2012 New Year’s Resolutions
When I ask people about their New Year’s resolutions, I frequently get this answer: “I don’t make New Year’s resolutions because I never keep them anyway.”
I understand this answer. If we weren’t able to accomplish our yearly goals, we can feel like a failure, and it’s even worse when other people knew we were trying to quit smoking, lose weight, or finally learn Spanish. It’s safer sometimes not to talk too much about aspirations.
That said, I do believe in making resolutions, yearly goals or whatever you want to call them. Goals should be specific, attainable and measurable. Stephanie and I sit down at this time of year and make a list of goals for the coming year. We start by reviewing last year’s goals and check off those we completed. That’s fun and inspires us with confidence that we finished what we started last year. There are always goals we didn’t get done, too. We re-evaluate how important they are to us. If we really care about them, they go on the list for next year.
We’ve abandoned some goals because we realized we really didn’t want them bad enough. For example, I originally had a goal to run in a marathon. I had friends who did it and it sounded like a good idea. But year after year, doing other things continued to be more important to me than running many hours per week. So I got honest with myself and decided I didn’t have enough desire to train for the marathon so I dropped the goal. It may have been a good goal for others but it wasn’t MY goal.
Then we set goals that are truly things we want to do, that are achievable but challenging enough to stretch us. We group them in major categories such as Spiritual, Family, Financial, Career, Social, Physical and Personal. They become the master plan for the new year.
We aim high so that when we succeed it is exhilarating but when we miss a goal it can be discouraging. Disappointments don’t slow us down for long, though. We just renew our efforts.
We believe that at the end of our lives, we won’t regret the things we tried to accomplish, as long as we knew we did our best. After all, we will never know the outcome of things unless we make the bold attempt. We think regret comes from not trying things that were within our grasp.
We commit our plans to God in prayer and trust His guidance and grace to allow doors to close on goals not good for us and to open those doors that lie in the path He has laid out for us.
Buck Dopp
1.17.2012
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