A new year = a renewed focus

1 John 2:7 "Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard." 

 We all enjoy the coming of a new year. It gives us a reason to celebrate life. That's why many of us party on New Year's Eve. A new calendar year becomes a fresh start. Many people become goal-oriented around this time of year. Promises of weight loss push us to join exercise gyms and count calories. Financially we strive to save more money and spend less. To improve our professional lives, we return to college, enroll in graduate school, and strategize our careers. However, the beginning of the new year does not mean that everything should be new.

I mean that if we are creating new goals year after year, what does that say about our previous goals? Did we accomplish them? If we did reach them, then why do we establish the same new goals every year?

During my teaching tenure, my goal was to meet my students where they were academically, and gradually raise their astuteness. Thus, I created a pattern within my lesson planning. Referencing Bloom's Taxonomy, there are different tiers of learning that are developed upon each tier. For example, a student learning about the Civil War is entry-level knowledge. Creating a play based on the Civil War requires a higher skill. Thus, I argue that we need to stop creating new goals every new year. 

Instead, we should push our goals to higher levels. Simple goals deserve complexity. For example, let's assume you possess a goal of losing five pounds. After reaching this goal, it should be heightened with taking cooking classes to eat healthier, jogging one mile every other day, buying organic foods weekly, etc.


One of my goals over the past few years has been to improve my writing to fulfill God's purpose for my life. This began with studying grammar and literature, writing daily, blogging, reaching out to successful bloggers, pitching articles to USA Today, and reading more books. Last year, I released this blog and my first book, My Flexibility Manifesto: Following Your Passion 2 Success.  

This year I continue my commitment to my writing goal. I dropped out of a superfluous MBA program to join a technical writing graduate program to master the fundamentals of clear professional writing. I am working on a new hip-hop album that will be free of explicit language, but filled with positive honest messages and themes. I continue to blog, read, and write. I am working on Welcome to Black Excellence: From poverty to prosperity, my next nonfiction book. This is how I developed a single goal into several tiers.

Now that I've shared my development of my writing goal, what goals are you leaving behind that deserve your full commitment?