Goal Update

January has been a good month for me. To tell the truth, it's been quite a while since I have felt as happy, peaceful and content as I've been feeling these past few weeks. I'm so grateful to have been enjoying the fruit of the Spirit, "love, joy, peace, goodness, faith." I have gotten into a good routine of getting up at 6:30 in the morning and doing a 20-30 minute workout and then spending 15-20 minutes studying the scriptures. I've started using the Preach My Gospel manual as a study guide and it's been really great. It's amazing how many truly wonderful, inspiring, uplifting, and guiding words are in the scriptures! I then get the kids up and we spend a few minutes reading the Book of Mormon and have a morning prayer. Each day I also read from the Ensign, right now I'm reading the Oct. Conference report. I've also been diligent at having sincere morning and evening prayers. As I have striven to take the Spirit as my guide, and take time to feed myself spiritually, and to consciously choose to have a positive, happy attitude, I have been blessed with much joy and peace. This is not to say I always behave as I should or that I don't have moments of sadness, but overall I can say that I feel that life is good!

Things I still need to work on: spending more time with my kids, particularly the two little ones who are home. They still spend too much time watching tv/playing video games and I need to curb that more and interact with them more. I also need to continue to improve on treating my children with more patience, kindness and long suffering. I have totally lost it with them a lot less this month, but it's hard to change years of responses and I'm still working on using love and soft speech more than threats and a raised voice. Overall, I am very pleased with my efforts to make positive changes in my life and with the results I have achieved in my own self. I don't know if my efforts have positively affected others, but they have made a big difference for me.