Goals & Resolutions

It’s January 7th, 2025, how are your New Year’s Resolutions coming along? Did you know that the idea of resolutions at this time of the year is believed to have started 4,000 years ago in the Babylonian Empire. Moving forward a number of years, Christians often used the first day of the year to consider the mistakes of the past year and resolve to both doing and being better in the coming year!

New Year’s Resolutions are both loved and hated by many. This year, in 2025, let’s resolve to keep our resolutions. But, how do we do that? Although there isn’t tons of research on resolutions themselves, there is some research published in 2020 that indicates participants with approach-oriented goals were significantly more successful than those with avoidance-oriented goals (58.9% vs. 47.1%) (Oscarsson, M., Carlbring, P., Andersson, G., & Rozental, A. (2020). A large-scale experiment on New Year’s resolutions: Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals. PLoS One, 15(12), e0234097.

Avoidance-oriented goals are those efforts to “avoid” something, like “eating less sugar” and “watching less TV” whereas approach-oriented goals could be “working out 3 times per week” or “visiting with friends more often”. So what do we take away from this? When you’re thinking about your 2025 goals (resolutions) try to setting the right kind of goals. Approach, don’t avoid.

Philippians 4:8 addresses this clearly. Improving your life isn’t about avoiding things all the time, although there are plenty of scripture that reminds us what to avoid, but that is only part of the puzzle. Emptying is not the trick, but filling.

This year, let’s encourage one another to set approach-oriented resolutions and find ways to fill our minds with the right things.

Have a GREAT 2025!