The #10yearchallenge recently took social media by storm. So of course, we had to participate.
If you are unfamiliar with this challenge, let’s catch you up. On social media, people share a photo from 2009 next to a current photo from 2019. These photos were often captioned with a story of growth & learning ...or maybe just point out some terrible style.
Read MoreSetting goals is really easy to do, but taking action on those goals and seeing them through is the hard part. That’s where most people struggle. One way to work through that struggle is to have someone who can hold you accountable. Ashley is that person for me and I am for her. We have given each other permission to hold the other accountable. We can call each other out and remind the other about our goals together or the goals we hold separately.
Read MoreOur lifestyle dramatic changed in July of 2018 when we challenged ourselves to do the Whole 30 diet. What could we do in 2019 that would have a similar positive impact? We both knew it and slyly grinned at the same time. EXCESSIVE SPENDING. It’s Billy’s need to buy anything with the Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl Champs logo on it. It’s Ashley’s obsession with any and all skincare trends. And in 2019, we’ve promised ourselves to stop the excessive spending.
Read MoreIt should come as no surprise that we love setting goals and accomplishing them. That’s why we have created our Goal Setting for Partners download. We want to help you achieve an epic partnership through goal setting!
But we heard from a lot of people saying how difficult the dreaming piece of the download was for them and/or their partner. And we get it. Putting 100 dreams down on paper is not easy for everyone. In all honesty, its something we struggled to do together. One of us was used to the process of dreaming & setting goals, the other was not. Just be patient, you’ll get there together.
You can jump-start the dreaming by focusing on these 7 things you should add to your dream list…
1… Travel somewhere new.
This is an easy place to get started. In the era of Instagram and travel bloggers, travel dreams can come from mindless scrolling. Iceland is totally on our list because of all the great photos we have seen on Instagram. Plus, we learned that you can see the Northern Lights from here. And that would cross off another item.
One of us was also inspired by ‘The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants’ and added Greece to their dream list. Can you guess which one of us that was?
Heck, there’s even an entire TV channel dedicated to travel. That’s where we picked up our dream of staying in an ice hotel.
2… Build a Family.
At an early age, Billy added “marry the girl of my dreams” to his list. He was able to cross that one off back in 2010, and we cemented that in when we got married a year later.
And then, the question we always get… when are you two planning to start a family? We do not see kids of our own in our future, but we have toyed with the idea of fostering or adopting a kid. This one is not officially on our dream list, but we talk about occasionally. Right now our family is complete with our two cats.
Building a family could also look a little like strengthening your family. We hope to continue making life-long memories with our parents (aka our best friends). And actually look forward to taking care of our parents just like they like to take care of us. We have also made progress on repairing relationships in our family.
3… Advance Our Careers.
After being married to each other, we are married to our careers. We work hard to secure new clients, deliver on our commitments, and earn the next promotion.
We consider ourselves lucky to each have a career we are passionate about. We both have a career we dreamed of as a child. But with that, we are also building a side-hustle.
4... Better the Community.
Community is at the center of all we do. We want to make sure we do good in our community. We continue to volunteer regularly and have been honored to serve on nonprofit boards. We have big dreams of supporting our community by making a large philanthropic gift.
In our podcast, we challenged ourselves to add five new dreams to our list together. Something that came out of this conversation was a dream to run for office. We do not know what office - could be local school board or maybe even something at the state level. But we do know that if we want to see big, systemic change that our community needs it will be done through policy.
5... Grow our minds.
We know that growing comes from learning. We continue to talk about our desire to learn Spanish. It’s probably about time that one turns into a goal. In the podcast we mentioned earlier, we also added live in another country. We put it here (versus travel) because it is about more about our desire to study a different culture and growing our worldviews.
Growth for us is also spiritual. We hope to always grow in our faith.
6... Build wealth.
Read: Build wealth, not greed. There is nothing wrong with building wealth. Wealth allows us to pay off student loans, buy a car, own property, and make that large gift we mentioned before.
Our financial goals are not just buying stuff (or paying debts), it is also investments. We also want to build our retirement and invest in a business.
7... Create Experiences.
This is where all the others dreams fall. One of us has a huge fear of heights and decided to face that fear by skydiving. The other has a fear of speaking to a large crowd and would love to face that one.
We are both big sports people. So things like meeting sport legends (specifically, having a beer with Chase Utley) and attending the College Football National Championship also fall here.
We talk a lot about being better together and how our differences make us stronger. But if we’re being real, when it comes to eating, we have NOT been better together. We each independently have bad eating habits. Those bad habits became terrible habits when we got married and began living together. Insert Whole30.
The purpose of the Whole30 diet is to eliminate types of food that may be causing other health issues for you. You can read more about it on the Whole30 website.
A common benefit? Weight loss. Yeah, we are super pumped that we collectively lost 20 pounds.
Another benefit? I learned that eating bread makes me feel bloated. I can indulge every once and while, but only once. No bread binging for me.
But the best benefit? We learned how we as a couple can build better eating habits. For us to change habits, we knew it was key for us to do it together. We kept each other committed, accountable, and motivated.
Here are three key things we learned about teamwork while on Whole30:
Sometimes you just need someone to introduce you to something new to bring out the best in yourself.
We’ve always had some sort of sparkling water in the fridge, but Billy never had one until Whole30. His beverage choice was always a Red Bull or a Dr. Pepper. Often his first sip of water was at night when taking a pill before bed. He now swears he could go through life never drinking a soda again.
A little motivation can get you over a speed bump.
Everyone has a weak point when changing bad habits. Previously, when one of us was eating well the other would convince them to eat something bad (typically pizza). But when on Whole30, we realized those weak moments are key for the other person to step up and be strong. It isn’t always easy because who can really say no to pizza?!
Strong teams know how to complete each other.
We like staying busy. And often we used this as an excuse for our terrible eating habits. Quick meals are a key to our success in Whole30. If it isn’t quick, we can easily revert back to our old habits.
Cooking meals rarely takes us more than 20 minutes… because we do it together. Billy excels at grilling, but hates chopping. I hate touching raw meat, but love rinsing and chopping veggies. We have gotten in a great routine of Billy cooking our protein (usually steaks, chicken, or salmon) and I handle the sides.
We continue to follow the rules of Whole30 even after the initial thirty days. It really challenged us to break our bad habits and replace them with some better ones!
Want to know what two busy professionals eat in a week on Whole30? Get your free download of our shopping list and a week of meals.
But you’re family now so you can call us Bashley, like our relatives do. Despite having a couple name that lumps us together, we couldn’t be more opposite.
We often get asked how we do so much together. The answer: goal-setting, purposeful communication, and embracing our differences.
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