New Year’s Resolutions: How To Make Sure They Stick

Intro: Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, where you’re invited to gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge about how Christians integrate their faith, life, and finances with a biblical worldview. Here’s your Christian Financial Advisors®’ host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters. Shawn: Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives and Happy New Year! Bob: 2023. Shawn: I cannot believe it’s 2023. I I feel like we just recorded our New Year’s episode not that long ago for 2022. Bob: How do you think it feels for a guy like me who graduated from high school in 1980, he’s gonna be 43 years this year since I graduated from high school. Makes me feel kind of old, Shawn. Shawn: Think Bob’s old. Bob: But I’m still going and I’m gonna keep on going and I hope I can do this until I’m like Warren Buffet. I hope I can do it till I’m 90 or something. Shawn: At 60, you’re only like, it’s like your midlife, right? Cause you’re gonna live like 120. Bob: I hope so. No, I don’t. Really, I don’t wanna live that long. So today, as we always do at the beginning of the year, you know me, I’m really about setting goals. Shawn: Yes, I have come to expect that from you. Bob: I always have one on setting goals at the beginning of the year because I think it’s never too old to talk about. You need to talk about at least once a year, setting goals. We have the scripture from Philippians 3:14. Go ahead, Shawn. Shawn: Philippians 3:14, “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heaven word in Christ Jesus.” Bob: So one of the goals that’s very important is their spiritual goal this year. I hope that this year will be a year in which you grow closer to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Maybe time to read that entire Bible again or just make sure you do that devotional every day. And so we are gonna talk about setting goals for this year. Shawn: And since this is Christian Financial Perspectives, this is gonna be focused a little more on setting financial goals for the year. Bob: That’s right. Well, the first one’s not really financial, but we’re gonna talk about the top 10 year resolutions that people set because at the beginning of the year, it’s always that time to renew, right? I’m in this new year. I’m gonna do it different this year. By the way, these are all my goals right here from last year. Okay. And I’m still working on this year. I’m getting close, but that first one didn’t work out too well for me. But I tried. Shawn: So this is a top 10 years resolution people set over and over in order… would you say in order of importance or is more of just an order of how many people typically have this listed? Bob: I think this is actually in order of importance, based on my research. Shawn: Importance and percentage. So the first one, eat healthier. 37% of people have that one. Bob: Got me. Shawn: It’s always a good one. Bob: Shawn, I’m so southern. I like my sweet tea and my chicken fried steak and my Mexican food. That’s what I’ve been raised on. Shawn: Well, Bob if I remember right, though, I think you might have hit the eat healthier, because I’m pretty sure you only put like six spoonfuls of sugar in your tea as opposed to eight. Bob: Actually I’ve gotten down to two. Shawn: Oh, even better. See, so that is even better. According to eat healthier, one could say that you technically accomplished that one. Bob: I’m trying. And then the next one is… Shawn: Get more exercise. Bob: All of y’all know that one. You know that if you go try to join the gym right now, it’s always packed. January, February, and March starts kind of tapering off. By the time summer gets around, you’re back to the same crew. Shawn: Your best time to join the gym is before you get to Christmas or towards the end of January when, unfortunately, a lot of people have already kind of given up on them getting more exercise, you know. Bob: We don’t want you to give up this year. We want you to do it every day because I do admit while I’m a little bit heavier here, especially after Christmas, I do exercise every day, but I have a little gym I have at my home, but that is the second one. Third one is save money or save more money. Now, we get to the Christian financial part of it. Okay. That’s 37%. That’s another very, very high one. Shawn: And then we’ve got focus on self-care. That’s 24%. It’s just kind of general, maybe it’s not necessarily healthy, getting healthier, getting more exercise, but just take care of yourself. Bob: This one’s maybe put the phone down and read more. Shawn: Read, like books? Bob: It’s a kind of an old-fashioned thing. You get the paper book out. It doesn’t require any batteries or anything. Shawn: Well, I’ll admit I usually use the electronic e-reader. Bob: We used to call that back in the old days, we called that a Kindle. But now I don’t know if they call it that anymore. Shawn: I don’t what they call it. I just didn’t wanna mention any your brand names. Bob: Number six. Shawn: Learn a new skill. Bob: Yeah. Learn something. Do something that that you don’t know how to do. Shawn: Maybe learn how to change the light bulb. This’ll be your year. Bob: The seventh one is making new friends. I’m too old for that, Shawn. Shawn: Oh, come on, Bob. You can still make new friends. Bob: