I haven’t made any New Year Resolutions for 2013. Last year I had a whole load of plans and goals in January and ended up failing at pretty much each and every one of them.

Good intentions are one thing but when life gets in the way, we usually hit a snag.

A year is a long time and sometimes it’s good to look ahead but sometimes it just doesn’t work.

Consider the person who has decided to lose weight and get healthy. For a couple months they lose weight and get fit and then suddenly realise that they have another 10 months of 7am workouts and no Mars bars.

Or the person who commits to reading one book every month but then lack of time starts to diminish their appetite for it.

Or the person who wants to write a blog series, commenting every day on the book of Matthew and then realizes that is a mental idea and remembers they are not NT Wright.

And then there is the person who decides that they want to change their character rather than specific behaviours. Who realizes a year is longer than they think so breaks it up into small sections with small achievable sustainable goals. Who decides to nurture small daily habits that are easy to grow and after enough work become second nature. Who remembers why they enjoyed running in the first place and sees that pleasure as their new goal.

Who looks back at the end of the year and realizes they have changed, grown, succeeded and won more than they thought they ever could. More than grandiose resolutions would ever allow.

I’m not making any resolutions this year but I am asking myself a daily question, which person am I?