New Year's Resolutions

New Year's Resolutions have gone to the dogs… already.

January first has come and gone, and once again, I haven’t made any resolutions. I used to. I had lists of things I wanted to change, stuff I thought would make my life perfect – or at least better. They never lasted, and I’ve gotten the impression that’s the way it is for most people. Especially since it seems “lose weight” is on so many people’s resolution list. Over and over. (Sorry, didn’t mean to say “over” when talking about dieting, so again and again.)

I do, however, have goals. Plans for this year, things I’d like to accomplish. And I have several lists of goals. There’s one for the dog training I want to do for each dog, another for the titles I think they can earn, seminars and clinics I’d like to attend, and of course goals for the business. It can take weeks of dreaming and planning to come up with my goal lists.

Goals have a plan of attack inherent in them. If I just HAVE to hear a certain seminar speaker, I know I can’t rely on that weekend’s obedience trial to finish a title. And to finish a title by a certain time, I need to sharpen up Kiernan’s heeling way before that.  Goals have steps, mini-goals, accomplishments along the way. And if I don’t make a goal, I don’t feel like it reflects on myself quite like breaking a resolution does. Instead I examine the process to get there.

It’s not quite so clear with a resolution. My resolutions were vague, generic: “be neater,” “don’t be late,” “lose weight.”  And if I broke them down into smaller bites, “make my bed every day” soon fell away the first morning I woke up late. Somehow I expected to be the perfect person I wanted to be, instantly. Resolutions were kept or broken.

The dictionary on my computer defines goal as “the destination of a journey” and “the object of a person’s ambition or effort.”  I like the implication that a plan has to be in place in order to reach a goal.  Resolution is “a firm decision to do or not do something.” It’s more about the final outcome than the process of getting there.

As Bob Bailey says, “Be a splitter, not a lumper.” It’s a process, and along the way there may be detours, but there is a map too.

And certainly one needs to be “resolved” in order to reach one’s goals, I’ll stick to my goals.