My New Year's Resolutions

In younger years, my new year's resolutions were, I have to admit, marked by pomposity. There's nothing like butting up against life to make a person rethink setting grandiose goals.

It isn't that I don't believe in having dreams. I still believe in them. But I also think that resolutions ought to be marked by a realistic assessment of one's self and, speaking for myself anyway, the right motives.

I recently linked to a post by happiness-seeker Gretchen Rubin on guidelines for sticking to new year's resolutions. I liked what she wrote. As I indicated in my post, the only thing I would add is the need to undergird our resolutions with prayer.

There are several reasons for that, two most notably. First, when we pray about something, we invite God in. God can give us the power, motivation, and insight needed to keep our resolutions or to change them, if necessary. Second, when we pray about something, we're reminded of it. Praying underscores our resolutions as priorities for us.

While my resolutions for 2009, have a bit more detail to them than presented here, I list them in hopes that they might motivate you to make your own simple new year's resolutions...and to make more accountable for keeping mine:

• Pray more.
• Study more.
• Work out the same amount of time I've been dedicating to it in the past month or so.
• Blog less.

That's it.

Do you have any new year's resolutions?

Whatever your answer may be to that question, thanks for being a reader of Better Living and God bless you with a goo 2009.