From Big Goals to 5 Manageable Resolutions

Goodbye 2020, and hello 2021! As with most people, I am eager for the new year and all of the opportunities we hope it will bring.

I am currently feeling very motivated by this new beginning, so I have a lot of goals I would love to start working towards. This isn’t my first new beginning, though, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I can’t do it all. So this year I am working to minimize my New Year’s goals into just a few resolutions that are small and realistic. I already talked a bit about why I prefer small goals, so here I wanted to share what mine are for 2021 and how I’m breaking them down.

My Intentions

In all honesty, I have a lot of aspects of my life where I desire different results. As I’ve mentioned before, I have the personality type of an enneagram 1, so I am a perfectionist who is always striving to improve. Ideally, I would love to make all of these changes in 2021:

Spiritual – Spend more time in the Word of God, in prayer, and worshipping.
Relational – Spend more time with my family, giving them my full and undivided attention.
Social – Stay in better contact with the friends and family that I rarely get to see.
Emotional – Set boundaries and let myself relax more.
Intellectual – Learn more about the research behind parenting decisions & food choices; social history, policies, and effective ways to advocate for justice; etc.
Physical – Eat better. Move my body more. Get more sleep. Drink more water.
Financial – Spend less money, make more money, and be more generous.
Vocational – Work smarter, not harder. Get promoted in 2022.
Avocational – Regularly post on this blog and increase its following. 🙂

Although admirable & well-intentioned, this list is impossible for one single person to achieve all at once. When I look at the overall list, I see a lot of the word “more.” But the days in 2021 are all still going to be 24 hours, and I am still the same person with the same abilities, so if I want “more” of one thing, I’m going to have to have “less” of something else.

My Goals

Next, I narrowed down my list to the areas that are most important to me right now: Spiritual, Relational, Emotional, and Physical.

I then refined those areas to be more specific, and I identified what I would need “less” of in order to accomplish each goal:

Spiritual
- Spend at least some time focusing my heart on God (whether via reading, praying, or worshipping) every morning instead of scrolling on my phone.
Relational
- Spend more time with Jackson instead of working late.
- Spend more time with Cooper instead of cleaning.
Emotional
- Let myself relax more by reading or doing a puzzle instead of doing housework at the end of the night.
Physical
- Get more sleep instead of scrolling on my phone.
- Drink more water instead of coffee.

My Resolutions

I like those goals, but even still I wanted to make them smaller and implement them over a shorter timeline. Here is how I did that:

In the month of January, I resolve to…

Spend at least 5 minutes focusing my heart on God before 1pm every day.
Stop working by 4:15pm at least 3 days per week.
Stop cleaning or doing housework by 8:15pm at least 4 days per week.
Set my phone on its charger (and do not look at it again) by 11pm at least 6 nights per week.
Record my water intake in MyFitnessPal every day.

To achieve these, I will set reminders in my phone and integrate them into my daily to-do lists and calendars accordingly.

Part of me is so embarrassed by how small some of these resolutions are that I almost didn’t want to publish them. But I very intentionally chose things that I thought would be easy to do, and I will improve upon them as they become more habitual. I stand by my confidence in that method, and I am publishing these to increase my accountability in it. (So please feel free to ask my about these in a few weeks!)

Here’s to hoping for true lifestyle changes!

I would love to hear from you, too! What are your 2021 resolutions?