These next few days are great days for reflection and resolve. It is healthy to evaluate your life every year, to be thankful for the good things, to learn from the mistakes, and to focus on the priorities of life for the future.
There are a few cautions and recommendations about this process.
- Be honest with yourself about the past. If you did something well--admit it. Enjoy it. If you failed in an area--face it. Change begins with a reality-check.
- Don't limit yourself by your past. Sometimes successes can become like sedatives. They put you to sleep and you fail to realize the effort necessary to sustain success, or the opportunity before you to rise to the next level. Failures are not like sedatives, they are like torpedoes. Don't let your past failures keep you from dreaming for the future. Just because you didn't make it before, does not mean that cannot make it now.
- Don't over-depend on personal resolve. This is often why 'resolutions' fail. They are dependent on determined emotion. When the emotion of a new year leaks away, there is no 'resolve' left to sustain the change.
- Be S-M-A-R-T. Specific. Measurable. Agreed Upon (be accountable to someone). Realistic. Time-based. Rather than depending on 'resolve', form a strategy that is well thought out in advance. Set a goal to go 21 days rather than an entire year. Research has revealed that it takes 21 days to establish a new habit. You can make it for 3 weeks. If you do, it will establish a healthy pattern that is easier to maintain. So set a goal and confess your goal to someone who can join you and/or hold you accountable. When you achieve your goal, take time to celebrate success. Then set a new time-based goal to keep the progress going.
- Target PROGRESS not perfection. Many times people do succeed with a New Years Resolution, but they do not recognize their success because they fail once or more. They may have done better in a particular area of life than ever before, but at the first sign of weakness or failure--they give up. So don't measure your development by perfection. Use progress or growth as your sign of success.
- Don't try to change too much at once. We try to go from undisciplined in 10 areas to complete discipline in 10 areas. That is just too much change for any one person to manage in a short period of time. Determine what the most important discipline needs improved. Which discipline is most likely to affect the others areas of your life. For me that is my daily time with God. When I get full of the Holy Spirit, He is a helper in every other area of my life.
- Get centered. We discipline ourselves not just for the sake of discipline, but for a greater purpose. So define your 'why'. Why do I want to change? What is the rallying cry that I will return to when things get tough? My center is this: I live to please God and care about people. This is my missions statement in life. What is yours?
Use this frame-work and you will be able to set one or two goals for the new year and achieve them with the help of the Holy Spirit and the grace that comes from your relationship with Christ.
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