NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS YOU CAN KEEP Are you sick of making the same resolutions year after year that you never keep? Why not promise to do something you can actually accomplish? Here are some resolutions that you can use as a starting point: ~ Gain weight. At least 30 pounds. ~ Stop exercising. Waste of time. ~ Read less. Makes you think. ~ Watch more TV. I've been missing some good stuff. ~ Procrastinate more. Starting tomorrow. ~ Spend more time at work, surfing with the T1. ~ Take a vacation to someplace important, like to see the world's largest ball of twine. ~ Don't jump off a cliff just because everyone else did. ~ Stop bringing lunch from home--eat out more. ~ Don't have eight children at once. ~ Get in a whole NEW rut! ~ Start being superstitious. ~ Personal goal: Don't bring back disco. ~ Don't box with Mike Tyson. ~ Buy an '83 Eldorado and invest in a really loud stereo system. Get the windows tinted. Buy some fur for the dash. ~ Speak in a monotone voice and only use monosyllabic words. ~ Only wear jeans that are 2 sizes too small and use a chain or rope for a belt. ~ Spend my summer vacation in cyberspace. ~ Don't eat cloned meat. ~ Create loose ends. ~ Get more toys. ~ Get further in debt. ~ Don't believe politicians. ~ Break at least one traffic law. ~ Don't drive a motorized vehicle across thin ice. ~ Don't swim with piranhas or sharks. ~ Associate with even worse business clients. ~ Spread out priorities beyond the ability to keep track of them. ~ Wait for opportunity to knock. ~ Focus on the faults of others. ~ Mope about faults. ~ Never make New Year's resolutions again.

Look past the process to the promise--the process often makes you bitter.

People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years, and underestimate what will happen in the next ten. – Bill Gates

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to bet better than yourself. --

Work is a passage of self-discovery. It is not the pots we are forming, but ourselves. -- M.C. Richards, potter

High aims form high characters, and great objectives bring out great minds. -- Tryon Edwards

You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometime fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?" -- Robert Louis Stevenson

It is not possible to fight beyond your strength, even if you strive. – Homer, Iliad, 700 B.C.

If you treat an individual as he is, he will stay that way, but if you treat him as if he were what he could be, he will become what he could be. -- Goethe

A dead ministry will always make a dead people, whereas if ministers are warmed with the love of God themselves, they cannot but be instruments of diffusing that love among others. This, this is the best preparation for the work whereunto you are to be called. Learning without piety will only make you more capable of promoting the kingdom of Satan. Henceforward, therefore, I hope you will enter into your studies not to get a parish, nor to be polite preachers, but to be great saints. -- George Whitefield

However much we may wish it, divine perfection does not set in at conversion. But divine infection does." -- Gordon Fee, Christianity Today, June 17, 1996, p. 22

Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it; men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts, we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled; and by doing brave acts, we become brave. -- Aristotle

When the time to perform arrives, the time to prepare is past. Chance favors only the mind that is prepared. -- Louis Pasteur

As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information. -- Benjamin Disraeli

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.

He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.

Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.

Knowing your own strength is a fine thing. Recognizing your own weakness is even better. What is really bad, what hurts and finally defeats us, is mistaking a weakness for a strength.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. -- Dhammapada (Buddha)

Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak. – John Selden, 1564-1654

Man cannot remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor.

But negative lessons are just as valuable as positive ones. Perhaps even more valuable: it's hard to repeat a brilliant performance, but it's straightforward to avoid errors.

Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, I think—as long as they don't seize the error hungrily because it has a pleasanter taste.

The preacher must live a life of large accumulation. He must not be always trying to make sermons, but always seeking truth, and out the truth which he has won the sermons will make themselves... Here is the need of broad and generous culture. Learn to study for the sake of truth, learn to think for the profit and the joy of thinking. Then your sermons shall be like the leaping of a fountain, and not like the pumping of a pump.

