Chase The Kangaroo

Who We Become by December

January always arrives with noise.

Lists. Promises. Bold declarations about the person we plan to become by sheer force of will. Five resolutions. Ten habits. A year that will finally be different, if we just want it badly enough.

Most of us already know how this story goes.

A few weeks of effort. A quiet drift back to familiar ground. By spring, the list is forgotten, folded into a drawer or buried in a notes app, replaced by the next urgent thing.

The problem isn’t discipline.
It isn’t desire.
It’s direction.

Resolution, in its older sense, was never about grand declarations. It was about resolve. About deciding where you are headed, then choosing to walk that direction long enough for it to matter.

Real change rarely announces itself. It accumulates.

Small decisions. Repeated actions. Ordinary faithfulness practiced long enough to compound. Progress so subtle it often goes unnoticed until one day you realize the ground beneath your feet has shifted.

This isn’t an essay about five resolutions that will change your life in 2026. It’s an invitation to something quieter and more demanding.

To stop asking what you want to achieve this year, and begin asking a better question:

What direction am I choosing to walk, and who do I want to be at the end of 2026?

The Roles That Shape the Year

Before we talk about habits, plans, or systems, we have to slow down and name something more basic.

None of us live as blank slates.

We move through our days carrying roles, whether we consciously claim them or not. Spouse. Parent. Son or daughter. Friend. Worker. Business owner. Creator. Caregiver. Steward of our health. Member of a community. Each role carries weight. Each one shapes the people around us, often more than we realize.

This is where I want you to pause.
Not to improve anything yet. Not to fix. Just to name.

Take a moment and list the roles you actually occupy in this season of life. Not the roles you aspire to someday. The ones that meet you where you are right now.

As you name them, pay attention to what follows. Each role creates a ripple. Presence or absence is felt. How you show up as a spouse changes the climate of a home. How you carry yourself as a parent shapes the emotional weather a child grows up in. How you act as a leader, a coworker, or a creative sets a tone others quietly adapt to.

This isn’t about measuring success. It’s about recognizing influence.
Once the roles are named, the next step is reflection.

Ask yourself honestly and without defense how you have been showing up in each role. Not how you intend to. Not how you explain it to yourself. But how it would likely be described by the people on the receiving end of your presence.

Most years don’t require reinvention. They require attention.

A husband doesn’t become more faithful through grand gestures, but through steady presence. A parent doesn’t shape a child through occasional intensity, but through consistency. A business owner doesn’t build trust through vision statements, but through daily decisions that honor people over convenience. A creative doesn’t find clarity by waiting for inspiration, but by returning to the work again and again.

Roles clarify direction because they remove abstraction. They show us where effort actually matters.

If nothing changes, where does this role end up by December?

That question isn’t meant to accuse. It’s meant to orient. It reveals drift. It also reveals quiet faithfulness that often goes unnoticed because it doesn’t announce itself.

Only after roles are named and reflected on does direction become possible.

Direction, Bearing, and Course Correction

Once roles are clear, something else becomes obvious.
Staying still is no longer neutral.

Every role you carry is already moving in a direction. Toward attentiveness or neglect. Toward patience or irritation. Toward clarity or drift. Toward health or erosion. The question is not whether you are moving, but whether you are moving deliberately.

This is where the idea of bearing matters.

A bearing is not a destination. It’s an orientation. It’s how you stay pointed in the right direction as conditions change. Anyone who has driven a long distance or sailed open water understands this instinctively. You don’t point the wheel once and let go. You make continual adjustments. Traffic slows. Roads close. Weather shifts. Obstacles appear that weren’t on the map when you started.

Life works the same way.

The idea that we can set a destination in January and simply arrive there by December ignores reality. Work changes. Health fluctuates. Relationships strain and heal. Unexpected responsibilities surface. Curve balls arrive without asking permission. Thinking we can set and forget our course isn’t optimism. It’s denial.

Bearing assumes disruption.

It accepts that progress requires attention, not rigidity. The goal isn’t to eliminate obstacles, but to respond to them without losing orientation. When the road closes, you reroute. When the wind shifts, you adjust. When you drift, you correct.

Admiral James Stavridis returns to this idea throughout Sailing True North, arguing that leadership and life are less about controlling conditions and more about staying oriented when they change.

Most of us don’t need dramatic change. We need steady correction.

Drift is rarely rebellion. It’s distraction, fatigue, neglect. Course correction doesn’t require condemnation. It requires awareness.

