Welcome to 2012!  I can’t believe that another year has already started.  As each New Year starts, we all begin to reflect on who we are and what we have accomplished in the past year.  Many of us will make New Year’s resolutions, most of which will last us until the third week in January.  We all get so excited about our resolutions and usually start off with great vigor, but then something strange happens, it’s called life, and things start causing us to miss our resolutions, and before you know it we feel so far behind that we just give up all together.  I think our resolutions are too important for us to give up on.  I think that there is a better way to set resolutions.  Let’s look at a couple of tips to help us set resolutions that we can actually accomplish this year.

Tip 1:  Set shorter goals.

Too often we set goals that have a much too long time frame associated with them.  Our thinking is that it is a monumental task, so it must need a great amount of time to accomplish it.  When we are up against what appears to be a monumental task, we have to set bit sized goals that are achievable, that will get us one step closer to where we want to be.  Let’s take reading through the bible in a year.  Instead of making that your resolution,  say for the next three months, I am going to read the following books of the Bible.  It’s a shorter amount of time, which when accomplished will give you a sense of achievement and will motivate you to move forward to accomplish the next step that will get you to your ultimate goal of reading through the bible in a year. 

Tip 2:  Share your plans with someone else.

We need others to come along side of us and encourage us to pursue our resolutions.  When we open up and invite someone else to partner with us, we instantly create accountability that can help us achieve what we feel God is calling us to do.  When we allow others to be a part of our resolutions, they can pray for us, motivate us, and celebrate with us when we achieve it.  It is much more likely that we will accomplish our resolutions when we share them with others. 

Tip 3:  Celebrate achieving your resolution.

It is extremely important to make time to stop and celebrate when we achieve one of our resolutions.  Too often in our lives we focus on the things that we did not do well.  This trains our minds to only recognize the negative in our lives.  We have to refocus and train ourselves to recognize the success, even if they are small in our lives, which will create future motivation to keep pursuing our resolutions.