It’s down there in the 15% category too, though. It’s not a real high one. Shawn: Just see, Bob, now would be a good time to make new friends. They’ll be your friends for the rest of your life, right? Bob: How about this one? Number eight, get a job. Shawn: Or get a new job. Bob: Get a new job. I think I’m gonna stick with what I do. I’ve been doing this so long. Shawn: Please don’t you get a new job. More for our listeners. Maybe you’ve been in that job and you realized I really shouldn’t be here anymore. Yeah, it’s okay. Go get a new job. And then the next one, take up a new hobby. That would be a good one. Maybe do something with the house. Bob: I probably need to do that. I’m so focused on this financial stuff. I need to do something different. I did play some golf. Okay. So I’m starting to take back up golf again. Shawn: I was gonna say you do need another hobby so we can talk about something other than finance. Bob: Financial, okay. Shawn: I mean, you’re good at that. Just maybe have something else to chat about. Bob: Okay. So we’ll talk about it. I grew up playing golf. Actually,, my parents were a member of a country club growing up, and I grew up playing a lot of golf up until I was 15, 16 years old. So when I go out and I start playing golf, the first couple of holes, it is terrible. But usually by about the third or fourth hole, I’m starting to par them. So that was always considered like riding a bike. Shawn: Old muscle memory, old muscle memorie’s back. “Oh, I remember this.” Bob: Yep. Exactly. It’s kind of like like you say, riding the bike. Once you learn it, you can get those skills back pretty quick. And the 10th one… Shawn: Is focus more on relationships. Bob: That’s a real important with me, and that’s relationships with your family, with friends, and others. So researchers say about 60% of us actually make our new year resolutions, but only 8% of them are very successful at them. Why is this so. Shawn: That’s a huge difference. Bob: It is, it is. Shawn: Bob, is that 8% of the 60% or is that just 8% of people in general. Bob: I don’t know. I think that’s 8% of people in general. I hope it’s not 8%. Cause 8%… Shawn: Of 60%, that’s a much smaller number. Bob: Eight times, that’d be 4.8. Something like that. No, that’d be 80% of 60%. So 8% would be like 0.04. Something like that. I think, I don’t think… Shawn: It’s low. Whatever. It’s low. 8%, 8% of people. Bob: So, we’re reminded, every year we talk about this, it’s always good to remind ourselves of it, of the famous Harvard Business School study about goals. And that 83 out of 100 people do not have clearly defined goals. Shawn: 83 out of 100. And you know what, that kind of makes sense when we’re looking at those top 10 goals that people typically have – eat healthier or get more fit or work on your fitness. That’s a really vague goal too. So, that kind of makes sense. They’re like, well, if your goal is to eat healthier, what does that really even mean? Bob: So you need to write it down. Here’s my written down ones. And we’re, we’re gonna talk about how to write those down and we have a little form that we’re gonna give you, too. It’s a goal setting form. Shawn: Okay. And for this next one, of the 17 people that did have goals, only three of them actually wrote them down. Bob: So get this, 83 out of 100 people don’t have goals, but the 17 that did have them, only 3. Shawn: So 3out of 100. So 3 out of a 100 people had written goals. Bob: That’s a low, very low number, isn’t it? And when they concluded the study at Harvard, the 3 out of the 10 people that had written goals were earning 10 times the income of the 83 people that didn’t have any written goals. Plus, they tended to be in better health and have happier marriages. Shawn: Wow. Bob: Because again, one of those goals needs to be a relationship goal. Shawn: Yeah, it should. Bob: And a health goal. So what’s the first thing, Shawn, that if you want to hit a target, what’s the first thing you have to do? I’m gonna have that bow and arrow and I want to hit that target. Well, or shoot that target? Shawn: You need. I think you tricked me the last time we talked about this, but this one is, you need to have a target. Actually, that’s the first thing. So most people think, oh, I need to aim. No, you need to know what the target is. You need to have the target. Did I get it right this year? Bob: You got it. You got it perfect. You’re an old hat at this now, you’ve been doing this. So there’s a goal system that I’ve used for years, and it’s called the SMAC, S-M-A-C method. Shawn: Please don’t hit me on camera. Bob: Okay. So the S in SMAC means… Shawn: Specific. So, setting your goals and a target specifically for you personally. Not goals someone else has or wants, but something for you, specific for you. Bob: The M in SMAC means measurable. Set goals that you can measure along the way as you’re getting to that goal. Shawn: You know a good one for that one? The fitness one is maybe you say, Hey, I wanna lose 10 pounds or something. Well, that’s something that you can actually measure instead of just get fit. It’s like, well, I’m gonna lose 10 pounds, I’m gonna lose 20 pounds or I want to get to a certain body fat percentage. Those are all things that you can measure along the way. And they’re specific. Bob: The A in the SMAC is, is achievable. Achievable. Shawn: Set