I remember - at a much younger age - making an elaborate set of New Year's resolutions every year. Eventually I discovered that change is harder than it looks, so I stopped creating my lists. But we do need times of re-evaluation - when we look at our lives and recognize the need for change.
I have recently come to appreciate the Benedictine approach: Every day is a new beginning!
Benedictines call "continual conversion" the growth that naturally occurs when people pray, study and put into practice what they learn. To this growth process, the Benedictines add an indispensable step: "when we fail and fail and fail ... never ... despair."*
I love this practical approach! Rather than focusing on perfection and becoming stressed by failure, view it as inevitable. Try. Fail. (It's inevitable!) But then, get up and try again!
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*The quote above is from Joan Chittister's Wisdom Distilled From the Daily: "We're told not not to be proud or intent on control, to resist addictions, to use our energies well, to avoid negative thoughts and negative speech patterns, to recognize our own creaturehood, to nourish the interior life, to live with seriousness of purpose and consciousness of ultimate things, to reach out to others, to love with a love that is nonexploitive, to be a healing presence, and, finally, when we fail and fail and fail in all of these, never to despair..."
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