January 1, 2021
Updated December 2021
The cold hard truth about New Year’s Resolutions. Are you expecting the most in the new year? What’s the key to being your “best self” in 2022? Well, it’s complicated…
Smart Advice for New Year’s Resolutions
Everybody’s saying “smart” things as the year ends. Clever rhymes, or really intellectual things composed by famous people. There’s a lot of talk about new beginnings, second chances, open doors. Also seeking fulfilment.
And I’m not knocking it. I like to be told to have courage, to dream bigger, and to think beyond the perceived limits.
Funny, isn’t it, to think these things are true all the time but somehow the mile marker of the next year is the time to actually do it.
(I guess it didn’t matter if I drug out the fat pants in September. I get to wait till January 1 to start exercising. 
)
Some of what I’m reading actually makes a lot of sense.
We like good advice, smart advice.
It could help me grow. (Mentally, of course, not into even bigger pants.)
Growing More In The New Year
Growth is exactly what we’re supposed to be doing right? Growing kinder and smarter, growing to be more like Christ, developing our investment in the lives around us.
Growth is good, change is good, and having fresh enthusiasm is good.
Do you think there’s more, though? Something deeper? While I’m deeply inspired by Helen Keller, Anne Frank, and even Dr. Seuss, there’s someone who can actually make my efforts count.
Instead of looking online for a clever quote (one I can repeat to friends and be popular), should I be looking deeper, into life’s purpose?
That’s what brought me to “The Cold Hard Truth About New Year’s Resolutions.”
Personal Direction In Your Resolutions
Did you read the post about creating a personal mission statement? Being Brave When I’m Afraid. It’s about being brave, and understanding the mission, and gathering your courage. It’s worth a read, even if you do it later. For now, here’s a little about that…
Defining your mission is a foundational move. It sets the sights on the destination, and eliminates a great deal of confusion. Also a lot of frantic decision-making. You make the bulk of your decisions ahead of time, then maintain a course.
Without a direction (mission), we tend to flounder.
Putting It All In The Wrong Hands
If mission isn’t driving our decisions and actions, emotions likely are.
Emotions are greedy, bossy things. Like unruly children grabbing doughnuts from the plates of others and racing recklessly through a quiet Christmas gathering, they take us quickly where we shouldn’t be. They get us into trouble.
Emotions are loud and clumsy. They don’t know when to stop.
Just think about it.
When you’ve been “scolded” as an adult, was it emotion that led you astray and embarrassed you, or ultimately even got your hand slapped?
Emotions break in line and insist on their own way. They blurt unkind things that can’t be unsaid.
Furthermore, consider the time those unruly “children” spend dealing with all the consequences of their actions. It’s inevitable that they interfere with peace and progress.
Remember: Emotions are greedy, bossy things. That’s a cold hard truth.
And there’s more. Not just emotions, but missing the mark in another way.
What’s that?
Making the wrong resolutions.
Unfortunately, there’s a kind of thought pattern we have these days that is so impatient.
You know what I mean, right? We want everything fast. Our food, our cars, and our paychecks.
Life is busy, and we don’t really have the luxury of time to sit down and look at our motives or overall goals.
We look for the quick answer in the back of the book, instead of working toward the knowledge that gives answers from our own wisdom.
So instead of constantly learning, building a perspective that yields the answers, we panic when we suddenly find we’re not sure. And then we want the answer to be delivered. Quickly.
It’s a faulty system, one that makes it hard to know what to do. Because we’re unprepared.
It’s frustrating and discouraging. Problems overwhelm us. We develop a pessimistic outlook, and resent our circumstances. (Greedy emotions, anyone?) Soon the path ahead seems to grow dark.
Another cold hard truth.
We want answers, advice, help. We want to be better.
Real help for a better New Year.
Not the worldly advice delivered with glitter and confetti and champagne on December 31st.
Instead of blowing cheap paper horns, we need to be getting serious about our future.