realistic goals you can achieve. Bob, you wanna give some examples? Bob: Well, I don’t think I should set a goal to run a marathon before the end of the year, but maybe I could set a goal to run a 5k. Shawn: Yeah, there you go. Bob: Okay. Because that would be unreasonable, especially with torn meniscus in both my knees, bad back, or even just walk five miles. Shawn: If you if you join a gym maybe a realistic goal would be like, I go to a CrossFit gym mainly because I used to work out on my own, but I kind of like going somewhere and just doing whatever the coach tells me to do that’s on the board. But wherever you go, if you join a gym, make your goal maybe to start with, I want to change my habits to where I go at least three times a week and just start with that. You can always build if you want to, but like, start with something weird. Like what, three times a week you can do that. That’s something achievable. Bob: You wanna curl 30, 40 pounds in each arm, you gotta start off with 5 or 10. Shawn: Yeah. Bob: And graduate from there. And as you get older, you’re not gonna be doing that heavy weight because your joints are gonna start hurting. Shawn: Okay. And so the last letter C, the C in SMAC means compatible. Set goals that are compatible with your values and beliefs. Bob: So, as we get into setting the specific goals. I always say that funny, too. My wife says, you sound like you say Pacific versus specific. Shawn: Just say it fast and they won’t know. No one will be able to tell, right? Bob: Right. Shawn: We’ll put specific in the subtitles. Bob: But I’ve been very specific over the years, and I set goals in practically every area of my life. This is gonna be on our goals chart that we’re going to give you. And Garrett, if you would put this up as we say these. So, one is a spiritual goal. And that’s, like you say, maybe the read the Bible this year or do devotionals every day to pray with your spouse. That could be a spiritual goal. Okay. Shawn: And if you’ve been having a hard time, this is a good example because I know this was one of my goals for 2022. But in 2022, my goal was that, for spiritual, is I wanted to be better and more consistent with my quiet time. There’s a lot of days where I felt like I was kind of giving my last 10% to God, like at the end of the day. And I realized, you know what, I’m gonna, I’m gonna start working out in the mornings, and why not? I can just get up 10-20 minutes earlier than I needed to, to get to the gym so I have some time just me and God, the kids aren’t up. Jenna’s not up. For those of you for spiritual goals, don’t think, oh, I wanna start spending two hours a day in my Bible. If you haven’t been doing that every day, maybe try 10 to 20 minutes a day, spending some time in the Bible. And then when you are consistently doing that every day, maybe you’re able to expand over time. But don’t, same thing, don’t jump into something huge on that spiritual goal. Bob: You don’t need to jump into the deep end. Jump into the shallow end, and then swim your way to the deep end. The physical one is the same thing, like you said. That’s a real big one with me, to keep working out. I’ll be 61 in June of this year. I hope to be going another 20, 25 years. Can you imagine how many podcasts we’ll have in 20 years? Shawn: Don’t do the math. Bob: I know it’d be a lot. I know. It would be, what’s? That’s like a thousand of them or something. But we’re up to 137. I think this is. Shawn: Then we have financial ones. Bob: And again, baby steps with that. If you’re not saving anything and you say, well, I wanna start saving a thousand dollars a month, that’s going from one extreme to the other. Remember, you need to make it SMAC specific, measurable, achievable, and compatible to you. Shawn: And then you have mental. Bob: Start off with $25. Okay. Shawn: That’s right. And then you start with mental, mental goals. Maybe that could be like from readin , because that is definitely one of the things… Bob: Maybe to go back to school. Shawn: Yeah. You can go back to school and finish that graduate degree or something or your undergrad if you didn’t finish your undergrad. Bob: The relational one. I think this is very important, especially for us guys. We have a tendency to get more focused on work. I am very, very guilty of this. Shawn: No, no. There’s no evidence of that, especially in the United States of guys focusing too much on their career and work. What? Bob: That relational one, like I’m looking at mine. Have a positive attitude towards Rachael, and travel more with her. By the way, this was 2022. I did that a lot last year. We went and we’re going to, again, this year. We’re going to finally, hopefully, do that Mediterranean cruise she wanted. We had to cancel a couple years ago cause of Covid. And hopefully it’s not gonna show it’s ugly head too bad again this year. Okay. But that’s a relational one that I’m gonna be doing with my wife. But that positive attitude toward her, I can be critical sometimes. And I had that, actually, on here – be less critical about things. Shawn: Yeah. That’s good. And you wrote it down. Bob: I wrote it down. Shawn: That’s helpful. Bob: Yep. Shawn: So professional. I don’t know, pin on your profession what you might do, maybe going for that professional designation in your career or maybe learning some new skills depending on where