According to ScienceAlert, publicly announcing your New Years’ resolutions is a key part of actually achieving them. So here goes, with one caveat—these are not resolutions per se, but goals for the year. I see resolutions as statistically doomed wishful thinking—an unreasonable hope that somehow this year I’ll lose that 10 pounds, stop eating junk food, save money, and all in all become a better person. Baloney.
These here, instead of short-term, soon-to-be-broken New Years’ resolution, are simply goals, in other words, stuff I want to get done by the end of this year.
Before we left for winter break, we challenged our Bible study to make a battle plan for winter break, full of goals that were specific, attainable, and measurable, and thus more likely to be met. Not only did we encourage them to make feasible goals, we focused on the whole person, looking at what rest would look like: physically, spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually. I haven’t found out what happened to their winter breaks, but I know that I had the best winter break…probably ever, thanks to intentional planning. And I’d like to carry that into this new year.
Physical Goals:
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Ride 3500 miles.
Given that I rode over 2500 miles between March of last year and when my cyclometer unpredictably reset on me this last week, I think 3500 miles is a reasonable goal.
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Ride the annual fall century (at a 15mph average pace).
For those of you that don’t know, a century refers to a 100 mile bike ride. Hooray for long term goals. Much more achievable than the double century in the spring.
(Hmm…All of these are biking related. Oh well. I clearly have no intention to improve my upper body strength.)
Spiritual Goals:
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Finish the TMS (Topical Memory Sytem). And memorize some other verses.
I’ve memorized a lot of verses at one time or another, but so many of them have slipped my mind. It’s easy to memorize a verse, but I need a plan for retention, but one that won’t involve me juggling 50 verses each week. I just drafted a 3-2-1 plan that will have me memorize two new verses each week, and the next week, I would review each of those verses three times, and the next week twice, and once on the third week. Hopefully that’ll be enough for more long term retention, and it has me juggling a max of 8 verses each week, with 6 of them being review-status.
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Pursue daily time in the Word and in prayer.
As always.
Will require intentional planning and protecting time with the Lord.
Emotional Goals:
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Be more intentional with friendships.
Why, yes this does sound quite like a wishy-washy, touchy-feely, resolution, but practically, this will look like intentionally getting time with people, sending texts and messages for no other reason than keeping in touch, and fighting even harder for friendships separated by distance.
Intellectual Goals:
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Read 10 books.
Yes, true bookworms will laugh at me for my measly ten-book goal, but this is a 43% increase from the 7 books I read in the past year.
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Write 100 blog posts. (One down, 99 to go!)
Over twelve months, that averages out to about 8 per month, two per week. Very achievable. Writingwritingwritingwriting. Hooray!
Well there they are. Wow, I used the word intention/intentional/intentionally a grand total of five times. And that is the sentiment with which I want to enter the new year—I want to live intentionally.
a cup of kimitea 