Throw something out this January…and by that, we don’t mean books

Ah, the new year.

Regardless of whether or not last year was our best or worst year yet, we just can’t help but hope and plan that this next one will be better. Right at the beginning, we make all kinds of goals and promises to ourselves.

Things like:

• Eat more healthy food!
• Exercise more often!
• Budget better!
• Reorganize the whole house in 30 days!
• Read more books!
• Have more patience!
• Increase joy!
• Gain more peace!

Sound familiar?

And yet, by this time, we’re probably already discouraged. We already missed a good week of gym time. We were supposed to have read a whole book by now and we just can’t get into the story. And
forget about healthy meals. We’re so tired from all the cooking and cleaning during the holidays, pizza sounds so much easier. So we consider giving up and we’re only two weeks in!

But look closer… what do you notice about each of these statements? They’re all written in a positive spin. And we think that makes it harder to stick to it and create goals – the goals you need
to accomplish your resolutions.

Think about it. If your plan is to eat healthier and that’s all you say, you might just set a number of calories or meals that need to be “healthy.” But most likely, that number was arbitrary, and its
attainability was probably not taken into consideration. What if you turned it around though? What makes for healthy eating for you? Maybe it’s eating out less? Ordering less pizza? Cooking more
meals from scratch? What if you started by just eliminating one thing? Instead of just telling yourself that to eat more healthily, tell yourself to just throw out one night of mac and cheese and make a healthy alternative.

Well, that you can do! Small actions create a chain reaction! And you can use the same trick for reading more, reorganizing the house, or budgeting better.

But we’re not just about resolutions here. We’re about life-change. So what about the spiritual aspects? What if you tried the same trick for your spiritual life?

If we’re trying to increase joy, we may not know exactly what that looks like, but we do know what DOESN’T bring us joy. What if, to increase something, you had to throw something else out?

With that in mind, what is the Lord calling you to throw out this year? Is there something you’ve been keeping around in a trash bag that you never got around to taking it out? You keep telling yourself: “I’ll get to it soon…” But soon doesn’t work. We both know that. And not only that, but that bag takes up room.  So, what are you waiting for?!

If you had to throw one thing out this year…what would that be?

Here are some book recommendations to help you with that