Practice makes it possible

Oh dear.

My very first post after making my "resolutions" is about how I'm not doing as good as I hoped. I was afraid this was going to happen.

BUT... then again I'm a frustrated perfectionist so I shouldn't be surprised. This is why I evaluated and picked the resolutions that I did. So when the inevitable happened and I became sidetracked, I could look at them honestly to see if they were the right ones to start with.

When I started to beat myself up for not following through (again!), this time I tried to re-evaluate instead. Did I need to do something different? Did I need to look even further out of the box to accomplish my goals? Did I need to break the goals down even smaller? And instead of just feeling angry with myself, I came up with a couple of do-able solutions.

1) The places I scattered my devotionals are not necessarily in plain view so I'm going to make little reminder signs to help me out.
2) Even though I haven't posted twice or even once a week, I HAVE done a lot of behind the scenes work on it, finished up some old posts, and worked a lot on my other blog.
3) And housework- the bane of my existence! I've haven't followed all of the reminders the FlyLady send me but I have shined my sink most nights and I'm learning how to make better use of my time through using my timer!

As I was thinking about all this, I realized anew the problem with New Year's resolutions- you fail before you even begin by expecting perfection just by making the resolution. I've done this to myself so many times before. Attempts at piano lessons come to mind. But we really don't work that way. We need time and lots and LOTS of practice.

I also have to remind myself that the goal was to get better at all of this by next year, not be perfect next week. (It begs to ask the question if it really was the goal, if I'm frustrated already!)
So I'm going to give it a go again with more patience and permission to take time to build these habits in my life. I'll also keep you updated how I'm doing.

Here's to making our Timer our Friend in 2010!