No Resolutions

Are your New Year's Resolutions still intact?  We make them every year---and usually they are broken before February.  There's the "I will lose weight" resolution which may include the "I will have better eating habits" resolution.  Then there's the ones that go along with being more organized, having it all together, followed by the ones that include attitudes---like I will be more kind, complain less, have more patience, etc, etc.  There are many many different ones.   The trouble with "resolutions" is that once they are broken we tend to say "Well, there it goes, I'm done" and quit trying.  Resolutions work as long as you keep them. They require a certain "perfection", if you will.  Unfortunately, we are fallen human beings and we make mistakes and cannot do anything perfectly.  That belongs to God alone.  So when we make resolutions we are setting ourselves up for failure---and the sense of worthlessness and discouragement that goes with it.  Why do we do this?  I know why we do. We really want to improve ourselves and a fresh new year seems like the perfect time to "start over".  So year after year we make these resolutions, and year after year we err and give up, and year after year come December 31st we start all over again.  Well this year I decided to do something different--or maybe I should say I decided to try a different perspective.  Perspective can really change things!  I decided this year to reach for goals instead of resolving anything.  Goals are meant to be reached over time.  They don't happen overnight. You set a goal and then form some kind of plan to reach that goal---though even the plan may have to change and evolve as you go along. You also know that along the way you might mess up.  But that's ok.  Just leave the goal in place and keep reaching for it.  With a goal, nothing gets "broken".  Even when the progress seems miniscule, with a goal you just keep plodding toward it.  You can set a goal for anything--just like the resolutions.  But I think setting a goal allows you to keep going forward---which is really what we want anyway, right?  Think of going on a hike up a mountain.  Your goal is the summit, always the summit.  But along the way maybe you see something beautiful off to the side of the trail (and you must go photograph it, like me!), or perhaps you didn't see the signs, and you find yourself on a secondary trail.  You don't say "Well that's it!  I didn't stay on the main trail so I'm going back home."  No!  You find the main trail again and head on forward toward the summit.  Resolutions and goals are like that.  Resolutions send you back home, back to square one to start over, whereas goals allow you to pick up again and keep going forward.  Isn't that so much better?  So here I am with my goals.  Knowing me, my progress will be slow.  But I hope to keep on moving forward, so that when December of 2014 arrives I can move my goal posts forward to set new ones.  What do you have?  Resolutions that hold you back, or goals that move you forward?  =)