Written by Candace on November 21, 2014 | 1 Comment

Goal Setting
For All The Right Reasons

It’s been a little over a year since I attended the Making Things Happen Conference.

It was such a rich conference that its principles have stuck with me all this time. I can’t say the same for other conferences I’ve attended. The powersheets have definitely helped in solidifying and applying what I learned too.

When I first shared about MTH, I didn’t really write much about what I learned because I just wanted to get to applying everything in my life. I didn’t want to talk about it and then end up not following through and feel like a hypocrite. Things have been far from perfect, but I am so thankful for the progress that I’ve made as a result of the lessons I learned at MTH and the help that the powersheets have been in my life.

You’d have to attend the conference or read Lara Casey’s blog to really soak in all the richness and wisdom, but there was one nugget that I thought would be a practical item I could share with you. As the new year approaches and you begin reflecting on 2014 and dreaming about 2015, I hope this will help you get further with your goals then you ever imagined. It has made all the difference for me.

One of my goals this year was to be healthy. Normally, it’s to lose a certain number of pounds or fit into a certain size pant. But this year, I wanted more than just that, I wanted to feel good, to feel the benefits in my mind, body and spirit that healthy living can achieve. Like I said, it hasn’t been a perfect road since I set this goal, but I can say that I definitely have lived a more consistently healthy life this year than in previous years. And the difference is because I attached emotional and unselfish reasons for achieving this goal. I learned that our reasons behind a goal can be selfish or self-focused. I want to be a size 4, I want to look better, etc. Those are self-focused and don’t usually motivate us for very long. This definitely resonated with me.

So, I set out to try something new. I set my goal of living a healthier life and then I drafted a list of reasons why. I’ll share my honest (and vulnerable!) list below to help with understanding this new concept. At least, it was new to me, revolutionary even.

REASONS TO BE HEALTHY

I will have more energy to serve others.
If I don’t do it now, I won’t do it when I’m 80.
To cultivate a healthy home for my family.
Feeling better physically will make my love life with Vitaliy more enjoyable.
To prepare for healthy eating during pregnancy.
I will have less weight to lose after having a baby.
To be a source of light and life to others.
To cultivate a spirit of self-control.
To increase my productivity.
To glorify God.

I wrote these out at the beginning of the year when we were anticipating starting a family. It is now November, 11 months later, and I am almost 7 months pregnant. Is my eating and exercising, perfect? No. But, thankfully that’s not the goal. Progress is the goal. And living a healthy lifestyle is still a big priority for me. I have seen huge progress even while pregnant. I haven’t fallen off the band wagon, so to say. I don’t have regrets or that sense that I’ve let myself down yet again. This will continue to be a goal of mine and I now have another reason to continue pursuing it. To have the health and energy in order to care for my little one.

I honestly didn’t attach emotional reasons to any of my other goals. But I’m starting a new set of powersheets, hopefully this weekend, and I plan on applying this same concept to the new goals I set for the upcoming 6 months. I won’t be waiting for January to come around. I’ll be continuing my goals right now. But there are two new things I’m excited about coming in January, my new Simplified Planner and Lara Casey’s new book Make It Happen. There were so many days this year that I wanted a planner like this to help me get my larger goals down to daily achievable tasks. And since I likely won’t be able to travel as much next year, I’m hoping Lara’s new book will be a good alternative to the actual conference.

Cheers to goal setting…for all the right reasons! Happy weekend everyone.

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Written by Candace on November 18, 2014 | 6 Comments

A Meaningful Legacy
Cottage Hill Magazine

Vitaliy and I have been tirelessly working through branding homework with the lovely Kathryn Duckett of Creme Brands.

When we started the process, I told her I wanted it to hurt. And like any good workout that burns in all the right places, you can rest assured that the work you put in is paying off. I am so happy we decided to make this investment, both personally and professionally. It has continued to help us refine why, what and how we do what we do. And I am excited to see where it takes us. But it has not been an easy process. Digging as deep as she has encouraged us to dig has been mentally and emotionally exhausting.

One of the things we’ve been going over recently is brand messaging. To brainstorm, we thought through other brands and the messages we receive from them. Then we tried to pinpoint our own messaging. We definitely seek to get across that we care, value and believe in marriage. But then we asked the question, based on our comparison of other brands, are we seriously saying that if we’re your wedding photographer you are going to have a successful marriage? Absolutely not. But it did get me thinking.

