19 New Year’s Resolutions Worth Keeping
1. Use your Money to Make Memories
People often make a rational calculation: I have a limited amount of money, and I can either go there, or I can have this. If I go there, it’ll be great, but it’ll be done in no time. If I buy this thing, at least I’ll always have it. That is factually true, but not psychologically true. We adapt to our material goods, but the things we DO can make memories that last a lifetime.
2. Be More Grateful
Christ healed ten lepers, but only one returned to express gratitude, while the other nine went their way, rejoicing. Christ knew that only the one leper would be fully healed, for he received another gift by expressing his gratitude.
3. Work on Being more Optimistic
Many people in America and around the world are feeling fatalistic — pessimistic about the future. But optimism has many benefits. A positive outlook is healthy and beneficial every minute you feel it. Science says so, but so does religion.
4. Pray with New Meaning
Saying the same prayer morning and night? Feeling like your prayers are not quite getting through? Here are 25 kinds of prayer you might want to try.
5. Find out if Following the Prophet is Right for You
Some struggle with the fallibility of prophets and leaders and don’t quite understand our individual responsibility, not only to sustain and follow, but to pray about everything we receive from them.
6. Learn to See the Benefits of Life’s Detours
We all have goals. How nice it would be to reach them on a straight path. But all sorts of things get in our way. Surprisingly, our lives may be all about the detours we are forced to take.
7. Judge Yourself and Others Less
Why do some of us feel too judged to want to join with the Saints to worship, while others come to church in spite of the consciousness of their own imperfections? Why does Mormon culture sometimes seem hard to live up to? Why is standing out sometimes so difficult?
8. Find your Mormon Identity
Are all members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the same? Anyone who’s spent ten minutes in a sacrament meeting knows that’s not true. But for a faith where we know that God loves us individually, and knows us by name, we must learn to embrace and develop our individual identity.
9. Get Online and Help the Church Grow
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is looking for volunteers to help tag photos in its online media library to help make finding images easier for searchers. According to LDS.org, many photos that have been submitted are in need of additional key words. When a photo is tagged with a key word, it becomes easier to find in an image search through LDS.org, the Media Library or even Google.
10. Find Joy in Heavenly Father’s Plan
If it’s true that all of us existed as spirits before we were born, it means that we might truly be eternal beings, that there might be an eternal plan for us, that mortality is just a brief time of testing and schooling, and that we as individuals are indeed unique.
11. Perform Random Acts of Kindness
A man who has never been a member of the Mormon Church sings praises for Mormons who have served him.
12. Find New Hope for Shaken Faith
Shaken Faith Syndrome is a newly-coined phrase to connote what is ailing people whose faith is shaken by gospel questions that seem to have no satisfactory answers. Lately, for Mormons, most of these questions have to do with the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, especially as they relate to the behavior of people, because people tend to be pretty flaky.
13. Put off the “Natural Man” to Find True Happiness
Though some people might say that the commandments of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are restricting and keep us from being happy, really, the opposite is true. The commandments are a means to protect us from evil, which in turn leads to our happiness. God wants us to be happy; we are taught in the scriptures that “men are, that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:25) and that “wickedness never was happiness” (Alma 41:10).
14. Seek Heavenly Father’s Will
Have you ever said to God, verbally or silently, “I don’t know where to move, or if I should go to school A, B, or C, or marry this guy or not; can you just tell me?” Have you ever just wanted the answer straight out of the sky with God’s signature on it, without any due diligence? God is a loving Father who wants to help us, but not dictate our lives in advance. He has an amazing template or pattern for discovering and receiving His will.
15. Build your Testimony with Preach My Gospel
This is the 10th anniversary of the release of Preach My Gospel to missionaries. Since that time all members have been encouraged to read and study the missionary manual. Here are activities that will help your testimony to grow, using Preach My Gospel.
16. Laugh More
Looking for a break from stress and work? Check out this list of 23 hilarious Mormon Memes to make you laugh! Mormon Memes are becoming more and more popular, and therefore, are becoming more and more clever!
17. Hasten the Work Online
At the 2014 Education Week Devotional at Brigham Young University, David Bednar, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, challenged Latter-day Saints to “sweep the Earth with messages” about the gospel of Jesus Christ through social media. So now that you’re primed and ready to share, you might be asking “What next? How can I share the best, most effective, social media messages?” LDS.net is here to help! Let’s look at the different ways we can participate in social media and how to make the best use of them.
18. Protect Yourself from the World
The internet is a wonderful resource for discovering knowledge, keeping in touch with family and friends, and sharing the gospel. However, the internet can also be a dangerous place where online predators, cyber bullies, and pornography are rife. In our digital age, how do we protect ourselves, and more importantly our children, from the dangers that pervade the world wide web? Learn how to block these dangers out from the computer with these internet safety tips.
19. Learn to Cut and Style Hair
To finish the list, here is a practical skill to share with your family. April Orgill, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and mother of four, recognized a need for hair tutorials online and in early 2013 decided she was the one for the job. She teamed up with her husband Davey, a professional videographer, to make this idea turn into something concrete. The duo has now published more than 100 videos with instructions on how to cut, style, and color hair to get a variety of dos.
