How Should a Sober Christian Make New Year’s Resolutions?

Moving into a New Year is a wonderful time to evaluate your life, set new goals, and move towards a better future for yourself. As a Christian in recovery, setting those goals requires taking more time and care than the average person. You have to ensure your resolutions leave you room to focus on your recovery. Your goals must align with your spiritual wants and needs. Most importantly, every step you take should move you towards where you and God want you to be.

This article covers some of the steps you can take to ensure your New Year starts and ends on the right path. Plus, it offers help and guidance on taking steps to align your goals with your wants and needs.

Don’t Walk Alone

“Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. “ – Proverbs 27:17

As Christians, we can rely on God for support and guidance. We also have the benefit of support groups, churches, and the Word of God to guide us. Yet, many of us choose to walk alone. You didn’t go through recovery on your own, why would you start any new goal on your own? Humans are social creatures, we thrive in the presence of our brothers and sisters. Looking for groups to help us, support us, and offer accountability makes achieving any resolution that much easier. The Times Magazine shows that the most common goals are fitness and weight loss, budgeting, reducing substance abuse, learning new skills, traveling, and family. Let’s look at what each of those goals might look like with a Christian, community-centric approach:

• Fitness and Weight Loss – Get involved with others who want to improve their health, either at a local group or from your community. Work to inspire and motivate each other so that everyone stays on track. This works whether you’re going to a gym with a group, running, cycling, dancing, or doing yoga. Find people who want to do it with you and work together towards your long-term goals.
• Eat Healthy – Discuss food goals with family and commit to helping prepare and plan meals. Choose goals everyone agrees to and work towards being healthy together. If you live alone, consider committing to meal prepping and, if you have the financial resources, donating some prepared meals to local shelters.
• Volunteer – Spend time volunteering with your church or local shelters. Try to avoid volunteering around drug or alcohol use. While it can feel good to help people like you, people in early recovery are normally recommended steering clear. Why? If cravings hit, people offer substances, or you often see drugs and alcohol around, you might relapse. On the other hand, spending part of your new year helping others will actively contribute to your recovery.
• Family – Set goals, plan, and communicate together. Sit down with family and discuss how, when, why, and where you want to spend more time together. Depending on your history, this might involve acknowledging that your past addiction has harmed your family. It may involve apologizing and rebuilding relationships. It might also involve attending family therapy to resolve problems. As a Christian, it’s on you to acknowledge and admit where you’ve wrong them and to put in the work to make up for it.
• Reducing Substance Abuse – Hopefully, you’re still clean and sober. At the same time, it’s important to continue getting help. Long-term treatment is key to long-term success. This means, for many of us, that it’s essential to continue going to 12-step groups like AA or NA, to seek out occasional counseling, and to continue putting in the work.

Essentially, it’s important to find a way to involve your friends, family, and community in your goals. This helps with success, with building up your community, and with helping yourself to feel good about your goals.

Prioritize Your Recovery

While it’s tempting to set goals that add to long-term success, your recovery comes first. You don’t have to set aside lots of money for a house, lose 50 lbs., or learn a new language this year. What you need is to build a lifestyle and habits that consistently contribute to your qualify of life, your spirituality, and your sobriety. That means building resolutions around the goals that actively contribute to those things. This can include:

• Building daily habits, such as keeping your home clean, eating healthy meals, and taking part in exercise
• Talking to God on a regular basis
  Rebuilding your relationships and making new ones
• Taking part in your community and adding to it
• Building weekly habits such as attending church, taking time off, etc.
• Committing to small acts of kindness
  Committing to working on yourself with therapy and treatment over the long-term
  Committing to time spent on self-improvement every week

At the same time, it’s important to keep in mind that you cannot do everything and you shouldn’t try. Overworking yourself, trying too hard, or giving yourself a constant stream of tasks will just leave you exhausted and burnt out. Take time off, plan to relax, and remember you don’t have to be perfect. It’s not realistic to set 30 resolutions. Instead, set one primary resolution with a few smaller goals around it. Tackle the largest impediments to your life happiness and health first. Then, feel free to tackle others as your habits take over and you can achieve things more easily.

It’s okay if you don’t achieve everything you want to this year. Progress is often not linear. You will have bad days, you will back track, and you might have to start over. The point is to continue sowing the seeds that allow you to reach those goals in the first place. If you give up doing that, you fail.

As a Christian, your goal is to align yourself, your goals, and your lifestyle with God. Often, that means making choices that enrich your life, the lives of those around you, and which allow you to live in a temperate but joyful way. It means committing to your community and to your church. And, it means living with respect for your body, your mind, and your spirit. If you can work inside those guidelines to create reasonable, achievable goals, motivate yourself and others to fulfil those goals, and consistently work for the good of yourself and those around you, you’re setting great resolutions.

Happy New Year!

If you or a loved one is currently struggling with alcohol or drugs, it might be time to check out a Christian Substance Abuse Rehab Program. Speak with one of our experienced treatment advisors today at (844) 577-1234 for a free assessment.