78. Run Your Own Race In 2026 (Part 1): Why Faithfulness Matters More Than Speed

As we step into a new year, many of us feel a mix of hope, pressure, exhaustion, and uncertainty. In this opening episode of Season 3, Nikki invites you to pause, reflect, and reframe what it really means to move forward.

This episode kicks off a three-part series centered on running your own race, not chasing comparison, perfection, or unrealistic expectations, but pursuing faithfulness in the life God has entrusted to you. Nikki explores why so many goals fade after the initial excitement of a new year, what “Quitter’s Day” reveals about our habits, and why lasting change is built on consistency, clarity, and grace...not hype.

Through a powerful track-and-field story, honest reflection, and a biblical lens on habits, discipline, and stewardship, this conversation challenges listeners to consider not just the new habits they want to add, but the old ones they may need to let go of. Nikki unpacks how our daily choices shape who we are becoming, why faithfulness matters more than speed, and how staying in the race, even imperfectly, leads to real formation over time.

Whether you’re feeling energized, discouraged, or somewhere in between, this episode offers encouragement to keep showing up, adjust instead of quit, and remember that growth is a process. This isn’t about a “new you”, it’s about becoming more aligned, more intentional, and more faithful in the race you’ve been given.

Next week, we’ll continue the conversation by talking about clarity and how having a clear “why” changes everything about the decisions we make and the goals we pursue.