If your dream were to compose music, would you say to yourself: "I've heard a lot of symphonies... I can also play the piano. I think I'll knock one out this weekend"? No. But that's exactly how many screenwriters begin: "I've seen a lot of flicks, some good and some bad... I got an A in English... vacation time's coming..." ... The novice plunges ahead, counting soley on experience, thinkng that the life he's lived and the films he's seen give him something to say and the way to say it. Experience, however, is overrated. Of course we want writers who don't hide from life, who live deeply, observe closely. This is vital but never enough. For most writers, the knowledge they gain from reading and study equals or outweighs experience, especially if that experience goes unexamined. <i>Self-knowledge</i> is the key--life <i>plus</i> deep reflection on our reactions to life.

As for technique, what the novice mistakes for craft is simply his unconscious absorption of story elements from every novel, film, or play he's ever encountered. As he writes, he matches his | work by trial and error against a model built up from accumulated reading and watching. The unschooled writer calls this "instinct," but it's merely habit and it's rigidly limiting.

Never be satisfied with with your preaching. Once you are, nobody else will be.

Have you invested as much this year in your career as in your car?

God doesn't need your intelligence to use you, but He needs your ignorance even less!

In holy and divine matters one must first hear rather than see, first believe rather than understand, first be grasped rather than grasp, first be captured rather than capture, first learn rather than teach, first be a disciple rather than a teacher and master of his own. We have an ear so that we may submit to others, and eyes that we may take care of others. Therefore, whoever in the church wants to become an eye and a leader and master of others, let him become an ear and a disciple first. This first.

I am learning slowly to bring my crazy pinball-machine mind back to this place of friendly detachment toward myself, so I can look out at the world and see all those other things with respect. Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don’t drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor’s yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper. So I keep trying gently to bring my mind back to what is really there to be seen, maybe to be seen and noted with a kind of reverence.

So how much time should you devote to reading and studying each week, month or year? Lots! Actually, I can’t answer that question for you. You must work hard and seek counsel to come up with your own custom-designed plan. If you don’t know how or where to start, check out John Stott’s time allotments for study (apart from sermon preparation), which he has followed for many years: One hour a day One 3 hour period a week One day every month One week every year

Eat like a bird and poop like an elephant. (In other words, glean from many sources and produce something substantial).

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous.

People are known as much by the quality of their failures as by the quantity of their successes. So if you're going to make mistakes (and believe me, you will), make sure they are smart rather than dumb ones. "Dumb errors" tend to be sins of omission - where you are expected to do something and, either trhough incompetence or forgetfulness, don't. "Smart errors" tend to be sins of commission - for example, as your company's chief financial officer, you decide the dollar will go down, act accordingly, and then it doesn't. If you've done your homework, your career (like the dollar) will recover.

The artist Bruce Herman was telling me that from childhood he’d been exceptionally good at drawing. Everybody thought he was brilliant. Then one day he placed his portfolio in front of an artist whose work he admired. The artist silently looked at Bruce’s work for a long time. Finally he broke the silence and said, “Bruce you’ve got a lot of talent, but you aren’t very skilled, and to be a great artist requires both talent and skill.”

Humans seek two distinct psychological states. One originates in sensation; the other in a cognitive judgment. The attainment of either permits a brief bout of joy, followed by hours, days, weeks, or months during which one tries to re-experience the lovely moment. Although a small proportion spend many hours of each day trying to capture the pleasures that originate in sensation, a much larger number spend the same amount of time gathering evidence that permits the judgment that self has matched its features to an ideal.

Adam was lonely and God took Eve out of Adam to solve his problem. So we see that God has given us everything we need in ourselves - we just need His help to find it. {paraphrased}

The Law is like the stakes you put in the ground to make your plants grow up straight. Eventually the plant internalizes the structure and becomes straight because of its nature - it no longer needs to be bound to the stake. In fact, if it tries to conform itself to the stake too tightly it will become twisted and won't grow to its full potential. {paraphrased}