The Cold Hard Truth About New Year’s Resolutions
It’s fine to plan things: Eat better, be kinder, spend more time with loved ones. Those are never wrong.
But there’s more required of me than resolutions.
Here’s what wrong: Making resolutions born of our emotions, not our mission.
Stating our goals with the idea of attaining something, but with a vague or absent connection to our purpose.
We’re after the reward, the result, the relief. But we forgot the purpose.
We need inspiration, motivation. We need the solid truth of Scripture, and the guidance of those strong in faith who have spent their lives seeking to fulfill the call of God. How hungry I am for their advice and their perspective.
I want to connect with purpose and mission, and I want my efforts endorsed by the only one who can bless them. That’s the yearning.
So here’s what you’re looking for, finally: The Cold Hard Truth About New Year’s Resolutions
A resolution should be: a defined result with a stated plan which is the specified goal of a worthy mission that was defined by the life purpose.
I’m sorry, y’all.
That’s not even fun to say.
Feels like having a mouthful of snowballs, doesn’t it?
>> Hang on, though. Don’t run off.
Let’s spin the record backward.
It sounds like this:
A life purpose
with a worthy mission
that has a specified goal
and a stated plan
to achieve a defined result.
Which actually makes sense. Now that it’s in order.
(But it’s still a lot of thinking. Can’t we look in the back of the book and just get the answer?)
This sounds complicated.
The first step: Thinking about it. You don’t have to create a meaningless deadline. January could be your “thinking” month.
Thinking About New Year’s Resolutions
So what do you do in this new year?
Reflect on the disappointments of last year?
- Try to predict the course of the pandemic?
- Lament the direction of our nation and its leadership?
- Try to recover from losses, either physical, financial, or otherwise?
You probably will do those things. I probably will, too.
Here’s the question: Are those activities mission driven? Or are they emotion driven?
C’mon, you know why I’m asking.
We’re not trying to outlaw emotions. We need them. And they are helpful. Emotions are okay.
But we can’t give them the keys to the family car. They can’t be trusted. They don’t know where we’re going.
Give those keys to the person with the mission. Then the car will be heading in the right direction for the whole trip.
Emotions are welcome to ride along. They’ll make the trip more pleasant, and do helpful things — like warn us of danger. They’ll point out the beautiful sunset, and convince us to stop for peaches at the roadside stand.
Emotions. We like their contribution, we just can’t put them in charge.
Begin The New Year With The END In Mind
Do you struggle with the mission? Maybe we all do.
It’s hard to begin with the end in mind. Maybe because we’re overwhelmed in our circumstances, or struggling in some way, or simply discouraged.
But that thing, “begin with the end in mind”, is really the only way.
For some reason, we are reluctant to do this. Maybe because it’s a lot of effort. Coming up with the mission, the intended result, and the method.
Kinda sounds like we’re gonna have to form a committee and host a regional meeting and prepare a Powerpoint to get this done.
Naaaah.
We can do it without all that. We just need to ratchet back on the frantic pace of life, reflect back on some of our pivotal moments, and focus on the important things we know.
The new benefit: we’ll use our wisdom to resolve problems foundationally. We need to abandon those quick-fix methods we’ve fallen back on.
We don’t have to keep hammering the wrong end of the screw.
[I made that up. Just now. To illustrate more than ordinary wrongness; extreme wrongness.🤨 Ordinary wrongness would be a nail.]
Our struggle sometimes is that we’re looking at things completely backward. We’re at the crossroads, and we forgot to plan the trip.
We need help, and it’s all around us. We need to look for the help — those who point us to truth, those who remind us of our mission and who assigned it.
What if we can hear advice from someone actually at the end.
Can I share my favorite quote?
James Dobson’s father, as he lay dying, shared these words.