While we cannot guarantee a successful or committed marriage for any of our couples, we do hope that we influence their marriages in a positive way. We believe that good marriages can help produce strong families, that can positively impact our communities, and ultimately change our world. We believe in wedding day vows, in never giving up, in choosing love even when you can’t feel it. And we hope to be a voice, even a faint whisper in all the noise, that encourages our couples to continue investing in their relationship long past the wedding day.

One of the most exciting things in the past year is finding other brands, specifically wedding industry brands, with the same or similar goal. Real people, working on real weddings, hoping to encourage real couples to not only think about their wedding as one day, but all the days that follow as well. I was delighted when Cottage Hill magazine reached out for a collaboration. Cottage Hill is a magazine that seeks to inspire couples to “live a life worthy of an elegant and meaningful legacy.” Legacy. A word not often used in our vocabulary these days. Legacy causes us to think far beyond just one day. And it forces us to consider the end, not just how we may be feeling in the moment. Something monumentally needed for lasting and committed marriages.

I am honored to have my words (and our photos!) make up a small portion of this magazine. It’s the first time to see something I wrote in print. While there is definitely a sense of accomplishment there, as I pushed past my own personal fears, my hope in doing so was that someone reading them might find hope in their own circumstances. You can purchase the magazine and also enjoy Cottage Hill’s online journal. And I cannot end without a huge congratulations to Katie O. Selvidge, Cottage Hill’s editor, for pushing far beyond her own fears to making this magazine and her dream a reality.

Article on marriage published in Cottage Hill magazine

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Written by Candace on November 13, 2014 | 7 Comments

“Oh, just wait…”

When we first got married, people often told me, “Enjoy the honeymoon phase while it lasts!”

I used to find it so discouraging and I could never understand why people felt the need to tell me this. On top of painting a dreaded pictured of the horror that was supposedly coming down the road, it also made me feel like I was missing something wonderful at the moment. I didn’t start my marriage with the supposedly “honeymoon phase”. We must have missed checking the box for that on our gift registry! We started our marriage in a “grieving phase” having just lost Vitaliy’s parents and little brother in a car accident. We also started with a “parenting phase” as we had just become legal guardians of his 15 year old sister. We lived in a new place, with no family nearby and friends we had only just made. There was nothing “honeymoon” about our life. But it was our life and it was a beautiful mess.

I’m now entering a new chapter of my life and I’ve found that there is a dreaded saying for this chapter too, “Oh, just wait…” You fill in the blank. I’ve lost count with all the ways people have told me my life is about to change…for the bad. And as quickly as they realize what they’ve said, they end it with, but it’s the best thing you’ll ever do in your whole life. I don’t doubt that there is truth to what they say and I’m sure their intentions are not malicious. But I’m always left just as confused as I was after I got married wondering how these things are helpful.

I called my mom crying one afternoon completely distraught after having yet another conversation filled with a string of “Oh, just waits”. Walking into motherhood is overwhelming enough, I don’t need someone forewarning me of all the difficulties that lie ahead. I will soon discover them on my own and figure them out for myself. My mother told me that life would change and some of those changes will be difficult, but it’s just like anything else in life, it’s what you want to make of it.

As soon as she said this, I was reminded of all the “honeymoon phase” warnings. Though they affected me, I didn’t allow them to define my own marriage. And as I work through my own fears of the future, I’m reminding myself of this yet again. Life is what you make of it! We were dealt a very difficult hand to begin our marriage, but we made beautiful things out of our mess. By God’s grace. And as my future fills with sleepless nights and poopy diapers and who knows what else, I’m trusting in that same grace to see me through life’s beautiful messes that lie ahead.

If you are single, quiet the voices telling you that marriage is everything or that marriage is bad. Neither is true. If you are newly married, quiet the voices that tell you to “Enjoy the honeymoon phase while it lasts!” Marriage is a personal journey and yours won’t look like anybody else’s. It will be filled with both beauty and mire, joy and pain, and all of it is worth walking through together. And if you are like me, about to embark on the road of parenthood, let’s quiet all those voices that cause us to fear and take it one day at a time. One moment at a time. Because that’s how life was designed to be walked through anyway.

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