Team Sing in the Choir Save X amount for college etc. Now that I am adult, my goals are a little bit different than they were when I was teenager, but my values are still pretty much the same. I wanted to pass on this same goal oriented life to my children, so In January we did a great family home evening where we set our Family Values and then set some goals in each area that we wanted to work on.   First we brainstormed a lot of different ideas, and then we voted and narrowed it down to 7 things. We are service oriented We are respectful We are optimistic We are learners We are self-reliant We are adventurous We are Christ-centered Under each of these 7 categories we listed a few things that we want to work on as a family. Some of these things I think we already do well, (like grow a garden, and going to church each week) and some things are things we agreed we need to work on (like being willing to try new foods and take shorter showers).   I made a 24x36 poster on my computer and had it printed at my local UPS store for about $4 and we hang it on the door between our kitchen and garage so that it is a constant reminder. (see below) This is a great exercise to do with your kids and figure what your family values and what goals you have and to figure out the culture of your family.   A few weeks ago on the 3in30 podcast, Host Rachel Nielsen interviewed  Chamaine Wollenzien of Wandering Families for Episode 40.  Chamaine said that the culture of her family is