Barb Raveling

Tips, Tools, & Bible Studies to Renew Your Mind

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New Year’s Resolution Study: Making a Plan

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Hi Everyone, Are you thoroughly sick of being undisciplined over the holidays and ready to get to work on your new year’s resolution? I know I am!

Why don’t we get started by coming up with a plan for our projects?

First, read the tab at the top of the page that corresponds with your new year’s resolution (breaking a habit, starting a habit, or breaking free from a negative emotion) and then fill out the worksheet below. Click here to see other posts in this series.

Update: If you’re interested in a book that will help you with your New Year’s resolution, check out The Renewing of the Mind Project, available 3/10/2015, on Amazon.

My Plan

My goal is:

If you’re breaking a habit: My boundaries are:

If you’re breaking a habit: My secondary boundaries are:

If you’re starting a habit: My plan is:

I will renew my mind every time I: (Circle one or two.)

  1. Feel like breaking my boundaries.
  2. Break my boundaries.
  3. Don’t feel like following my plan.
  4. Experience this emotion: _________________ in this situation: _________________ with this person: ________________________
  5. _______ times a day.

I will ask _____________ to hold me accountable to the renewing of my mind, if necessary.

To help me achieve my goal, I will see what the Bible has to say on the following subjects: _________________________

I will not beat myself up when I fail. Instead, I will go to ______ (I’m hoping you’ll say God) for help so I’ll have a better chance of doing well next time. If I do beat myself up, I’ll renew my mind about being myself up!

Questions

It’s hard to know how much to write in these blog posts, because we’re all at different levels in our experience with the renewing of the mind. Some of you have been doing it for years while others are just starting out.

If you have any questions, please ask me in the comments as others are probably wondering the same things you’re wondering. If you have a question you feel uncomfortable asking publicly, just e-mail me on the form under the “About” tab at the top of this blog.

Input Needed

I’ve decided to just keep posting at the blog as several of you have said you don’t use Facebook. I’ll try to post every day this week to get you started but then it would be nice to know what you guys would prefer – would you rather have me post 6 days a week for 3 weeks or 3 – 4 days a week for 5 or 6 weeks?

Also, I’ll try to use examples in the posts. If I know what goals you’re working on, I’ll try to come up with examples for those specific goals. If you don’t mind sharing, tell us about your goal in the comments section. And if you have time – pray for your fellow new-years-resolutioners. I’ll be praying for you, too.

P.S. If you’re trying to break free from procrastination, treat that as a starting-a-habit goal. You would make a list each day and then renew your mind whenever you don’t feel like doing the next item on the list.

Related Posts:

Comments

  1. I would prefer to do 3-4 post over a longer period, but I’ll go with whatever others like. Thanks for posting here, since I’m one who doesn’t use FB.

    I’m stuck at having someone hold me accountable. For now, the Holy Spirit is my accountability partner until God directs someone else to do it.

    As for beating myself up. God’s been helping me with that. I can’t live in the past. I must press forward! I can’t change the past and tomorrow isn’t promised. All I have is right now. What am I doing with my time for the Kingdom of God?

    • Love that last question, TC. It goes along with my New Year’s resolution which is to make a list each day and renew my mind whenever I don’t feel like doing it – and also renew my mind whenever I have distress about writing. I feel like that’s the biggest thing that’s keeping me from serving God the way He wants me to serve HIm.

      • It’s so good that you can ID areas that keep you from growing and serving. So many of us just think we can’t ever change and it’s because that’s who we are. We don’t want to put forth the effort to grow.
        God bless you for doing this series!

        • Thanks, TC. It’s going to help me too, I just finished filling out my own plan and a couple of things came up I hadn’t thought of before. I’m looking forward to becoming a changed person!

  2. I am so grateful for finding this site!! And I’m super excited to see how God works in me to tackle overeating.

    Thank you for being here and providing so much information on your blog!!

    • Glad to have you along, Lee! Not sure if you’ve seen my other blog that I used to write at, but there are lots of old posts on overeating – it’s at http://www.ideserveadonut.com. Overeating is a hard one – it took me hundreds of sessions with God to gain victory, but it can be done! I’m excited to see what He’ll do in you as well!

