How can we have an effective New Year's resolution or a life plan to ensure success by the end of the year? There are at least two keys to a winning life plan. Some people, just as I did before, use a process that I would call "Cut and Paste." It's the process of searching what worked for others and using them on ourselves. I once met a girl who shared that she was watching a cooking show on TV when she had an epiphany. She sprang up from the couch, pointed at the TV and said, "That's it! That's what I want to do in life!" And off she went to a cooking school in Miami, bought expensive cook wares, but later turned around to become a hairstylist, just like her mom. Another person took on photography, buying expensive SLR digital camera and editing software. It didn't work so he turned to another possible career in the medical field. It also ended nowhere.
"Cut and Paste" doesn't really work. Why? You need to see that the process was already faulty to begin with. That is, we start with an idea that what others did must be right, because it worked for them. With such a philosophy, you cannot really stop looking for more to try out because everyday, at the back of your mind, you know that there are others who also have succeeded in life, and that could mean that they too must have the right key or idea for you! And on and on and on it goes.
Now, considering the great volume of resources available to search through, there must be a million and one ideas out there. And you can spend the entire 2014 looking for it. Often people look at sources outside of themselves, in books, articles, TV shows, social networks, magazines, searching for the idea that would solve all their problems and become the person that they want to be, or to reach their dream in life.
Realize this, all the material resources you now read and watch on the printed page or online are just dreams and ideas of those who once searched for their own key to their dream life. They just did something different. They decided to stop looking at what others did and looked into their own self and wrote about it.
"Make sure the dream you are chasing is your own, not someone else's."So to answer the question: what exactly do you need for an effective New Year's Resolution? The first key lies not outside of you but from within yourself: Your own personal dream. Your dreams are products of your desires, experiences and unique make up which God placed in you to guide you in life. Your dream points you to God's calling for your life. The Bible says, " For it is God who is working in you, enabling you both to desire and to work out His good purpose" (Philippians 2:13 HCSB). And in Joel 2:28, it says that His Spirit enables you to dream dreams and see visions.
The problem of using resources outside of ourselves to make our New Year's resolution is that they are not designed for our own life. Over time, because it was not from within us, we tend to lose interest on it. If you do this cut and paste type of planning for your life, your life could end up looking like Frankenstein. Therefore, be sure the dream you are chasing is your own and not someone else's which you have read in books, Instagram, tumblr or seen on TV. Write your dreams down clearly and with specific steps to achieve it. So that at the end, you can hold it, look at it and enjoy it. Let it guide your decisions and activities throughout the year.
A second key to an effective New Year's resolution, and I'll be short in this, is in your use of time. As we welcome 2014, realize that time is the one thing that we all have in common, rich and poor, young and old, winners and losers. We all have 365 days or 8765.81 hours. It's up to you how you would use it to whip up something significant so that as you get around this point again in 2015 you can be sure of something better than what you've had.
"Time can be your greatest friend, or your worst enemy. . ."
The difference between winners and losers at the end of the year rests on their use of time. To win, you need to prepare ahead of time. If you plan and act on it ahead of everyone else, you have created an advantage for yourself. Smart people finish ahead of the curb, so that with the ample time they have left, they can review and make the necessary corrections when they can. But if you waste your time playing and goofing around, then you just gave up your advantage and left your opportunities to chance. Time can be your greatest friend, or your worst enemy, depending on how you use it.
Pursue your own dream and prepare ahead of time. These two keys should work. You can try them or make your own.
May you have a happy New Year!
