By Jake Thurston
2020 is behind us! Whether this year was pretty terrible, or suprisingly great, we are at that glorious part of the year where everyone can say goodbye to the previous year, press the reset button, and start afresh with a new year.
Yes, everybody, it’s New Year’s Day. Welcome to 2021!
Since New Year’s serves as a natural reset button, it’s also the time of year where everyone looks at all the things they’re not satisfied with about their life and radically change everything with New Years Resolutions.
I have no doubt you’ve heard of some of the top new year’s resolutions: Eat healthier, workout more, get out of debt, read more Scripture, get better grades, stop bad habits, lessen screen time, watch more funny cat videos on YouTube—or, at the very least, “let 2021 be better than 2020.” (I think that’s everyone’s New Year’s resolution at this point.)
But here’s the issue. What’s equally as significant as setting new year’s resolutions is how quick new year’s resolutions fail. One study shows that 80% of all New Year’s resolutions fail by the 2nd week of February. That’s pretty discouraging.
I don’t know what the last year has held for you. But I want to encourage you that this next year can be different, and that you can get a new start. So in this blog, I want to give you some tips and tricks to help you make the most of the New Year and to potentially let your new year's habits stick.
1. Be Simple
It’s really easy this time of year to take an inventory of all the things you’re displeased with about your life, and then set out to change all of them. But that will actually set you up to fail from the get-go.
It’s recommended that you be as simple as possible when identifying areas of your life that you want to change. So instead of choosing 10 things you want to change this year, choose 1 thing. Just 1 thing. Which would you rather have? Fail at changing 10 things, or successfully change 1 thing about your life? Simplifying your goals helps you harness all the energy you’d spend on changing the 10 things onto the 1 thing.
So, as you make the list of the areas in your life you’d like to see change this year, choose the one that works its way to the top of the list.
2. Be Specific.
“Eat healthier,” “Lose weight,” and “Read more Scripture” are good goals, but are not specific enough. Does eating healthier mean only eating fruits and vegetables ever, or does it mean eating just 1 carrot a day? Does losing weight mean 1 pound, or 100 pounds? You want to get very detailed about what you want the achievement to look like, otherwise you won’t know if you hit your goal.
So if your goal is to read more Scripture this year, break that down into a number of books you’d like to have read per month, or that you want to spend 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week reading a devotional. Or if your goal is to lessen your Screentime on your phone, break that down to a specific number of hours you’d like to see at the end of each day. Or if your goal is to watch more funny cat videos on YouTube, identify a specific number of videos you’d like to watch per month, per week, per day, and so on.
Be specific with your goal. Make sure there is a number attached to it.
3. Schedule It
This is where a lot of New Years Resolutions fail. People may identify the one area they want to improve this year, get really specific about what their goals look like, but fail to schedule it into their daily lives. Goals remain as ambiguous ideas until you decide how they change your daily life.
Begin by taking an inventory of your daily schedule. Include everything from sleep, family time, school, work, study hours, and extra curricular activities. Then, identify either (1) where you’re going to devote time towards your goal, every single day, and/or (2) what you need to stop doing to make room for your new goal.
So if you want to read Scripture 15 minutes a day, when is that going to take place? First thing when you get up? During your lunch break? Before you go to bed? If you’re going to go to the gym 3 days a week, when will you go? For how long? Do you need to get up earlier to go? Do you need to stop watching TV on the couch in the evening, and instead stream it on your phone while you run on a treadmill?
Goals don’t become tangible until you can figure out how they impact your daily life. Which leads to the 4th thing…
4. Sacrifice Something.
Habit change is hard. The whole point of setting goals is to achieve something you currently don’t have, or aren’t used to doing. Even if you want to change bad habits, your mind and body will always fight against doing new, good habits simply because it’s gotten used to the habit you want to change.
Every new goal you set out to achieve requires you to give up something you’re currently doing. So what is it that you need to sacrifice to achieve this goal?
If it’s reading more Scripture, perhaps it means not going to bed at the same time every night, or giving up watching YouTube for 30 minutes first thing in the morning. If it’s losing weight, you have to give up the fudge rounds and Cheetos for carrots and apples. If it’s saving money, you have to give up eating out as much or impulsively shopping on Amazon. If it’s watching more cat videos on YouTube, you have to give up watching as many hamster videos.
What is the thing that you have to sacrifice for you to achieve your goal? Changing habits is hard work… However, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun. Which leads to tip #5:
5. Make it a Game.
One of the most addicting elements of video games are progressing through levels and winning prizes that mark your progress in the game. So do the same thing with your habits by create a scoreboard to track your progress.
What you want to do first is to break your goal down into monthly goals. So if your goal is to lose 25 pounds this year, then set monthly goals of losing about 2 pounds per month. Or if you want to read the New Testament in a year, break it down to 22 chapters per month. These are your monthly milestones.
Then, you’re going to break your monthly goals down into weekly goals. So losing 2 pounds per month is about 0.5 pounds per week, or 5 to 6 chapters of Scripture per week. These are your weekly levels.
Finally, break down your weekly goals into daily goals. So every day, 5 days a week, you’re going to track what you eat and do 20 minutes of exercise, or read at least 1 chapter of Scripture a day. These are easy, bite-sized actions that if done everyday works toward achieving your annual goal.
Finally, figure out a fun way you how you can keep "score" for everytime you do your new habit or activity. This allows you to track your progress, and keep your goals right in front of you at all times. For example: You can draw a thermometer that gradually tracks your progress, with each “10 degrees” representing a monthly goal. Or, get a jar where you can put in a marble that represents every time you’ve achieved your daily goal towards your annual goal. It becomes incredibly addicting, because you want to visualize the progress you’re making towards your goal.
So there you have it. 5 ways you can win at achieving your new years resolutions: Be simple, be specific, schedule it, sacrifice something, and make it a game. Our prayer is that you may have a fresh start in 2021, and that this may be truly a wonderful time for you to hit the reset button, and continue pursuing the very best God designed you to be.
