New Years Resolution with Purpose

Earlier this week I posted about New Year resolutions and how to take control of your life by tracking progress and not just the number on the scale. Today I want to share with you my BIGGEST New Years Goal.

Last Fall, I privately told God that if He would call me to another 12 months of ministry in Miami I would obey because I would know He was in the endeavor. In my own strength I would not be able to stay and without His will for me to be there I would flounder. Even though I loved doing ministry in Miami, I knew that where I was planted was not leading me in the direction God had created me to flourish.

I am thankful for the lessons I learned last year and for the special people I shared my life with. With this in mind I know He had called me to it, He had pulled me through it and when the time to move on approached He removed every obstacle from my decision to leave when the opportunity came.

I am thankful for that time and I am beginning to see the glimmer of purpose from that hard year. I believe in the coming months I will find even more clarity and purpose from it. At the end of that season in my life, I learned that I could stay the course. I passed the test with flying colors and I am confident that God will never call me through this season again. Just like in the story of Noah and the Ark: there was a flood and now God has given me a hope and a promise.

Once I left Miami, the Holy Spirit placed in me a kindling desire to learn how to honor like Jesus in any situation. To give just as much honor and love to those who deserve it as to those whose actions disappoint me. It is my New Years goal to walk this out beginning with those closest to me. Often when we come across a painful situation or person we harbour resentment for weeks until it comes out as a big argument or we walk away jaded assuming that no one is to be trusted.

We forget that sometimes people hurt us because they have some growing of their own to do. It is not a reflection of some dark matter or moral corruption. They are people who need growth just like the rest of us.  These situations are spiritual easy battle’s that we must conquer before we can be like Christ to people who truly do not like us. If you are familiar with the slopes, it is like comparing the bunny slope to the double black diamond. You have to practice on the hills before you can tackle the mountain.

Billy Graham once said that it is “The Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge and my job to love.” You can not be held accountable for the actions of others but you are completely responsible for how you conduct yourself. Remember: Honor is not an outcome based on the merit of another person-it is the result of how honorable you are.

This year I encourage you to make both healthy goals and purposeful resolutions. Allow God to reveal areas in your life that need some attention and reflect on the lessons you learned in 2014. Life is meant for growth and development: Make sure to live it with purpose.

In Health,

Michelle

Procrastination and the Desire to Succeed

For weeks we have been telling ourselves that once the holidays are over we will put down the pies, the eggnog and the mashed potatoes in an effort to make our pilgrimage to better health. This conversation starts sometime around Halloween and it lasts through New Years Day with plenty of parties and family festivities to chew our way through in the meantime.

So when January 1st comes we have our FitBits, our food journals and we are ready to take on the world but for many of us, perhaps sometime around February 1st, our momentum starts to slow down. The scale may have gotten stuck somewhere or if you are like me a birthday happens and then Easter rolls around. Suddenly its June and there is no way you are putting that itsy bitsy teeny weenie bikini back on this summer even if your life depended on it.

In an interview with Psychology Today, Timothy Pychyl, a professor of psychology at Carleton University in Canada, says that people make resolutions as a way of reinventing themselves. Everyday we have the opportunity to change our lives but we put it off for one reason or another. When January 1st rolls around all of a sudden there is new surge of motivation that makes us want to participate in a big change. New Year-New You! Or at least that has been the mantra.

Our failure to maintain goals is hindered by our inability to create immediate change. Apparently we are hard-wired for immediate gratification and anything that we deem or find too difficult to accomplish is put on the back burner. In a study on “cultural procrastination” Pychyl and his team focused on the ability to change habits, particularly bad habits and our inability to maintain long term lifestyle changes. What we can take away from his study on short term mood regulation is that procrastination, coupled with and an unrealistic mindset of changing long-held habits, boils down to a high failure rate when it concerns making any lifestyle change last.

However, there are ways to combat procrastination and our desire for immediate gratification. In my last article, I recommended making gradual sustainable changes that you can manage over a short period of time instead of intense overnight changes that could lead to losing momentum. Over the past decade, officials in the health industry have come to the conclusion that the more slowly you lose the weight, the more likely you are to keep it off.  Start by doing what is manageable. If your goal is to bench press your body weight, but you have never attempted to do it before, it would be wise to gradually increase your weights over a long period of time. Likewise, if you are attempting to cut out processed foods perhaps you would want to start off by removing processed sugars followed by processed grains, etc.

You can achieve good health and it is possible to live out these healthy changes your entire life following this process. Albeit there are some Herculean varieties of humans who can cut anything out cold turkey and make those changes last but for the majority of us we need to ease into it. Following these recommendations and researching how to overcome your personal obstacles will aid you in your journey.

In Health,

Michelle W.