Are you frustrated with how this last year went? Did you set goals and fail to meet any of them? Are you feeling frustrated about not making progress in your growth? Here are some tips to help make your goals and resolutions more fruitful.
1. Make your goals extensions of the vision and values of your life.
Vision puts the “why” to your goals. Vision is your belief and perception for the future. Sometimes people make goals, but they have no idea why. If you have vision for your life—where you feel God is leading you—then goals become the daily application to the vision. It is great to have vision of where you are headed, but what needs to happen today to put the vision into motion, one step at a time?
2. Pray over your goals.
Before you set goals, ask God to bring up the areas that He is working on in this next season. If you partner with heaven over what God is working on in your life, you will hit the greatest stride in your growth.
Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. (Psalms 37:5 NKJV)
Commit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established.(Proverbs 16:3 NKJV)
In both these passages, the word commit means to roll, roll off or roll away. When we talk to God about the goals for the next year, we first roll away the situations to Him, then we hear the assignment from heaven, which usually come with specific actions of application.
3. Write them down.
Many people do not reach goals simply because they never write them down.
Then the Lord answered me and said: “Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it.” (Habakkuk 2:2 NKJV)
When you set goals, write them down and make them easy to understand. Don’t try to be super deep. Could it be if you make them simple and plain, you will gain the ability to run better in this next year?
4. Communicate them to those who will hold you to them and cheer you on.
Pick a few well trusted people who believe in you to share your goals with. Don’t speak the goals to the masses and don’t waste your time sharing with the critics. Use wisdom, but pick people who will not just check on whether you screwed up, but encourage the positive direction you seek to move to.
This will be the third time I am coming to you. “By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established.” (2 Corinthians 13:1 NKJV)
by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.(Matthew 18:16 NKJV)
These people push you when you want to quit. Most people don’t take this step, because it makes them vulnerable and accountable.
It is easy to declare a resolution. The work comes in the application when you have to stick with it.
5. Set aside regular time reflecting, evaluating and planning.
Carve out a moment each day, each week and each month to evaluate how you are doing. Most people just let life happen to them. When you set aside time to reflect, you set time to be more intentional with your days.
6. Make the goals, specific, measurable and applicable.
Instead of, “I want to be more loving towards my son” which can be vague, say, “I want to love my son more by spending at least two times a week spending time with my son doing something that he enjoys.” Instead of, “I want to lose weight,” say, “I want to love and cherish my body by losing 15 pounds over the course of 20 weeks and maintaining that weight.”
7. Do not set too many goals.
If you are not accustomed to setting and meeting goals, then I would suggest just setting one, maybe two clear goals for yourself. Don’t try to go to the gym and bench press 300 pounds when you haven’t actually been to the gym. Many people become way overwhelmed because they set too many goals that were too challenging. Your brain cannot handle a ton of major changes all at once anyway. It overloads the system.
8. Put your goals in your schedule.
If you do not set your schedule, life will set it for you, leaving you frustrated at the end of your day. Take responsibility to put your goals into your schedule. Let your vision and values be placed on your day to day investments of time.
Block out non-negotiable time to invest in what you feel God is setting you out to do. When you set goals into your schedule, you develop healthy routines that become engrained habits into your system. The long term result you want to find when establishing goals is that you develop habits that are permanently a part of your lifestyle.