by ROBIN O’BRYANT

I am vehemently against New Year’s Resolutions—for myself, anyway. By nature, I’m a rule breaker. If I say I’m giving up carbs for a week, I can think of nothing but pasta and bread constantly until I indulge. It’s not something I like about myself but it’s who I am. Whatever the rules are, I’m going to try to push the limit to see how much I can get away with.

The only resolution I’ve ever successfully kept was in 2010 when I resolved to stop buying clothes at Wal-Mart. My children were moving out of the “spit-up-wipe-my-nose-on-mommy” stage and it was time to stop dressing in the equivalent of a hazmat suit. I needed motivation to exercise and not to “let myself go.” My solution was to bribe myself with clothes from exotic and expensive designers like Target and JC Penney. It worked, and for the first time in my life I successfully kept my resolution.

I’m not a fan of rules and resolutions, but I am a fan of reflection—without it, we continue to make the same mistakes. Socrates said on Pinterest, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” (That was a joke. I know Socrates is still on MySpace.)

There’s no better time of year to pause and reflect on how you want to live your life than at the end of a year, as a new year stretches out in front of us. I’ve said it before, the gift that God has given us in the monotony of motherhood is that we have one million chances to get it right. As the New Year rolls in, I am taking time to pray, to look critically at how I spent my time and my resources last year and asking, “What can I do better? What can I give up? How can I give my kids and my husband the best version of me possible?”

I’m pretty sure of the answers I’m going to come up with: less online time, more Jesus time, more face time with my kids and husband, and continuing to wear my exotic, designer clothes.

Robin O’Bryant is mother to three daughters, wife to one husband, and debut author of Ketchup Is A Vegetable And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves. She shares the drama and hilarity of motherhood in her syndicated family humor column, “Robin’s Chicks” and on her blog by the same name (www.robinschicks.com).