Do you make New Years Resolutions?  If so, do you write them down and put them pen to paper?  Or are you going to keep them off the paper, just in case they don’t materialize?  Do you skip making resolutions at the start of the year?

In the past, I have done both.  So silly I guess, but I thought for years I had to make a big list of goals.  Then I went through a stage where I totally disagreed with this practice and refused to make “special” New Years Resolutions.  For the past couple of years I even decided to stay away from certain resolutions that I thought I might fail at, such as weight loss.

But now I find myself somewhere in the middle.  I want to have goals for the new year ahead, but I don’t want to dwell on them or let them stifle my freedom and creativity either.  I need basic goals to keep me balanced and moving ahead with purpose, but flexible enough to allow for change when needed.

One specific area of focus for me this year is the fitness and wellbeing of our family unit.  I am going to include the health of the family unit in specific areas such as: physical, nutritional, spiritual, financial, social, relational, life skills, educational, and more.

I came across this great suggestion to boil the resolutions down into 5 simple categories (faith, family, fitness, finances, and friends) and I thought this was brilliant!
I CAN BE SUCCESSFUL in these areas with a simple, flexible statement of what I want to achieve this year.

Here are my New Year Resolutions 2013

Faith:  Encourage activities that promote faith.  Have daily bible study and discussions.  Keep a prayer and praise journal.

Family: Encourage activities that promote family togetherness.

Fitness:  Create a family fitness plan. 

Finances:  Create a new family budget for this year that includes healthy eating, family activities, giving and sharing with others, supporting ministry, reducing debt, and savings.

Friends: Spend time connecting with friends.

I plan to flesh these resolutions out over the next few weeks and develop manageable goals to achieve each of these this year.

This post will be linked up with:
Above Rubies
Raising Homemakers
Sharing Time

Question:
What are your New Year’s resolutions? 

Please leave a comment below, or link up your stories during the month of January and share your resolutions with us.  Thank you.

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