10 Challenges for the New Year
Thrive in the New Year!
1. Get comfortable with your own skin. Stop trying to be someone else. No one else can be you. Only you can.
2. Let go and let God. 1 Peter 5:7 says, “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you” (NLT). What might your New Year look like if you actually did this?
3. Shed the Someday Syndrome. Stop thinking that someday you will catch that big break, experience some grand miracle, or find the hidden secret to contentment. Live in the moment and embrace your NOW.
4. Release the emotional toxins. Don’t let anger, resentment, bitterness, or grudges take root in your life. Take back your joy, peace and happiness by daily giving your emotions to God.
5. Accept grace as your FREE gift to grow. There is nothing you could ever do to make God love you less, or more. His love for you is perfect, though you are not. But He also loves you too much to leave you the way you are. Celebrate God’s grace in your brokenness, but don’t let it keep you stuck in your brokenness. Grace is your catalyst to grow—to get unstuck!
6. Walk in humility. Be ready to admit your mistakes and reconcile your failures quickly. This will give you more influence than you ever imagined.
7. Determine to overflow with generosity. Let your life be a constant outpouring of blessings to others. Seek out needs to meet around you—even more so, not less, when you find your life constrained financially. The road out of constraints isn’t paved with selfishness; it’s paved with generosity. Giving is the highest form of living!
8. Find your tribe. Don’t settle for pseudo community (online community). Get to church and live in real fellowship with others. The best way to discover loyalty in friendship is to become loyal in friendship. Go out of your way to contribute to community. It will pay you back more richly than you invested yourself.
9. Live with an eternal perspective. Maximus the Gladiator was right: “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” This world is temporary. Social acceptance and popularity is fleeting. Money and possessions will pass. Live from the timeless core values that give eternal perspective to your life. Play to the audience of ONE. Make much of Jesus. You will never get to heaven and hear Jesus say, “You were just too passionate about me. You went overboard with your faith.” Jim Elliot said, “Wherever you are, be all there! Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.” Eternity hangs in the balances.
10. Take a new risk this year. Peter Drucker admonished, “There is the risk you cannot afford to take, there is the risk you cannot afford not to take.” This year will present you with an opportunity, a risk, that you cannot afford NOT to take. Be ready. My book “AUDACITY: Find Your Crazy. Change The World.” is a great resource on this subject!