      • Thanks for the link Barb. I also noticed your book about emotional eating and will probably need that too!!

        • That’s the Bible study I wrote after God had set me free from the control of food. It deals a lot with emotional eating which was one of my biggest problems but is also helpful for other types of overeating.

  3. I’d prefer the longer 4 days a week for 5 or 6 weeks also!
    Haven’t quite decided yet on what to work on. I’ve been going through an incredibly hard trial since nov 13th and I fight it not consuming my mind 24/7.So I’m in the Word so much to keep my mind off of it, I just haven’t studied much else.

    • Have you thought of just making that your project? Often when I have one of those huge trials, there are so many issues under the surface that it takes awhile to explore them. Have you been using any of the renewing of the mind tools to work through your trial?

  4. So I am finally getting to this, and have a question for you. If my goal is a fresh and positive attitude about something, should I begin with starting a new habit looking for and hoping for the best with a heart of thanksgiving and grace, breaking an old habit of being cynical and rather hopeless about a situation, or breaking free from the negative emotions (which seem a bit jumbled) which relate to this something?

    • I would approach it as a breaking free from a negative emotion habit. Renew your mind every time you feel cynical or hopeless.

      I would try truth journaling (that would help you get to the bottom of things if your feelings are jumbled), praying with thanksgiving (that would help with your goal of having a heart of thanksgiving and grace because it would help you focus on who God is in the midst of your situation), and option charts because those would help you focus on what your real-life options are so that you could make the best life possible within the situation if you’re powerless to change the situation.

      I haven’t been able to post about option charts on this blog because I can’t figure out how to format them to fit on the blog, but I do talk about them in my Bible study, Freedom from Emotional Eating.

      Hope that helps!

  5. Great post, Barb. I’ve found it’s helpful for me to quickly pray or think over specific concepts and goals while I’m taking a small break at work.

    Posting frequency is whatever you feel is right. But I tend to enjoy less frequent but deeper posts. I’ve also found from the perspective of a blogger, that’s more sustainable too.

  6. hi Barb thank u for inviting me to this group i have so many goals to work on and they all are important to me. I want to break free of negative emotions and distorted thinking and insecurity and depression but most of all i want a closer walk with the lord and to have a closer relationship with family lol i know these are a lot of goals but i think i need to start with two to break depresson one is a closer walk with God and a closer relationship with family

    • I can relate, Robin – I always have more goals than I can handle as well. I love all of your goals – excited to see what God does in your life as you work on them!

  7. Sometimes I don’t know if I should tackle all my goals at once, or if I should work on one main one and not worry too much about the others. Some major goals or changes are: losing weight and staying healthy, walk with God, and maintaining a godly marriage. I feel like I do better when I concentrate on a specific area, and I really am itching to tackle the weight loss, since I feel like I’ve let it slip and the weight has crept back on, and I’m back to emotional eating. I also feel like these things over lap… like if I could only look past the surface goal, I’d see the real goal underneath… but in order to get to the goal I have to start working on something. I just don’t know which one!

    • HI Tamara,
      I noted the date of your post and looks you and I may be the only ones doing this study presently. Anyway we are the only two posting for Sept 2017. I am just staring the study today, Sept 18, 2017.

      Doing one goal at a time works best for me. I know what you mean about want to do more than one of Barb’s studies at the same time, but my mind tends to run every which way if I work on more than one at a time. Have you thought about maybe starting Renewing Your Mind, then after you get going with it until your habit is established, begin the weight study.

    • Hi Tamra! Sorry I took so long to answer. I’ve been out of town for the last 1 1/2 weeks camping and hiking! I agree with Linda that it’s probably more helpful to work on just one goal at a time. I usually work on whatever issue seems to be the biggest in my life at the time. I also agree that the project overlap. For example, working on either marriage or emotional eating would help your relationship with God since you’d be going to Him for help with those. If you worked on marriage, that would help with any emotional eating that was due to marriage issues. Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any other questions!