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You don’t have to wait until January 1st to think about your new year resolutions. It’s never too early to start planning what you want to accomplish in 2015. Life gives us so many directions to take it can be hard to focus on how to make our resolution list successful…so here are a few suggestions.
1.) Start praying about your resolutions
2.) Make a list of things you want to accomplish
3.) Set long term and short term goals
4.) Be specific
Resolutions are just goals you set out to accomplish. Some are realistic and some are not. No matter what they are the first thing to do in order to be successful with your list is to start praying for them now. While it’s great to have a list of some great things you want to accomplish if they aren’t aligned with God’s will then they will fail. So that is why I always recommend starting with praying about your goals. In this first step God can change our hearts if need be.
In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps. –Proverbs 16:9
Next, is making a list of the things that you want to accomplish. Take your time of prayer with the Lord and include things that he has put on your heart. Within those things you want to accomplish set some short and long term goals so that you can plan how you’re going to get there. Lastly, is to be very specific with these lists.
Last year when I was putting together a book proposal I had a lot of great ideas but I wasn’t sure how I was going to assemble them with any structure. The structure of a book proposal forced me to take all of my ideas and make them appear doable.
Without a plan in place 2015 will just be a bunch of fun ideas but sadly they won’t go much farther.
My encouragement to you is to talk to the Lord about your list, your resolutions, then go from there.
Sarah,
This is some great insight. I think it’s easy to say “a new year is coming and I want to change this and that”, but the reality is that change can be hard. In addition to the things you pointed out, I would also encourage people to prioritize their resolutions and focus first on what is most important. You’re right though, Prov 16:9 is a very good verse for this and it needs to fall within God’s will for people to be successful. Thanks so much for sharing. God bless.