Resolutions Revisited

As usual I totally agree and totally disagree with Iceman. I love resolutions. This is my favorite week of the year where I plan out my goals for the next year, determine what I would like to accomplish in the coming year and what I will do to accomplish those goals. But I appreciate that many people do get briefly excited about resolutions only to fail. Maybe the pressure of this one important moment in time is just too much.

I think the difference might be in the word "resolution" vs "goal". To me a resolution is something you "resolve" to do but doesn't necessarily include alot of planning, instead it is accomplished by sheer will. A goal requires planning and is accomplished with a slow stead plodding forward. If I simply resolve to "eat healthier" in 2010 there is no plan with that, no way to know if I am accomplishing my goal and therefore no motivation and nothing to do but fail. If, on the other hand, I decide to drink 8 glasses of water a day by filling up a pitcher at the beginning of each day and putting it by my sink and not going to bed until it is empty then I know what I need to do to accomplish this task and will know if I am successful or unsuccessful in meeting this goal.

Creating a plan to be better in my life gets me excited. And statistically people who have goals tend to accomplish more than people who just simply let life happen to them. Of course I don't accomplish all my goals but if I never had a dream or a plan I would probably be living in a cramped 2 bedroom apartment with my family because we never would have risked some of the career tracks we have been on, I might not have been able to stay home with my children and we certainly would not have taken a mission trip across the world to Africa. As I told my husband a few years ago when he was resisting goal setting talk, "this life did not just happen to us. I planned it!" He has since come to appreciate the difference goal planning makes in our lives even when we don't quite reach a goal. I would rather try and fail, I always end up further ahead than I started no matter how it ends.

SO...Here are a few things I am tossing around as goals for the new year:

I had been toying with training for a fall marathon to commemorate my 40th birthday but am unsure I am willing to commit to the training. Goose suggested an Iron Girl at her place in June and I suggested the same up here in September. This might be a better way to ring in 40 at this point in my life. Maybe I will put the marathon on my 45th birthday when my 4 year old is in school all day.

I recently read about a runner whose goal is to run 1000 miles this year. Not sure I want to run that many but like the idea of deciding on a number of miles I will go this year. It seems like something I could track all year and broken up would give me a sense of how much I needed to do each week. If I got behind I would need to catch up so I could still meet the goal at the end of the year. I might do this one.

I am also considering some ideas for meal planning this year. Creating a system which I am motivated to follow week in and week out is a bit challenging for me. It is easy to come up with ideas but hard to stay consistent with following them. I love it when I come across books where people have challenged themselves in some arbitrary way for a year. I read one about a couple that decided not to buy any consumer items for a year, no new clothes, books, home decor, etc for a year. There is an article in Women's Day this month about a woman who strove to do something to make herself happy every day for a year and of course the movie Julie and Julia about a woman who wanted to cook all the recipe's in Julia Child's cookbook (haven't seen it so I don't know if that was within a year or not but seems like the same idea). So I have been imagining what it would be like if my family committed to not eat out for an entire year. Realistically I know it isn't going to happen but it has me thinking if maybe we could put some parameters around our eating out habits and see what happens to both our health and our budget.

These are just a few thoughts I am having. Of course I can make changes as I see fit, it is my life, my goals, I can do whatever I want. And although I am not going to put Goose's detox plan for next week in my 2010 goals that doesn't mean I am not going to do it. Actually I have already planned out all my meals for January and have excellent choices to go with a detox diet on the list.

I am looking forward to an exciting and healthy 2010 challenging and being challenged by Iceman and Goose.

Happy New Year!