I can’t stand “New Years Resolutions.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for folks trying to better themselves, making new goals, and discovering new paths in life. That stuff rocks.
But the reason I hate New Years Resolutions is because they fundamentally misunderstand human behavior.
New Years Resolutions are predicated on the belief that you and I can simply “will” ourselves to change. Such is the proverbial cart-before-the-horse approach to life. “Try” with all your might, and you’ll almost never change your life, no matter how lofty your goal or big your dream.
That’s why I believe 80% of all New Years resolutions fail by February. Simply trying to change your life is no way to actually change your life. We need something more than a cheap resolve.
New Values
Jesus said it is “out of the abundance of the heart that a man speaks.” (Luke 6:45) Or in other words… what’s going on in the inside of you will eventually find a way to get outside of you. Acheiving life goals and making changes to our behavior must begin with changes we make on the inside before we will see changes we desire on the outside.
For example, if you want to lose weight (something I’ve been working on for the past few months), the key is not simply watching what you eat and getting a lot of exercise. That is important of course. But you’ll never have the follow through necessary to lose weight until you actually value a healthy lifestyle. If personal fitness actually becomes something you value on the inside, and becomes part of the fabric of your identity, then over time, you’ll begin to work out behaviors in your life that are in keeping with what is going on inside of you, and you’ll make the choices necessary to actually live a healthy lifestyle.
The same goes with personal finances. No matter how hard you try, you’ll never save, invest, and build wealth until you make some changes on the inside. The odds are, you don’t have a money or spending problem as much as you have a heart problem. If your heart is always set on getting a new pair of designer blue jeans, eating out, and having a new car every couple of years, you’ll find the ability to build up your savings and invest for the future to be near impossible. To save and invest, you must begin to value the “future you” more than your current self, and the pleasures of the passing moment, which do nothing but eat away at your ability to save and invest.
New Thinking
Of course, new values just don’t spring up in us overnight. They only find a way to lodge themselves in our hearts once we discover new ways of thinking. Change the way you think about things, and your heart will change.
For example, if you aren’t entirely sold on “being healthy” as a good thing, you have to consider the alternatives. Well, not being healthy means you’ll probably have a shorter lifespan than you would otherwise have. It also means you’ll probably gain weight and not look as attractive as you could otherwise look. And if you gain a lot of weight, you’ll probably eventually experience a slow trickle of painful medical issues that will limit your ability to enjoy life and plunge you into all sorts of other problems.
That sucks. Trust me, I know!
And what are the upsides of valuing your personal health? You’ll have the opportunity to live longer. You’ll probably be more physically attractive. And you’ll find you aren’t limited in the things you can enjoy in life.
A New You
But none of this will happen until you start thinking new thoughts, and allowing those thoughts to trickle into your heart. And only once you start thinking in fresh ways and holding to new values will you begin to take the actions necessary to truly transform your life, one step at a time.
That’s why I am not a big fan of New Years resolutions. I want to make meaningful choices in my life that improve my life. I want to make changes in my life that come out of decisions that have captured my heart, and not simply because I saw some sort of late night TV commercial after eating an entire pizza.
That’s not to say the New Year isn’t a great time to take inventory of your life and think about possible changes you want in your life. Calendar junkies like me, who live and die by what’s on their calendar for the year, will find the New Year to be a welcomed season.
But I don’t want to be a person who simply gets caught up in the drama of the the moment with the rest of society, and end up making fickle resolutions doomed to fail. I want to make meaningful changes, and do so out of beliefs and values that I hold closely in my heart. I want to love new things, and hate anything that is out of step with the things I truly value.
Hopefully, you’ll be one of those people too. Happy New Year!
[…] Jimmy Humphrey makes a bold prediction for 2020: 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by February and yours will too. He says it’s because people don’t understand human nature. I believe the desire to make resolutions stems from the same thing that makes religion popular. We feel the desire to do something. We know something is wrong; all humanity pretty much universally recognizes that things are not right. Genesis 3 tell us about the fall and the curse. Nothing in world God created has been exactly right since. Every world religion makes an effort to fix what is wrong. Many have a list of rules to follow or rituals to perform. Hindus bathe in the Ganges River, one of the most polluted in the world, because their ancient religion teaches them it will make them clean. Not physically but inwardly, washing away what is wrong. Isaiah 1 is about all the things the Hebrews were doing routinely but they didn’t effect any change in their daily lives. God was frustrated they trampled the courts of his temple, made sacrifices, lifted their hands and said many prayers yet their hands and hearts were unclean. They were going through the motions or as we might say they were playing church. […]