Approach Your Goal Setting Differently This Year!

By Melissa Stone

We have successfully crossed over into 2023. Some of us may have new year’s resolutions, others not. I don’t make resolutions anymore (and haven’t for years), but I do try to set a few goals. My goals for this year were inspired by the title of a January 1 Abide meditation: A Little Each Day. My husband and I have been working on refurbishing our home beginning with a new paint job. The problem is that our walls are not drywall, but plaster. There are some areas that have weak patches, and we have to be careful in stripping the paint to avoid crumbling the plaster. It is tedious work, to say the least. Because of that factor—and life getting in the way—we have yet to have an entire wall completely stripped. But that’s

where those four little words come in. If we can focus “a little each day” on the task, it will be completed and ready for painting in the spring.

I have a 365-day perpetual desk calendar that focuses on a certain word for seven days. Appropriately enough, the word for this first week of the new year is diligent. I’d like to share the thought for the day that may help you see the word diligent in a new light, as it did for me: Did you know that the word diligent comes from the Latin word diligere, which means “to value highly; take delight in”? In English, we often translate this concept to mean “working hard,”which is not completely incorrect. The English definition of diligent is “careful and serious in

your work, or done in a careful and determined way.”

The Latin definition has inspired me to look at one of my goals, to write more, in a new way. What if I

approached my writing as a source of high value and took delight in it instead of “working hard” at it?

Joining the Abide meditation title and the Focus calendar word gives me a motto for the new year: Be

diligent to do a little each day. If I deem my goals worthy enough of my time, I can delight in the baby

steps it will take to reach them.

What of your goals for 2023? Does this rendering help change your perspective in completing them?

May God bless you with diligence and vision this new year.