My 2025 New Year’s Resolutions
Are New Year’s Resolutions a waste of time? Only as much as any goals are. People love to make fun of the fat newbies in the gym who come hit the treadmill for three or four weeks before washing out, but at least they haven’t given up on themselves yet.
So many people have utterly given up on improving their lives. They go to a job they hate, earning a salary that rarely ever goes up, come home to a loveless marriage, cuss the kids for not cleaning up, zone out on the television till bed time, and stuff themselves full of beer and potato chips till they look nine months pregnant.
If your motivation dwindles after a month or two and you stop making progress, at least you did more to better yourself than the majority of people. The trick is to not wait till the next new year to start over. It’s January 28th, you realize you haven’t been to the gym in a week. Don’t call it quits. Remind yourself of why you started in the first place and get back to it first thing tomorrow.
What is Your Why?
Whether your goal is to get in shape, make more money, travel more, spend more time with family, journal more, you name it - you have to keep your Why in focus. And it has to be a good why.
Why do you want to be in better shape? Find what motivates you. While the body positivity culture would have my head for saying this - there are some people who will benefit from an “I’m sick and tired of seeing a disgusting blob when I look in the mirror” attitude. That’s the mindset I had in 2020 when I cut out soda, sweet tea, and alcohol, got on a calorie deficit, started working out daily, and lost nearly 75 pounds.
That mindset doesn’t work for everyone. Some need an “I love myself too much to keep destroying myself mindset.”
Now that I’m long past my weight loss days, I’m instead focused on getting bigger, stronger, and in better shape cardio-wise. Why? I never, ever, want to be too weak to carry my baby boy, no matter how old or big he gets. I never want to be too out of shape to play with him, no matter how fast or wild he gets. I want to be able to protect myself and my family from any threat. I want to set an example for my son and inspire him to strive for greatness.
Whether your goals are physical, financial, spiritual, or relational - you have to know your Why.
How to Reach Your Goals
When making New Year’s resolutions or any other kind of goal, you need to make SMART goals.
S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Achievable
R - Relevant
T - Time-Bound
Continuing to use fitness as my example - my goal is to lift weights five days per week and to go for a run at least one day per week. These are specific goals. They’re clearly measurable. They’re achievable, for me. I already work out 4 days per week. I’m trying to add an extra day of lifting and an extra day of cardio. Very doable. If you’re an absolute fitness rookie, that might be too ambitious for you. They’re very relevant goals based on the Whys I already gave you. And they’re time bound. I have seven days to get six days worth of work in.
Writing down your goals (kind of like I did here in this blog post) is a way to revisit them from time to time and make sure you’re doing what you need to do to stay inspired and stay on track.
My Goals
I have a number of New Year’s resolutions beyond just fitness.
One of my resolutions is to start cooking more. Thus far, my wife has handled 100% of the cooking in our relationship - but I’d love to be able to take some of that burden off of her in 2025 by cooking at least once per week. I know almost nothing so far, but between AI and YouTube I reckon I should be to get the hang of some basic staples. I already conquered the notoriously simple scrambled eggs this week. Next up is fish and rice for my meal preps.
Without going into specifics here on the internet, I also have a wealth of financial goals. See what I did there? Primarily, we’d like to increase our investing to 15% of our take-home pay by the end of the year.
Spiritually, we’re planning on getting more involved in the church. We took a few months off while our church was renovating. They relocated across town temporarily, doubling our commute, right after we welcomed our son. We tried to get there for a few weeks just to get derailed by trying to time feedings and naps and general fussiness. We ultimately gave up but the church is back in its regular building right down the road and we finally made it back this week for the first time. We hope to get involved in the nursery serving at least one per month.
Personally, I want to blog more. Hence this post. In the past, the majority of my blogging was limited to travel-related posts. Now I have a new avenue for that. Since launching Small Town Travel Guide with my coworker Dave, I have hardly posted at all on my personal website in the past year. I’d like to shift the content of this site to talking about all facets of my life instead of simply travel. My current goal is to try and write on here at least once per week, though I fear that may be too ambitious.
Reading is a long-lost passion of mine I’d like to rediscover. I used to read a book per week but for the past few years I just haven’t made the time. I’m setting an easy goal of a book per month for this year.
Professionally, I hope to find a way to network a little better in 2025. I’ll confess I don’t have a SMART strategy for that yet. Maybe I’ll rejoin the Sand Springs Chamber of Commerce?
But that’s the thing - you don’t have to have a perfect strategy by January 1st. The whole point of New Year’s resolutions is to get you thinking, to get you dreaming, to get you motivated and refreshed. And if your goals fall flat by February - improvise and adapt. Don’t resign yourself to failure because you planned to work out five times a week and only made it once a week. Adjust your goals to twice a week, alter the time of day you’re going, or find some other way to put yourself in the best position to win.
What are your goals for 2025?
