A New Year, a New You?

New Year's Eve is tomorrow. Time to celebrate the end of one year and the clean slate beginning of the next one. Let's all be honest here: most of our New Year's Resolutions should more appropriately be called New Year's Day Resolutions, because that's about how long they seem to last. I've done it before so many times, telling myself this is the year I'll learn a new language, get six-pack abs, learn to play guitar, learn a programming language, and, more recently, finally get published. Well, this year, I mean them. ;)

And they still may not last. Last year, I came up with twenty such resolutions. I followed through on just eleven of them, and that's being fairly generous on what constitutes keeping those resolutions. I now have a list of twenty more resolutions for this next year, some of which are the same ones I had at the beginning of the current year. Will I keep them all? Almost assuredly not.

Why? That's the question, isn't it? And the answer is simple: I'm resolving to change my actions and not my heart. I somehow believe that my life can be better by changing habits and leaving my heart the same. It's a losing battle if my heart is in the same place it's been. Sure, I may have the willpower to swear off Oreos for a year (for those who don't know me, I've had a lifelong love of Oreos. "Oreo" was actually the first word I learned to spell, so giving them up for a year sounded insane to family, friends, and most of all, myself.), but do I have the willpower to not do something more detrimental to my future or to make myself do something that will change my future for the better?

Perhaps more important is the question of why I am not trying to change my heart. I don't love people like I should. I don't get into the Bible as often as I should. I don't pursue God like I should. In all of these things, my heart is in the wrong place. And yet, "Love God more" isn't on my list of resolutions, neither is "Change my heart to love others like God loves them and me." I will put these things on the list, but why were they not the top things I thought I needed to work on?

As humans, we have a tendency to put the cart before the horse. We want results first before our actions change. We want a raise so we'll work harder. We want a relationship to help us work on our insecurities. We want our needs met before we'll trust God. With our actions, we want to change our actions and think that doing so will change our hearts. Everything is backwards. We must first analyze our hearts and then change them (asking God to help us do that) and then our actions will change of themselves. When our actions change, our results will naturally change.

Think about it this way: you know, of course, how you dress in the morning. You have an image that you are comfortable with people seeing you in. It's like in the Matrix when Morpheus is teaching Neo about the Matrix and says that the way Neo looks in the Matrix is how he pictures himself to be. If your style is not flashy, you won't dress flamboyantly. If you like lots of colors, you probably won't be going out in black, gray, and white. If you think of yourself as smart and powerful, you're more likely to wear a suit or nice shirt and slacks or dress. If you're laid back, jeans are more likely. How you see yourself determines your choices. Change how you see yourself and your choices change. Change your choices and your results change. If you want to be a new you in the new year, you have to change your heart first to line up with the person you want to be. Once you do that, you'll naturally keep your resolutions.