Here we go again

It’s that time of year again. Gym memberships spike, meal prep containers fly off the shelves, and we all make promises to ourselves about becoming better versions of who we are. Lose weight. Save money. Get organized. Be more productive.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these goals. But here’s what I’ve noticed: most of us approach January 1st like it’s a fresh start where sheer willpower and a good plan can transform us into who we want to be. By February, most of us have discovered the truth—we can’t just force ourselves into being different people.

But there’s an even bigger problem. Almost all our resolutions focus on the outside stuff—our bodies, our bank accounts, our schedules. These things matter, sure. But you can be fit, financially stable, and highly organized while still lacking the one thing that actually makes life worth living: the ability to truly love other people.

Love Isn’t a Skill You Master

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you can’t just decide to become a more loving person the same way you decide to run three miles every morning. Love isn’t a behavior you execute or a habit you build through repetition. It’s something deeper than that.

Think about what it actually means to love someone. It’s not checking off a list: “Monday—listened for 15 minutes. Tuesday—bought a thoughtful gift. Wednesday—didn’t say that sarcastic thing I was thinking.” Love is the foundation underneath all those actions. Without it, the kindest gestures are just going through the motions.

Here’s where it gets tricky: real love—the kind that doesn’t turn possessive or manipulative or burn out—isn’t something we can generate on our own. We can try really hard to be nice, to be generous, to be patient. But left to our own devices, even our best attempts at love eventually go sideways. Our care for others becomes controlling. Our generosity comes with strings attached. Our patience runs out at exactly the wrong moment.

We need something we can’t produce ourselves: genuine divine love working through us. And that’s not the kind of thing you add to your life like adding a morning routine or a savings plan.

The Problem With Our Hands Being Full

Divine love is a gift. And like any real gift, you can’t receive it if your hands are already full of your own plans and programs and self-improvement schemes.

This might be why Jesus seemed to spend so much time with people who had nothing going for them—the poor, the sick, the obvious failures. They knew their hands were empty. They knew they needed help. Meanwhile, the successful people, the ones who had their lives together, often missed what he was offering because they already had everything figured out.

When the New Year rolls around and we feel that itch to improve ourselves, we grab for control. We make our plans. We trust our willpower. And God can’t fill hands that are already full.

A Different Approach

So what should we actually do when January 1st comes around? Let me suggest something different from the usual self-improvement program.

First, examine what you actually love. Not what you say you love or think you should love, but what your life reveals that you love. Where does your attention go? Where does your money go? What do you get anxious about when it’s threatened? You might discover some uncomfortable truths—that you love comfort more than honesty, or security more than helping others, or looking good more than actually being good.

Second, admit that you can’t manufacture the kind of love you actually need. The love that transforms us and flows through us to others isn’t something we produce through effort. It has to come from outside us, like light filling a room when you open the curtains. Our job isn’t to create the light. Our job is to open the curtains—which means removing the stuff blocking it: our pride, our need to be in control, our self-sufficiency.

Third, recognize that all your self-improvement might just be sophisticated self-centeredness. The people who’ve actually become genuinely loving aren’t the ones who had “become more loving” on their goal list. They’re the people who got so absorbed in loving God and caring for others that they forgot to monitor their own progress. The moment you start congratulating yourself on how loving you’ve become, you’ve stopped loving and started admiring yourself.

Fourth, make practical resolutions about positioning yourself to receive love. Not “I will be more loving” (that’s not really within your power to promise), but things like “I’ll spend 15 minutes each morning being still and quiet” or “I’ll visit that lonely neighbor every Tuesday whether I feel like it or not.” These aren’t techniques for manufacturing love—they’re practices that put you in the path of it.

Be Still

There’s an old verse that says “Be still and know that I am God.” We’re so busy with our improvement projects, our productivity hacks, our optimization strategies. Maybe what we actually need isn’t more technique but more stillness. Not more effort but more openness to receive what we can’t create.

I can hear the objection already: “Are you saying we should just sit around waiting for love to magically appear while making no effort at all?”

Not even close. I’m saying our efforts matter enormously, but we’ve been aiming at the wrong targets. We’ve been trying to fix the surface issues when the foundation is what needs attention. We’ve been rearranging the furniture while the house is burning down.

Here’s the real question: Do you love God? And if you do, are you loving what He loves—which is everyone and everything, including the annoying coworker and the person who cut you off in traffic and the spider in your bathroom? If not, then all your careful attention to your diet and budget and productivity is just window dressing. You might achieve a nicer-looking life, but you’ll have missed the point.

The Good News

But here’s the hope in all this: The very fact that you want to be better—even if your attempts are misdirected—means something. It means you were made for more than what you currently are. That desire itself is a gift, pointing you toward something beyond yourself.

And here’s the scandalous truth that offends everything our culture teaches us: God doesn’t wait for you to get good enough, organized enough, or disciplined enough to deserve His love. He loves you right now, in your mess and your failures, in your broken resolutions and your repeated collapses. You can’t earn it. You can’t achieve it. You can only receive it.

Maybe the resolution we actually need this year isn’t to do more or be better, but simply to open ourselves to the love that’s already looking for us. To spend less time checking our progress and more time paying attention to the One who loved us first. To worry less about our self-improvement and more about becoming available to the only power that can actually transform us.

What This Actually Looks Like

This doesn’t mean you abandon discipline or effort. Not at all. But it means your discipline serves a different purpose. You don’t practice stillness to become some spiritual overachiever—you do it to make space for God. You don’t practice generosity to build your moral résumé—you do it to train yourself in self-giving. You don’t practice patience so you can feel superior to impatient people—you do it to crack open your self-centeredness so love can flow through you to others.

Here’s the irony: the person who stops trying to “become more loving” and instead gets absorbed in loving God and their neighbor will probably become far more loving than the person who makes it their New Year’s resolution. But they won’t notice, because they’ll have stopped paying attention to themselves. And that’s probably the clearest sign that love has done its work.

A Different Kind of Resolution

So as another year turns and you face the annual temptation to trust in your own power to transform yourself, can I suggest trying something different?

If you must resolve anything, resolve to spend this year learning to receive love. From God. From others. From reality itself. Practice the difficult art of opening your hands and admitting you need help. Pay less attention to your progress and more to God’s presence.

Because here’s the truth: we don’t become better people by trying harder to be better people. We become better people by becoming loved people—by letting ourselves be found by Love Himself, and then letting that love flow through us to a world that desperately needs it.

The resolution to end all resolutions might be this: stop trying to save yourself and start letting yourself be saved.

Everything else will follow.