I have concluded that the accumulation of wealth, even if I could achieve it, is an insufficient reason for living. When I reach the end of my days, a moment or two from now, I must look backward on something more meaningful than the pursuit of houses and land and machines and stocks and bonds. Nor is fame of any lasting benefit. I will consider my earthly existence to have been wasted unless I can recall a loving family, a consistent investment in the lives of people and an earnest attempt to serve the God who made me. Nothing else makes much sense.
—What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew about Women, P.108
Wow. After reading this quotation many times over many years, it still grips me.
Those three things — “a loving family, a consistent investment in the lives of people, and an earnest attempt to serve the God who made me” — are once again sharply carved out of the unimportant, and delivered to me.
Heavy in my hands, I know I’m holding something that matters.
Cold Hard Truths to Anchor Us In The New Year.
You know what else has that feel? God’s Word. I have never picked up my Bible and found it insignificant in my hands. It has solid weight, both physical and spiritual.
Before you make any resolutions, slow down.
Do you know
- Your life purpose?
- Your mission?
- Your goal?
- Your plan?
- The intended result?
It means a lot of thinking, doesn’t it?
Quick resolutions are easy. And not all bad.
Start the diet; it’s time. Walk every day; it’s good for you. Introduce other personal disciplines that have faded. All these are fine.
But spend January connecting with the real thing – your life purpose.
Accept The Cold Hard Truth, and Plan Your Resolutions
Here’s an example:
- Life purpose: To glorify God and enjoy him forever.
- Mission: To worship in tangible, disciplined ways on a regular (daily) basis.
- Goal: To grow in faith and witness.
- Plan: Daily Bible reading, daily prayer, connecting to others on a deeper level.
- Result: Obedience to God, increased wisdom, stronger faith, meaningful relationships.
And it can be much shorter:
To proclaim Christ and the eternal hope. To acknowledge the difficulty of this life and shine a light into the darkness.
Or would you go with a simple statement based on the reflection above:
To earnestly love my family, to make worthy investments in the lives of others, and seek to serve God in every avenue of life.
It’s hard work, I know. It is. But it’s beginning with the end in mind. Beginning with the mission.
More Inspiration For New Year’s Resolutions
You know I’ve got something for you today. Some sweet links to places that share some wisdom.
A link to Savoring Home with 10 Christian Quotes.
Also, Bible Gateway’s Prayer and Thought For the New Year.
Then, there’s that thing we really need. The Word.
Because God already knows we need the plan, the nudge, the motivation. You know what he says?
We can be complete, equipped for every good work. That’s awesome.
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
—2 Timothy 3: 14-17
That’s a lot of cold hard truth about resolutions. I’m sorry.
Here’s something a little nicer: You don’t have to do everything in a few minutes. Take some time, and really slow down and consider things.
The Warm Soft Welcome Into Renewal:
Are you interested in taking the month of January to reconnect to a more meaningful intentional life?
That’s right, take a whole month to decide what’s important, what needs to be accomplished. Here’s a little help with the basics, and then you can build from that.
If you’d like to begin a daily prayer habit, try reading over the recent Prayer Series. You can start this in just minutes a day. If you’re a busy, overwhelmed person, this is for you.
If you’d like to start daily Bible reading, you’ll find plenty of plans.
- Bible Study Tools has one.
- Also ESV has a daily plan.
- See what John MacArthur says about a plan.
These plans often arrange the reading to get through the entire Bible in 365 days.
Or simply start, just reading 1-2 chapters a day. No one says you have to read the whole Bible every year. Well, some people do.
We all can agree on this: It is wise to read a little Scripture every day.
That should help you get a little jump start.
After all that, you may be asking…
What was today about?
- Connecting Scripture to your purpose.
- Connecting your purpose to your mission.
- Connecting your mission to your actions.
I can say “Happy New Year” because I do want you to have that. But I love you enough to say “Meaningful New Year” also.
Would you be willing to share what you think is a helpful? A way to move into the new year — and making things better?
After all, that’s why you’re here. To make things better. And you just did. Thank you for reading.
Thank you for visiting! At GFP company is always welcome!
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-Grammye
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