In about exactly a month, millions will make long lists of New Year’s resolutions. And most of them will never amount to anything.

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Why do we even bother with such a seemingly useless tradition? The answer is, we need to believe that we can improve this year over the last. We need to believe that we can change ourselves or our circumstances. If we can not, then what is the point of moving forward?

So what if we could improve our chances of making 2015 better? What if there was a way to beat the effect of New Year’s resolutions? To do that, we need to do our self-improvement list with a little more purpose.

Find your “push” goal.

Your “push” goal is the one goal that if it were to succeed, it would automatically let some other things fall into place. For example, last year I realized that half my other goals would kind of fall into place, if I could just get up an hour earlier every day. I identified that as my push goal. Getting up earlier set me up for early morning devotional time. It also allowed me time to eat some breakfast. And it put me in my office ahead of schedule so I could start the day a little less stressed.

I could have put all of those things on my list of New Year’s resolutions, but it would have made almost no difference. But identifying a push goal allowed these other things to become motivators instead of things I needed to do as well. And that helped me change in a meaningful way. And maybe just as importantly, it narrowed my focus.

Only allow yourself one or two goals at the most.

Don’t pick everything. Pick carefully. Allow yourself to dream a little, and make sure that the goal or goals are actually inspiring for you. Don’t just pick a goal because you know you should.

Tune out the voices that are clamouring to tell you what your life should look like, and take some time to discern what God created you for. Then create a few goals around achieving those dreams.

Find your why.

Find that inner drive of why reaching this goal would be meaningful to you. Find the motivating connection between your goal and the way achieving that goal will improve your life in 2015. Visualize how your life would be more of what God intended for you when you achieve this goal.

Why you do something matters. It can be the difference between it being a mere wishlist item on your New Year’s resolution list, or being a goal that you can sink your teeth into and do some damage. So to change 2015 into your best year ever, do a bit of homework.

And to help you out, here is a free resource from Michael Hyatt, 3 FREE videos on making 2015 your best year ever. He is one of the guys I read on a regular basis.

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