you’re working. Or maybe, hey, if you’re working somewhere, a lot of places, especially larger companies, will have like programs and stuff where you can say, all right I want to work my way up to being a shift manager or an assistant manager or something. A lot of times companies will have those paths if you say, Hey, I wanna go further with this. Well maybe talk to HR about it. Bob: Just remember to make it SMAC. Shawn: That’s right. Exactly. Don’t say I wanna be an owner of the property. You’re like, okay, maybe make baby steps there. Bob: So I was thinking about this for myself, Shawn, and it has to do with the program here. It was before the end of the year, be doing videos. That was not an easy task. This was not easy, putting tthese videos all together and the technology behind it and all that, but we did it. Shawn: We did. It took about six months longer, but we kept at it. And finally, and as you can tell, here we are. Bob: Are one of the things that kept me at it was seeing this every day. Because you know me, I put these around where I’m looking at them all the time. And then, there’s charitable goals. I think it’s very good to think of a charitable goal, what that may be. With me personally, it was supporting more children with Compassion. We’re very strong about Compassion International. But it may be with you, it may be Habitat for Humanity. Just start it. Maybe some of you’re not tithing or giving to your church. Maybe it just has to do with giving more to your church or volunteering at a charity. Shawn: It doesn’t have to be money, especially when it comes to charity. And I think that a lot of people kind of forget that. Like I know at our church, we really need more people to help with the youth, with the kids. And so maybe you can’t give money, but hey, maybe once a month you can help with something at your church. That’s great. That’s still helping. Bob: So another thing is, I had on my goals here that you can add something to your goals and it’s not gonna be on our little chart that we’re gonna give you, but I have traveled, again, because Rachael loves to travel. Me, I just like staying home on my 17 acres and playing out with my John Deere tractor. But Rachael loves to travel, so put that on my goals. Shawn: Put that on my specific family goal. Bob: Yeah. A special goal that you might want, like a skill you might wanna learn. I do have a travel goal in there. So, there is the spiritual form, I mean the goals form for you that we would love to share with you. And I just wanna emphasize again the scripture from Philippians, it talks about the goal to win the prize for which God has called you. So remember that behind all these, you need to be within the will of God, I feel within those goals. Shawn: And just to reiterate those again. So the goals form, we should have shown it on screen, but we’ll also have it in description. Bob: Yeah. We’ll make sure to have it on the screen. Shawn: But the ones that you usually recommend and the one that you follow, we have spiritual, physical, financial, relational, mental, professional, and charitable. Bob: And I take one and this little form, and you can see it’s real small. I just print this out on a piece of paper, and I laminate it. See how it’s laminated. Shawn: Or you can use clear tape. Bob: That’s what I do. Actually, that’s what I do. Shawn: If you don’t have your lamination machine. Bob: I used to have it laminated, but I use clear tape now and I put a copy of this – one in my shower, one on my vanity, one on your visor in your car. If you pull it down, you see it. I got one in my Bible. So I put these all around me where I see them. And as I look back at my 2022 goals, I’ve hit nearly every one of them except the weight. Shawn: I think that’s pretty good. Bob: Again, I’m gonna try that again this year. Shawn: So, so you got 6 outta 7. Bob: I think that’s pretty good. There you go. Well, that’s all for today. We hope we’ve helped you. Again, Aappy New Year, and it’s gonna be a great 2023. We look forward to bringing you many educational programs this year from a Christian perspective with Christian Financial Advisors®. Shawn: And like we said earlier, if you do like this video, please like and subscribe, do all the fun YouTube things. It really does help us out. It also helps, I think, with the algorithm. If you like this, then other users similar to you who might also like Christian financial topics. So, that’s all. Happy New Year and God bless. Outro: We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes, covering many financial topics from a Christian perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes. You can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or Amazon Music to learn more about integrating your faith with your finances. Visit Christianfinancialadvisors.com or call (830) 609-6986. Disclosure: Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors, Inc DBA Christian Financial Advisors® also known as Christian Financial Advisors® Management Group, a registered investment advisor. Comments from today’s show for informational purposes only, and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the host Bob Barber and his guests. Bob does not provide tax advice and encourages you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Investment Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.