Why 2026 Resolutions Might Be Easier Than We Think
Makinde Kehinde Margret@kehindemargretmakinde
10 hours ago
As you would dress a kitchen with vapours and flavours, or prepare a living space with greeting cards, ribbons, lights, and intention, so dress your determination with care.
Before you decide what to become next, forgive yourself (mind and heart) for all you did not become before today. Forgiveness clears the space where focus can live. Without it, ambition becomes brittle.
There is something within you that already knows what will work. Beneath attention fatigue, learning gaps, and scattered efforts, there is a still signal—yourself, nudging you to what fits. When you notice it, stay with it. Make it work.
Because for the next version of you, only three power-filled things are required:
you, now, and a step.
If you are reading this moment, I congratulate you.
You have you.
You have now.
What remains is the step.
Sometimes the step is unglamorous.
•Put one foot before the other.
•Turn on your data or connect to Wi-Fi.
•Head to LinkedIn, learn in its public space.
•Open Ocean PDF and download that course by a seasoned professional. Treat each page like a classroom. Listen. Practice. Do the assignments. Build small projects. Repeat.
The step you need is often the one you did not know counted.
What Dies Quickly When the Year Begins?
There is something I have noticed over time:
some things have very short lifespans.
They are activated with enthusiasm (new pens, jotters, diaries, new living space), announced in public or mental space with confidence, written boldly and then nudged to be ignored or abandoned.
One of these is the New Year resolution.
This is not an attack on resolutions. For the visionary, the gifted, the diligent, resolutions can be powerful if they are simple enough to survive the noise of a turning year.
Because the new year does not arrive alone. It arrives with crews or cliques, teams:
•Comparison
•Pressure.
•Silent accounting of age
•Expectations (spiritual, mental, physical)
By grace, if God grants us another year, many will enter it already exhausted by who they think they should have become.
What quietly kills skill, talent, passion, even grace upon productivity is far from laziness, it is the virus of distraction looped as ambition, or motion mistaken for progress, or too many goals competing for one life.
Canceling resolutions is out of it. The answer is in refining them to just one, not not more. To enter the coming year with a single anchored decision:
To be diligent with grace.
Grace does not cancel work but empowers it. Diligence does not replace God, it partners with God. This equates to excellence (≠ perfection) faithfulness in that one resolution practiced repeatedly.
An anchor question is uncomfortable but necessary:
What do I have that I have looked away from?
•A skill you abandoned.
•A gift you underplayed.
•A talent you treated casually because it came easily or you felt anyone can do it
When you find it, do not romanticize it.
Plough it.
Work one field well.
Network within it.
Speak about it.
Practice publicly.
Program your mind intentionally to partner with the Spirit already at work in you.
Scripture is clear: growth is not mystical, it is relational and disciplined.
“Iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens another.”
Proverbs 27:17
Learn from those ahead of you.
Keep showing up with what you have.
Teach what you know.
“To everyone who has, more will be given.” Matthew 25:29
Professionals publicize the same truth in different languages:
•Writers read and write to expand minds and inform hearts
•Chefs cook daily to water throats and satisfy bellies
•Doctors study cases to be emphatic and competent healers.
•Musicians practice scales to pamper ears and souls
•Designers repeat, refine, release.
No shortcuts to devotion.
Isaac planted and God multiplied.
“Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the Lord blessed him.”
Genesis 26:12-13
This is the order:
1. Plant first.
2. Trust God for increase.
You must make a resolution and it must be focused and faithful.
•Decide to look again at what you have overlooked.
•Decide to stay longer than comfort allows.
•Decide to become excellent and not famous, excellence will publicize you into fame, and everything else will find you.
Prayer
God, empower me to do faithfully what You have already placed in my hands. Teach me diligence with grace. Help me plant well, work honestly, and trust You for increase.
Amen.
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If this piece helped you slow down, refocus, or choose one thing wisely, you can support the work with Super Thanks. Your support helps keep these reflections alive and accessible.
If you wish to go deeper: spiritually, intellectually, or practically, these readings extend the conversation.
Further Readings
1. Scripture (The foundation)
Proverbs 6:6–8 Learning diligence from the ant
Ecclesiastes 9:10 “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might”
Colossians 3:23 Work as unto the Lord
Luke 16:10 Faithful in little, faithful in much
Galatians 6:9 Do not grow weary in doing good
2. Books
Brother Lawrence “The Practice of the Presence of God”
Cal Newport “Deep Work”
James Clear “Atomic Habits”
Os Guinness “The Call”
Richard Foster “Celebration of Discipline”
3. Articles by Thinkers
Parker J. Palmer "Vocation, inner truth, faithful work"
Eugene Peterson "Long obedience, unhurried faith"
Annie Dillard "Devotion to craft and attention"
Cal Newport "Focus, craft, depth over noise"
#purpose
#faithandwork
#personalgrowth
#excellence
#intentionalliving
#newyearreflections
#nircle
Picture Credit: Micheala Merglová for Unsplash
