Welcome to Episode 363 of The Non-Anxious Leader podcast, the last episode of 2025. If you are new to this podcast, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com with your questions, comments, and suggestions for future episodes. You can find more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com, where you can find out about my coaching practice, speaking engagements, the the books that I've written and the courses that I offer. You can also subscribe to my Two for Tuesday email newsletter there at the website or at the link in the show notes. And finally, if you'd like to support my work for as little as $5 a month, you can do that at the link in the show notes as well. This helps pay for the technology that I use to support the podcast and the website. Thanks in advance for your consideration. And now, without further ado, here is episode 363, an updated version of 5 tips to start your New Year Well. I originally did a version of this episode two years ago. Rather than do a rebroadcast, I decided to record an updated version. Both episodes are based on my book, One New Habit, One Big Goal, Change Your Life in 10 Weeks.

You can go to the link in the show notes for a free copy, no email address required. The idea behind the book is that it takes an average of 266 days or about 10 weeks to develop a habit. If you were to do that four times a year, you would see continual improvement in your well-being and productivity. Before I go through five tips from the book, I want to cover two helpful notes. First, if you haven't done a year-end review or at least some reflection on where you want to head in the next year, it's a good idea to do that first. I won't cover that here, but I will put a link to an episode I did on the year-end review in the show notes. Second, I'm not a fan of traditional New Year's resolutions as they don't typically work. That said, I am a fan of temporal landmarks. There are two types of temporal landmarks, social and personal. A social landmark is shared by all of us. These include the beginning of a new year, new month, or new week. Major holidays in the beginning or end of a school year are also social landmarks.

Personal landmarks are unique to you, such as a birthday or anniversary. There might be other days related to your work life, like the day you started an important job or the day that you retired. Researchers at the Wharton School of Business found that using a temporal landmark as a starting point for developing a new behavior increases motivation. They call this the fresh start effect. Of course, this means you could start on January 1, but if you're not ready to do that, the beginning of any week or month will work. This is important if you're going to use this process more than one time a year. Likewise, setting a temporal landmark for finishing your goal has been shown to increase motivation. When you develop a 10-week plan, see if you can have it culminate on a personal landmark, such as a birthday or anniversary. If not, shoot for the end of a month or an end of a week. Even that will make a difference. My first tip is to pick one thing. One problem with New Year's resolutions is that we have too many health goals, spiritual goals, work goals, relationship goals, and by February, most of those are gathering dust.

Not because we are weak or unmotivated, but because we're human. The more we take on, the less likely we are to succeed at any of it. So instead of trying to overhaul your entire life, choose one improvement that genuinely excites Not the thing you think you should do, but the thing that sparks energy when you imagine it becoming part of your life. That excitement is fuel. It's what gets you out of bed each day when motivation is low. Once you've chosen that one thing, give it your full attention for the next 10 to 12 weeks. That's long enough for a new behavior to become automatic, something you no longer have to negotiate with yourself about. This is the heart of the approach in my book. Focus deeply, build steadily and let small, consistent actions create big change. So don't overwhelm yourself. Don't chase everything. Just pick one thing and start there. My second tip is to make a specific plan. Most people rely on motivation or good intentions, but those are unreliable. They come and they go. What actually drives consistent action is clarity. The more detailed your plan is, the more likely you are to follow through.

When you know exactly what you're going to do, when you are going to do it, where it will happen, and how long it will take, you remove the friction of decision making. You don't have to negotiate with yourself every day. You just follow the plan. Research shows that when you identify these details in advance, you greatly increase your odds of doing it. If you decide to train for a 5K and you wake up each morning and ask, Should I run today? How far? When? You've already lost the battle. But if you've mapped out your week, Monday run this amount, Tuesday run this amount, Wednesday's a rest day, and so on, you've eliminated the guest work. You've created a path you can simply step into. This is true for any habit you want to build, whether it's reading scripture, exercising, improving your sleep, strengthening your relationships, whatever your one thing is, give it structure. Put it on your calendar. Decide the time, the place, and the duration. Make it so clear that you don't have to think about it in the moment. A specific plan doesn't just increase your success rate, it frees up mental energy, reduces anxiety, and builds momentum.

When the plan is clear, the habit becomes doable, and when the habit becomes doable, change becomes inevitable. The third tip is to manage friction. Friction is anything that makes a behavior easier or harder. Most of us We underestimate how much friction shapes our daily choices. We assume we lack motivation or discipline when in reality we're just fighting unnecessary obstacles. When you learn to manage friction, both the bad and the good, you make it far more likely that your habits will take root. Start by reducing bad friction. These are the obstacles that make your desired habit harder than it needs to be. If you want to run in the morning, lay out your running clothes the night before. Put your shoes by the door. Have your training plan ready so you don't waste mental energy deciding what to do. The fewer decisions you have to make in the moment, the more likely you are to follow through. Friction works both ways as well. You can also increase good friction, the kind that slows down the behaviors you're trying to avoid. If you're working on healthier eating, use smaller plates. It naturally limits portion size without requiring willpower.

