How not to fail with your New Year’s Resolutions

Somehow, the beginning of a new year stimulates us to make resolutions. Lose a few pounds, start a new habit, seek to make a more positive impact on the people around you. If you began the New Year like that, you may by now already feel like you have failed. You would be in good company too. Is there a way to escape the failed attempts and to achieve our set goals? Do we just keep trying, hoping that this time we will somehow produce the wished for result?

Those who study how lasting change happens point out that TRAINING rather than TRYING is what’s necessary!

Let’s say I wanted to run a marathon in 2015. The first thing I need to face is that if I have never run farther than from the couch to the refrigerator, my attempt to run for 26 miles will fail miserably. I have to start where I am, not where I want to be. I need to put together a realistic plan that builds on my current fitness level. The first few weeks might need to be spent just running, or even walking for one mile a day. As my endurance increases, I will be able run for two, five, ten, and eventually all 26 miles of a marathon.

“If I engage in the necessary disciplines and do the things I can do, God will do in me the things that only He can do.”

Can we apply this approach in reaching the goal to become more patient for instance? Our starting point might be to observe how we tend to rush through life. Here is a test: When you go shopping, do you scan the checkout lines to determine which one is the shortest? Do you become restless when you chose the one that looked best to you, only to find out that for some reason it took you longer than the person who was behind you? Here is my confession: That’s me!

In my pursuit to become a more patient person I have begun to train, by consciously taking what looks to be the slowest lane on occasion and to quietly speak blessing over the person in front of me. How does that help me to grow more patient? Well, it doesn’t immediately, but the secret lies in the fact that as I engage in these kinds of deliberate activities and do the things that I can do, God has promised to do in me the things that only HE can do.

How about it? Let’s train together to become who we are meant to be.