Intentional 2021

 

What are your goals for 2021?

Few things can get me stressed quicker than someone asking me that question. Because of that, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are a real struggle for me.

I wrestle with all my failures from the past year, all those goals and dreams still unmet. I feel suffocated with the expectation that I need to come up with great goals and plans for the next year.

It leaves me feeling anxious and depressed. Not exactly the person you want at your New Year's Eve party.

Maybe you are motivated by goal setting. Perhaps setting huge goals gets you excited. It drives you forward and, even if you don't quite make the big goals, you still feel accomplished for how far you've come.

For others, New Year Resolutions are just a list of things that overwhelm or something that gets dropped by the 3rd week of January. New Year Resolutions aren't a terrible thing in theory. I am all for looking for ways to improve, to continuously have a drive to be better tomorrow than you were the day before. But when we put out big goals, with no plan on how to reach them, we set ourselves up for failure. 

 How about, instead of huge goals, we look at smaller patterns we can build into our day that, when we look back a year later, we can see the improvement they have made? Research has found the best way to guarantee that a pattern will stick, is to add it into something that you already are doing habitually.

Drinking coffee in the morning. Walking to the mailbox. Brushing your teeth. Loading the dishwasher.

What little things can you add into your day that can, over days building upon each other, can improve your daily life? Pray more, read scripture, drink more water, send a text to a friend just to let them know you're thinking of them, clean off one surface a day, exercise, slow down.

By adding in small, achievable patterns into our day, we can accomplish goals that seemed overwhelming when there was no plan, just a big dream in our mind.

Along with this, may we remember that God doesn't ask for perfection, or that we crush every goal we set. Failures and set backs from our human perspective may actually be setting us up to be exactly where God wants us to be. 

2020 may have felt like a gap year, like not much was accomplished. But maybe it was behind the scenes. The stage was getting set for something to come. Just because God seems silent, doesn't mean He's not working.

My prayer as we head into 2021 is that we may more clearly see God in our lives and may have a better view of how we can better live for and serve Him this coming year.

Happy New Year, Friend.