goals | The Catholic Realist

What moves you, and what makes you be moved?

Posted on February 15, 2012 by joesuperdad

We’ve all heard the cliches about hard work. You get out of something what you put into it. Pray like it all depends on God, work like it all depends on you. Hard work equals success. Talent only gets you so far. Luck is the residue of design. Let me know of others – I’m sure there’s lots more out there.

Yes, this is more about my running. But more than about my running. When I run, I am praying. Every morning, within my first few steps, I am giving God that run, that morning, that day… my life.

The view at my 10-mile race last Saturday (from Checkers AC pictures of the race)

New Year’s Ir-Resolutions

Posted on January 20, 2012 by ymkbird

I had a friend once assess my inability to complete a project saying, “You’ve got high initiative, but low follow through.” I would have been offended if he hadn’t been absolutely right. I think this is why I hate New Year’s Resolutions. It’s the end of the Christmas season and I’ve usually been gorging on delicious (in other words, unhealthy) foods since Thanksgiving. I get all these great ideas in my head (high initiative) and think about the goals I could set for myself: workout more, eat better, say the rosary every day, go to daily Mass once a week, start writing a book (or a blog – ha!). And then I try to do them all on January 2nd – which ends up being a very busy day. On January 3, I manage to complete most of them…same with January 4. By the time Christmas break is over and I’m back to work, I’m lucky if I’ve still stuck with one…and that one usually fails by the end of January (if not sooner).

So this year, I’m going to try Irresolutions instead.

Quite possibly the real reason I hate New Year's Resolutions...

(I’m an English major and a bit of a word geek…I’m aware of the nerd factor in this, just bear with me).

If a resolution is a firm decision (according to Webster), then an irresolution is a moment of hesitation or wavering. This year I’m going for irresolution. Instead of diving head first into decisions or promises that aren’t realistic and that I haven’t really given much thought to, I’m going to be wavering and hesitating a whole lot more. Hopefully, I’m going to be taking more things to prayer and discernment before jumping into them. I’m going to try to give each new idea an incubation period in an attempt to level out my “high initiative” peak into some more solid follow through. This is going to mean I’m going to have to set aside some really good ideas, but my hope is that the result will be maybe just one or two ideas that I actually see to completion.

For now, I’m going to go put on a workout DVD…because I do still have a desire to rid myself of these holiday hips…I’m just not making any promises about how long that desire will last.