New Year's Resolutions

I’m not a fan of “New Year’s resolutions,” but I figured I could rouse my blog out of hibernation since it’s now 2009. In my experience with friends who make resolutions, they often seem to get lost in the clutter of everyday life by mid-March or so. It’s almost as though the more important something seems at the beginning of the year, the farther it can travel to the bottom of the “to do” list.

At the same time, though, shouldn’t we set goals for ourselves? Shouldn’t we pick a time to start improving in some way, and then work hard to stick with it? Isn’t the turning of the calendar year as good a time as any?

I know that some people can set goals, and achieve them all year long. For those people, I admire your commitment and resolve. It’s amazing! And some goals do, indeed, lend themselves to a January-to-December time frame.

However, many goals may be better supported by a different calendar. I know people at church who, after the Passover in the spring or the Feast of Tabernacles in the fall, will set a spiritual goal to accomplish by the next festival season. Maybe it’s baptism, or reading the entire Bible, or praying every day. Not only do these types of goals have a deep and lasting benefit, they’re also based on God’s calendar!

This, of course, is not to downplay the importance of achievement on a more (for lack of a better word) superficial level. But these, too, can often work on a different schedule. For example, young women frequently set a goal at some point during the year to lose pounds or inches by the following summer. You may give yourself a deadline of a week or two to completely clean your house – or just the living room. Something as short-term as a certification exam or a test at school can be an equally worthwhile, and perhaps more achievable goal.

And for me, achievable is a necessary trait in a goal. With my busy schedule and long list of “to do…eventually,” crossing off a task, no matter how small, feels amazing. For more long-term goals, I find myself putting off starting a project or regimen, feeling as though it’s not worth it to do 1 page of my scrapbook when I want to do the whole thing, or exercise 1 day this week if I know that the other days won’t be open. I need to learn to accept little victories, and celebrate them as such.

So I guess the point is that any time is a good time to commit to change in our lives. Any time is a good time to make a dent in a project, if we can make that “dent” the goal. After all, it’s when we’re the most motivated to grow that we will be most successful. And that can happen on January 1 or the middle of July.