New Year's Resolutions

I've never been very good at keeping New Year's Resolutions. Not good at all!

But I had an interesting experience...opportunity...on Sunday and I think this year I might actually be able to get somewhere with some resolutions.

Normally on the 5th Sunday, the youth meet with the adults during the third hour of church in our ward. So that's what we planned for this past Sunday. The Young Women's President left church early to drive up north to visit family, but we figured we were good since the youth were meeting with the adults. Imagine my surprise when I found out at the end of Sunday School that the plans had been changed and no one had told the Young Women's Presidency! I had approximately 3 minutes to come up with a lesson. Yikes! The bishopric counsellor over the YW said he would do something since he was going to be visiting YW for a little while, but I told him we could handle it.

After a quick prayer as I was walking down the hall, inspiration hit and my sister E and I started frantically looking up scriptures to go along with the blossoming idea. I think it all turned out really well -- and I couldn't have done it without E's help. I thought of the four categories New Year's Resolutions fall into: home improvement/organization, personal health/fitness, knowledge/learning new things, and spirituality. We found some scripture to go with each category. We talked about why people set goals/resolutions, and what causes people to not reach their goals or keep their resolutions. We talked about breaking things into small, manageable, realistic goals and finding the right kind of motivation. We talked about each of the four areas, read the scriptures that went with them, and then the girls had a piece of paper and pencil so they could write out some goals/resolutions in those four areas, along with ideas for how they could achieve those goals. They really seemed to enjoy the lesson and participated a lot more than I expected. Yea!

I shared with them some of my failed resolutions and they gave me ideas for making the goals more achievable and manageable. I think I'm going to try it.

Home Improvement/Organization: Dejunk and declutter our home by the end of 2007. That gives me one full year. DH is on board, and so are the kids. If we manage to dejunk one room every month, plus the garage, attic, and yard, we'll be in good shape.

Personal Fitness/Health: Exercise a minimum of 15 minutes every day. Right now, that will be accomplished by doing my physical therapy exercises on a daily basis. That, and walking with my best friend, J who lives right behind us. We used to walk together all the time and we need to start again!!

Knowledge: Decide if I'm going to go to law school or do a PhD, and start working on the applications and preparing for entrance exams.

Spirituality: Read the scriptures every day -- even if it's just one verse. We need to get better about doing this as a family, so that's part of the goal, too.

I think these are pretty manageable. We'll see what actually happens!