A small adjustment, made early and held consistently, can change where you end up entirely.

This is why bearing matters more than ambition. Ambition focuses on outcomes. Bearing shapes daily decisions. Ambition asks what you want to achieve. Bearing asks how you continue moving the right way when conditions change.

As a spouse, your bearing might be toward presence rather than efficiency.
As a parent, toward patience rather than control.
As a leader or business owner, toward stewardship rather than speed.
As a creative, toward faithfulness rather than inspiration.
As a steward of your health, toward sustainability rather than intensity.

These aren’t goals. They’re directions. And directions ask for attention, not perfection.

Charting the Course

Once roles are named and bearing is chosen, the next step isn’t to rush into action. It’s to chart the course.

Charting a course differs from setting goals. Goals fixate on outcomes. A course accounts for terrain. It considers where you’re starting, what you’re carrying, and what conditions you’re likely to face along the way.

This is where roles, direction, and agency come together.

Begin with the roles you’ve named. Each already contains responsibility and opportunity. Charting the course simply asks, given this role and this direction, what kind of movement is required of me?

Not dramatic movement. Faithful movement.

For each role, clarity matters. One sentence is often enough. Not a resolution, but an orientation. Not what you’ll accomplish, but how you intend to move through that role in the coming season.

This is where small practices begin to make sense.

As James Clear writes in Atomic Habits, “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”

Small, repeatable actions aren’t trivial. They’re formative. Chosen wisely, they reinforce direction without demanding constant motivation. One practice, aligned with one role, is often enough.

Charting the course also requires humility. You won’t foresee every obstacle. A course isn’t a guarantee. It’s a reference point. Something to return to when drift happens.

And drift will happen.

The difference now is that drift no longer signals failure. It simply calls for adjustment.

Agency and Resolve

Once direction is chosen and the course is charted, one question remains.

Do you actually believe you can act on it?

Agency is a quiet word, but it carries weight. It means this: within the limits of your life, choice remains.

Circumstances matter. History matters. Limits are real. And still, response is yours.

Viktor Frankl, reflecting on human freedom under extreme constraint in Man’s Search for Meaning, argued that between what happens to us and how we respond lies the space where meaning and responsibility take shape.

Agency doesn’t promise control over outcomes. It promises responsibility for direction.

Resolve grows out of this understanding.

Resolve isn’t intensity. It’s steadiness. It’s the decision to keep returning to the bearing you’ve chosen, especially after drift. Resolve doesn’t shame you for getting off course. It simply calls you back.

Jeff Olson makes this case clearly in The Slight Edge, arguing that small daily disciplines, repeated consistently over time, inevitably shape the direction of our lives.

What feels insignificant in isolation becomes decisive through consistency.

Resolve corrects a familiar distortion. We overestimate what we can change in a week and underestimate what we can shape in a year. Resolve trades urgency for faithfulness.

Agency says, I can choose again today.
Resolve says, and I will.
Together, they form the backbone of a year lived intentionally.

Walking Toward December

December will arrive whether we plan for it or not.

The question is how we will have moved through the year by the time it does. Whether the months ahead will be shaped mostly by reaction and demand, or whether they’ll carry the quiet imprint of intention.

When you ask who you want to be at the end of 2026, you aren’t asking for a perfect version of yourself. You’re asking for alignment. For continuity. For a life lived with attention to what matters.

As James Allen wrote more than a century ago in As a Man Thinketh, “A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”

That version of you isn’t built through grand declarations. It’s shaped through bearing. Through small choices made repeatedly. Through course corrections handled without drama.

You won’t walk this year in a straight line. No one does. There will be detours. Slowdowns. Unexpected weight added to the load. That doesn’t disqualify the journey. It simply demands attention.

Direction matters because it gives you something to return to.
Agency matters because it reminds you that returning is always possible.

Resolve matters because it keeps you walking when progress feels quiet and unremarkable.

This isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about becoming more faithful to the life you’re already living.

So take the time now. Name the roles. Choose the bearing. Chart the course. Then walk.

Not perfectly. Not loudly. Just deliberately.

December will tell the story.

And if you’ve paid attention along the way, it will be a story worth standing inside.

Year Bearing: Field Notes

Year Bearing is not a one-time exercise. It’s a practice that benefits from return and recalibration as the year unfolds.

Throughout 2026, I’ll be sharing short Field Notes to help revisit direction, check bearing, and make small course corrections as seasons change.

January 8 – Year Bearing: Setting the Course
Naming your roles and choosing a clear direction at the start of the year.