New Day Resolutions
Why do so many people wait until New Year’s Day to change their lives or their lifestyles?
Sure, a new year brings new beginnings with old things washed away.
But many New Year’s resolutions remain out of reach for many individuals because it is very difficult to change a bad habit cold turkey.
When a person wants to break a drinking or smoking problem, they often take it one day at a time.
Addicts can often tell a person how many days, weeks, months or years that they have been sober.
Some fall off the wagon after a long ride of sobriety only to get back on that wagon and courageously try again.
With strength, faith, help from others and tenacity, many addicts completely break the chain of addiction after much struggle and adversity.
But the key is they take it day by day.
Therefore, instead of having a New Year’s resolution for 2021, people should have a new day resolution everyday just in case this New Year does not run as smoothly as planned.
Many journalists will complain that I buried the lead in this story.
However, those anecdotes used to set up the lead were like buried treasure for those who have to overcome the odds despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
Unfortunately, the year 2020 represented 366 days of obstacles for many Americans with the coronavirus pandemic, loss of jobs, loss of loved-ones, loss of personal liberty and a loss of sanity at times because of cabin fever.
Many like myself thought that 2020 would represent the year of tremendous breakthroughs in life.
While many breakthroughs were made in my life in 2020, and blessings continued to flow from the Heavens, the year did its best to try to break my resolve.
And many people can relate to that all too well.
Business opportunities had to be postponed because of the pandemic.
Personal plans had to be postponed because of the pandemic.
Funerals had to be missed because of the pandemic.
But through it all, I woke each day with hopes of a better tomorrow because I knew that each day represented a new opportunity to achieve my goals for the year.
When looking at how much adversity people had to overcome in 2020, looking at all of their goals in the midst of those trials and tribulations could become daunting.
The difficult road may cause one to turn around and go back, giving up on their plans.
However, by taking each day head on people can achieve all of their goals although the road might become bumpier than planned.
The Bible says weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.
Each morning that God wakes us up should become an incentive for us to make that day better than the previous day.
If we drank a little bit too much the day before, the new day gives us an opportunity to get it right and leave the bottle alone.
If we cheated on our diet last week, we can rebound next week by eating less and exercising more.
If we did not work as hard as we wanted to today, there will always be a tomorrow in which we can make up for the opportunity lost the previous day.
If we reacted to a negative situation the wrong way today, we can apologize that same day and try to do better the next day.
While a New Year’s resolution might be hard to accomplish cold turkey, it becomes easier if taken in daily doses.
When we sin and ask God for forgiveness with repentance, He forgives and forgets.
He does not hold our missteps and mistakes over our head as if we committed a deadly sin by not living up to our goals or resolutions.
Once He forgives and forgets, He gives us the strength and wisdom to do better the next time around.
We should afford ourselves the same forgiveness when we fall short of our resolutions and goals for the New Year.
GoSkills.com lists the top 10 New Year’s resolutions as exercise more, lose weight, get organized, learn a new skill or hobby, live life to the fullest, save money/spend less money, quit smoking, spend more time with family and friends, travel more and read more.
All of those aforementioned resolutions and goals are something people can begin on April 22 or July 5, just as easily as they can begin on Jan. 1.
GoSkills.com reported, “Despite the best intentions, once the glow of a fresh New Year wears off, many people struggle to make good on their plans. According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, only 46 percent of people who made New Year’s resolutions were successful. That means over half of the people who set a goal for the New Year will fail.
“The study also involved non-resolvers, people who did not make a New Year’s resolution, but had a goal they wanted to achieve that year. Only four percent were successful at achieving their goals, a far bleaker result than those who did make a New Year’s resolution.”
Those grim statistics should not make one more apprehensive about achieving a new goal in 2021 or changing a bad habit.
It should provide more resolve because it proves that many are in the same boat as us when it comes to breaking our New Year’s resolutions.
But it should also force us to look at the difficulty of keeping a New Year’s resolution and encourage us, instead, to take our resolutions and goals in small daily doses instead of trying to tackle too much at one time.
No related posts.