Remove junk food from the house so you have to work harder to access it. When the path of least resistance leads toward the behavior you want, change becomes much easier. Managing friction isn't about forcing yourself to be better. It's about designing your environment so the right choice becomes the easy choice. When the easy choice aligns with your goals, habits begin to form almost effortlessly. I had a friend who wanted to get up early, go to the gym near where she worked, and work out, and then get to work a little bit early. What she did was she put her her clothes for the morning and her gym bag in the car. That created good friction because if she decided she didn't want to go to the gym in the morning, she had to go out to her car to get her clothes to get ready for work. It also reduced bad friction because everything was ready. All she had to do was get her coffee, jump in the car, and drive to the gym, and her gym bag was already with her. In the end, she was able to develop a habit where she got to the gym early, did her workout, showered and dressed, got to work early as well.

Use friction to your advantage to help you develop the habit you want to develop. The fourth tip is to think big and act small. I learned this concept from Gary Keller and Jay Papisand's book, the one thing, the surprisingly simple truth, behind Extraordinary Results, and it was life-changing for me. The hardest part is getting started. We tend to imagine the finished product, the marathon runner, the daily Bible reader, the person who has finally got a consistent morning routine. Then we get overwhelmed by the gap between where we are and where we want to be. That overwhelm keeps us stuck. Your long-term vision matters because it gives you energy and direction action, and you want to think big. But the way you bring that vision to life is through tiny, almost laughably small actions that build momentum over time. Derek Depker calls them microhabits, and B. J. Fogg calls them tiny habits, and they're the key to breaking through the inertia. Let's say your goal is to read the Bible for 30 minutes every morning. If you try to jump straight into 30 minutes a day, you're less likely to succeed. Instead, start with something so small you can't talk yourself out of it.

For the first week, your only goal is to sit in your chair with your Bible for two minutes. That's it. If you read more, great. But if not, you've still succeeded. What happens is powerful. These two minutes build consistency, and consistency builds confidence, and confidence builds momentum because you're getting used to getting started on a regular basis. When you think big and act small, you create a path that's actually doable. And once you're moving, even slowly, everything gets easier. When I decided to write a book, I wasn't thinking about how am I going to write a whole book. What I started with was, I'm going to write for 30 minutes every morning before I start work five times a week. In doing that, I had most of a manuscript in less than six months. This leads to the final tip, which is track your progress. Progress is your biggest motivator. When you can see that you're moving in the right direction, even in small steps, something shifts inside of you. You feel encouraged, you feel capable, you feel momentum building. That's why visual tracking is so powerful. One of my favorite examples is Jerry Seinfeld's Don't Break the Chain method.

Early in his career, he committed to writing one joke every day. He hung a big wall calendar where he could see the whole year at once, and every day that he wrote a joke, he put a big red X on that day. After a while, he had a chain of red Xs stretching across the calendar, and once that chain started growing, he didn't want to break it. His mantra became, Don't break the Chain, and it worked. You can do the same thing with any habit you're trying to build. You don't need a giant wall calendar. Use whatever works for you. I keep a page in my journal where I track my exercise, my focused work, and the habits I'm developing. When I see that chain of progress, it motivates me to keep going. It reminds me that even on the days when I don't feel like it, I'm building something meaningful. Tracking your progress isn't about perfection. It's about noticing the small wins that add up over time. When you miss a day, instead Instead of getting down on yourself, look at your progress, look at what you're tracking, and say to yourself, I can pick this up again tomorrow.

When you can see your progress, you're far more likely to stay on course, even when you have little blips. And that's how real change happens. Remember that this change doesn't come from willpower alone. It comes from clarity, simplicity, and consistency. In summary, start by choosing one thing that genuinely excites you, not a long list of resolutions, but a single improvement that would bring joy if it became a part of your life. Then make a specific plan. Decide exactly when, where, and how long you'll practice the habit so you remove the daily friction of decision making. The clearer the plan, the easier it is to follow through. From there, set yourself up for success by managing friction and tracking your progress. Reduce the obstacles that make good habits harder and increase the barriers that can make unhelpful habits easier to avoid. Use microhabits to get started, tiny steps to build momentum, and visually track your progress so that you can see the chain of consistency forming. Progress is your strongest motivator, and when you combine clarity, simplicity, and small wins, you create habits that actually stick. This will enable you to get the year going in the direction you want to go.

That's it for episode 363, remember, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com, and you can find more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who would benefit, and please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks in advance for your help. Until next time, go be yourself.