New Year's Goal Setting

As much as I love Christmas and my birthday (shameless I know...I'm such a big kid), New Year's Day may be my favorite day of the year. A list-making idealist at heart, there's just something about new beginnings, clean slates, and fresh starts that energizes me. It's why I love mornings, Mondays, and God's mercies (they are new every morning...see Lamentations 3:22-23). Each new day brings with it the opportunity to do things better. Maybe I like starting over so much because I mess up so much. I like having another shot...and another...and another.

Needless to say, I love the idea of resolutions. It's the follow through that trips me up. I used to make vague lists of resolutions, but a couple of years ago I switched to setting goals because a well-worded goal that's specific has a much better chance of getting accomplished. I also forced myself to narrow down the list considerably, as in only two or three items. And of course, one of the best ways to ensure you make progress is to enforce some sort of accountability. Posting my little list here on the blog probably only counts as some form of pseudo-accountability though. The best way to create accountability is to share your goal(s) with someone else and give them permission to harass, uh, I mean ask, you frequently about progress.

So, here are my goals for the year along with the reasons:

1. Learn more about prayer. Prayer is definately a discipline I struggle with, but this year I want to learn what God has to say about prayer, meaning I want to take a fresh look at what the Bible actually says. I was inspired in part by Richard Foster, who wrote in his book Celebration of Discipline, about taking everything Jesus said regarding prayer in the Gospels and putting it all together to take a good look. I figure with the help of biblegateway.com and a printer I may be able to do this too. And along with the "learning about" I hope to improve my "practice of" prayer.
2. Conduct experiments in healthy living. Yeah, the terminology is odd, but I chose it on purpose and here's why: experiments never actually fail. Experiments are, by their nature, designed to test a theory or hypothesis, therefore, you can't fail. When you conduct an experiment, you either successfully find something that works or something that doesn't work. A simple distinction, but an important one. I like the idea of applying this to healthy habits. I'm going to "experiment" with foods, activities, and thought processes and see what works. The details are still a bit fuzzy on this one, but I'll get there.
3. Learn how to do something new. There are a couple of crafty things that I'm really wanting to try, and I'm itching to get my hands on a guitar, and it might be fun to know how to cook something besides a hot pocket. We'll see how this goes. :)

So, there you have it, way more than you wanted to know about my goals for 2007. How about you, what are you trying to do in 2007?