As humans, we all want to be better, do better, look better, and feel better. This wrestling match every year starts in our favor, but quickly turns against us as quickly as Winter turns into Spring.
Of all people, I realize how quickly my New Year’s resolutions can fail when I stumble upon a delicious warm chocolate chip cookie! I’m also old enough to realize that some resolutions are trivial to our greater purposes in life.
These aren’t excuses to not set new habit or goals, it just means that setting resolutions are to be done with extreme care.
Our vows to be better humans take on a level of seriousness with every failed attempt.
Auditing Our Work and Life
Part of setting resolutions means reflecting on the past. It means thoroughly assessing our previous year’s goals, where we went, what we achieved, what we pruned, where we grew, and even where we failed. Our desire for inner transformation is innate. This process takes more than 2 minutes by the way! Take a day or two to do this type of audit and unpacking.
Through my own audit, 2022 revealed what the world says is not possible…Work-Life Balance!
Everyone, yes, EVERYONE, has said there is not such a thing. It’s a unicorn that does not exist they say! Work-life balance CAN be achieved harmoniously with purpose, planning, and intentionality.
At the foundation of finding this “unicorn”, was extreme peace that I had never experienced in life. My perspective changed and with that so did my attitude! More on this below, but shifting my mindset to internal aspirations instead of external rewards has been life-changing!
What society gets wrong about balance is that life and work need to be in opposition. Society focuses on external awards, great resumes, and promotions….rarely on the condition of the heart.
True balance is achieved when we let go of societal standards, redefine success, ruthlessly chase our life’s purpose, and make our own rules and boundaries on how to allocate our time accordingly.
A life of overlapping vocations and avocations, the dueling pianos playing in harmony, is where we find the balance!
Auditing Our Struggles
Sadly, many ignore their life’s purpose and only seek out vocation without giving any thought or time to an avocation. Vocation is employment. Avocation is putting purpose, passion, and joy to work. Those that are stuck solely on the vocation while ignoring the avocation tend to find burnout quickly.
Burnout is typically self-medicated with self-destructive behaviors. So it’s not surprising to see the same resolutions every year around better sleep, going cold turkey, and new diets. We also tend to set new goals with work that will help us be more successful. None of this is bad per se, but we have to be careful about what idols we are building and why we are chasing them.
Idolatry is the culprit of our misery, anxiousness, and anger. We all struggle with this! We all have our “thing”. We as a culture tend to all seek validation and self-gratification, and look for value in the wrong places.
This pursuit of self-improvement is a dangerous trap when the root of why we are doing these things is not addressed.
The worldly idols will always disappoint us.
Auditing Our Hearts
What God wants for His children is peace, rest, love, and obedience. While we struggle with our own weaknesses, God sent his Son in human form to save our souls, to save us from eternal death, and to give us eternal life. That life isn’t just an aspiration for when we die, it’s a freedom that we can experience immediately when we become a believer in Jesus. We are already validated, valued, and loved!
So why do we continue to make resolutions each year? The answer is simple, we want to become better versions of ourselves. We want to please God. However, our self-destructive habits tend to lead us astray from who we are designed to be, so it’s natural to use landmarks on the calendar to set goals to find ourselves again.
Finding the best versions of ourselves is what we should be doing! We are quite forgetful, stubborn, and sometimes rebellious!
To combat our forgetfulness, I challenge us to set attitude adjustment goals by looking deep inside our hearts. Attitude resolutions are not meant to replace necessary diet plans or business goals. These goals help us to be better beings, not doers.
Most resolutions that have an external action can only be achieved with a solid internal attitude. Our commanded attitudes are all identified in Galatians 5:23-23 (ESV), “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control“. These attitudes are ones that we are to aspire to have daily!
These conditions of the hearts, also known as the “fruits of the Spirit”, are the reflection of people that walk under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Through this free gift and help-mate, we are to operate stronger at our spiritual core instead of following our fleshly desires.
Auditing Our Purpose
What gets lost in the pursuit of being better humans is not doing a thorough evaluation of our purpose. Purpose is having clarity on our role in this world and the assignment that God currently has asked us to do.
Purpose does not need to have a specific job title. Purpose is how we show up from the playroom to the boardroom.
At the heart of the matter is the ability to be authentic to the better version of ourselves and in line with God’s will for our lives. That’s where a solid resolution can be created.
How to Set Attitude Resolutions
No matter where you land on your external facing resolutions, don’t forget some important factors in the process for your attitude resolutions:
- Assess and verify that your current work-life is ultimately your life’s work. Find and/or verify clarity on your unique purpose during this particular season of your life. Living in alignment with your purpose may be the leading domino on many other goals of fulfillment.
- Before looking at money, weight, titles, or career goals, write down one or more fruits of the spirit that you aspire to be better at: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self-control.
- Don’t just write the word, outline 3 or 4 granular ways to implement the attitude adjustments. Answer the question of HOW. If it’s peace, then outline hobbies or activities that give you peace and a decluttering list that removes the chaos. Put these activities on the calendar and time-block them.
- State your heart and attitude-based goals out loud to a trusted accountability partner. Make a system or a place of visibility to remind yourself of these goals.
So as we all continue to buckle down on our resolutions for 2023, may we all strive to be more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. These conditions make us grounded in who we are and our approach to sharing the Kingdom of God in our daily walk.
And no matter when you may have read this article, there is no time like the present to start a new journey, a new goal, or a new resolution! The best-laid plans are always just that. Just plans. The unexpected happens for the good, but we might have to go through the bad to get there.
Strategic Planning is important because it is how we get intentional with what needs to shift or change in our lives. Setting goals and then breaking them down into achievable steps is how we eat the proverbial elephant – one bite at a time.