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Transcript

Welcome To Season Three

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey friends, I'm Nikki Smith, your host here at A Heart That Beats for Home, the podcast where we're ditching filters and diving headfirst into the raw beauty of all things home. Now, I am no expert when it comes to this whole parenting and marriage dance. I'm simply a gal who's been riding the mom roller coaster for 22 years and a wife still untangling the mystery of it all 25 years after saying I do. My goal is to bring you unapologetically messy and boldly genuine conversations about cultivating strong families. We're gonna laugh, possibly cry, and straight talk about the joy and chaos that comes within the four walls that we call home. No judgment and certainly no perfection. Just real talk from my heart, a heart that beats for home. Let's dive in. Hello, friends. Welcome back to a new year here on the podcast. So excited to have you joining us. Whether you have been here with us for the last several seasons or you are new here at A Heart That Beats for Home, we are so excited to have you joining us as we kick off season three. Hard to believe that we are coming into this third season. Excited for what is ahead this year in just the different interviews, the programming, the things we have scheduled here to bring to the listeners in 2026. Today we are gonna kick off with a three-part series as I have been processing these first couple of weeks in January. I had a really great Christmas break. The last podcast aired the week before Thanksgiving. Closed out season two, had about six or seven weeks just to lay low, be with my family, be super present, do a lot of thinking and sitting and processing about coming into a new year. It's always an interesting time when you're coming into a new season, a new chapter. Lots of different feelings for different individuals around coming into a new year. Some of us come into it with a lot of excitement and love the thought of new goals, new ideas, reaching for maybe things that we haven't been able to accomplish in the past or new things that are on our heart. Others feel very paralyzed by coming into a new year. For some, it can be very discouraging. And it feels like just another year where I didn't do what I told myself I was going to do, didn't make the progress I wanted to make. And maybe for some, even went backwards and also recognize that you can be all of those things. You can be excited about goal planning, you can be frustrated with the things that didn't happen, and recognize that in some areas you really did well, and in some you you didn't do so well. You didn't make the changes that you wanted to make. And so as I myself with my husband have been processing through just what we want for 2026, reflecting on what went well in 2025, the areas that we're proud of ourselves for showing up how we did or making adjustments, kicking some bad habits to the curb, and also where we say, man, we could have done better in these different areas. And so it is just a good time for reflection. And so these next three Thursdays, we are gonna break down just some thoughts around walking into a new season. This week specifically, we're gonna talk about this year being your race. This is you against you. It's not you against the person next to you or that you're following on social media or the person that maybe you're working with. This is about your race, about what do you want to do in the race that you've been placed in 2026? We're gonna walk through some different thoughts on that. Next week, we're gonna jump into a conversation on clarity, specifically gonna share with you a story that so impacted me a couple of years ago in really getting good at clarity in my vision for my family, clarity in my vision for myself, my own health, my own personal goals in my marriage. And it's a story that came from a conversation I had with my husband that really just changed so much about how I move forward, in how I make decisions, in how I say yes or no to things. So we're gonna dig into that a little bit next week. And then the final week in January, we're gonna talk about staying in your race, even when it gets hard. And so I'm just excited to be able to take these next couple of weeks. This is not gonna be a hype, you know, rah-rah, go huge, go big, new year, new you. I am not a huge fan of the new year, new you thing. I said that all the time in the past, and I recognize that's really not the goal, is that it's a new year and it's a new you. I am much more about, and I think we talked about this in one of the last episodes last year, that not so much new year, new you, but new year, another opportunity to get better than I was last year. I don't need to be a new me. I need to take time to recognize that there are things in my life that I'm doing well, that I'm showing up for, that I'm actively participating in, that I'm making forward movement. And yet there are still things that I need to do better in. And so it's not about a whole recreation. I think sometimes that's what takes people out of the game. We come into the new year and we have so many goals. We're seeing so much stuff out there. We're seeing people post on social and all the fitness people and the food people and all these different voices that are coming at us are giving us all of these things that we could be doing. If you just did this, you'd get this result. If you just change this, you'd have this result. And we can come into a new year having these huge goals and burning out really quickly. I did that for a lot of years. I would sit down and I would make so many specific goals for so many different areas in my life and got to the point that it was just burnout. And you can only do that for a handful of days or weeks before you realize this was just too much. And a lot of times the whole thing crumbles apart because we haven't really taken time. And like we're gonna talk about next week, we haven't taken time to get clarity and understanding the why and how it impacts us long beyond 2026 is often the thing that will make us stick with and stay with a goal long term. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with the term quitter's day, but quitter's day is a day that has been set. It's the second Friday of every January. And it's a day that statistically has shown that most people that start out January 1st with some big goals and dreams, by the second Friday of January, most people have walked away from those new ideas, those new goals. And so if you're listening to this now, obviously we've already passed that day, January 9th. And so if you have walked away and you've given up on maybe some of the things that you initially set out to change or to achieve in this year, know that you're not alone and there's some reasons why that happens. We're gonna talk about. And if you are somebody that's listening and you're like, man, I'm still trucking along on a handful of the goals that I set, congratulations because you have beat the odds of making it past Quitter's Day again, which was January 9th. Why does Quitter's Day happen? What's the impact behind people walking away from things that they were pretty serious about just a few weeks ago? First of all, it happens when the noise of the new year fades and reality starts to set in. Coming out of Christmas and the holidays, a lot of times we feel like junk. We've been eating differently than we typically eat. We've been drinking differently. Maybe our sleep habits are different. We've been staying out later. And a lot of times people just don't feel good. And so there's that initial motivation of I just want to feel better. There's also some time off of work and maybe some breaks set in those weeks after Christmas or that week after Christmas coming into the new year. And so you're making some of these New Year's resolutions when you're not in the daily grind of kids being in school and the early work call times and just all the things that in the day-to-day routines can get in the way. Sometimes the goals that felt really exciting when we came into the new year. We're seeing all the hype and the stuff that's being put in front of us everywhere. And we can get on that hype roller coaster and be excited. And eventually those things that once were exciting us can actually really start to feel heavy, can have a lot of guilt associated with them, can have a lot of pressure associated with them. Routines that felt very hopeful now feel very inconvenient. Maybe you made the decision that, hey, I'm gonna get up before work and I'm gonna get my exercise in because I know that's gonna be the best time for me to show up consistently. And so you're setting that alarm in that first couple of weeks of January at 5 a.m. And you're reluctantly getting out of bed and going to work out. And by that third Monday, you're like, I'm tired. I'm tired. What was exciting now feels heavy. And I don't know that I can keep doing this for another 49 or 48 weeks. And so I'm just gonna not get up today, but I'll do it tomorrow. And not doing it today turns into not doing it tomorrow, turns into not doing it this week, turns into not doing this month. Sometimes when we get into that habit, we decide I've already failed, and so I might as well just quit. And one little piece of advice that I got that I want to offer you here is that somebody once said to me, You're allowed to have a bad day. You're allowed to have the day when you just couldn't get out of bed, where you didn't get enough sleep. Maybe you got woken up a couple of times in the night, your your energy is just struggling, you maybe had something happen out of the ordinary that emotionally you just didn't get out of bed. And you're allowed to have those kind of days. But the advice that was given to me is Nikki, when you stack bad day upon bad day upon bad day, that becomes a new normal. But when you allow yourself to say, today I'm gonna give myself grace, but I'm not allowed to do that two days back to back. Tomorrow I have to get up. And so is today the day that I'm gonna not do it because I have to do it then tomorrow. I can't continue to stack, and I hate to call them bad days, but days where I'm going to not maybe push so hard or not be so disciplined. You only get to do that one day at a time. And that has been something that has really helped me in a lot of areas. And so that's just the reality of this quitter days that goals start to feel hard, they feel inconvenient, progress feels slow, we lose momentum. People realize that change requires consistency and not just excitement. And it is way more fun to work on excitement than consistency. And so when excitement has worn off, old habits feel easier than new ones. I saw a quote that was going around the first week in January that kind of hit me and I took some time to think on it. And it said, quitting your worst habit will change your life faster than starting your best habit. Stop the leak before you try to fill the bucket. And that really got me thinking. And I we talk so often here about one of the habits that I struggle with the most that year after year continues to be on the list of I need to get better at it. And I'm grateful that I can look back at last year, 2025, and say I made some good progress. And progress for me wasn't just changing habits. It was a heaviness that I felt in my heart about the importance of this goal. Not just because I know that I should be putting more boundaries on it, but an actual heaviness and a burden for my family to make sure that we are being good stewards of our electronics. And so to me, that even is such a different place to work from than just knowing I should be doing better. It's a true conviction of this really matters for the future of my family. It matters for the foundation that we're laying for our children and how they show up on technology and what it teaches about interpersonal relationships and showing up in person with eye contact and without distraction, how it impacts how we need fast results and instant information. There is a new part of realization for me in this goal. But when I stop and I think about that, quitting your worst habit will change your life faster than starting your best habit. Stop the leak before you try to fill the bucket. I have to ask, what is the bad habit in your life that is making new habits maybe seem impossible? Could it be that you are drinking too much, that you're using alcohol to numb out at the end of a hard day? And so then you're getting poor sleep, which is not allowing you to get up, to get to the gym, to do the Bible reading, to be in a place of joy when you get up, to operate with your family. Is it the phone for you, like me? Is it the phone that's taking you away, that's making you have divided or distracted conversation? Is there way too many tabs open in your brain at all times that you're feeling stressed and you're short with your kids and your patience is struggling because there's just too much information coming at all times? And is it causing you to stay up later than you should be? Are you grabbing it first thing in the morning and it's instead of a quick check at the timer to turn off the alarm, it's turning into a 15, 20, 30 minute scroll. And now you're getting out of bed already overstimulated and overwhelmed by the world and the bad news and the news highlights and the political unrest. And it starts your day off in a bad spot. Maybe it's your desire for comfort. Maybe your bad habit is that you really love being in your bed and you love the cozy blankets and that comfort and that warmth makes you not do the things that you know you should be getting up to do. And you have to evaluate like, how is this bad habit when it's not controlled, right? Sleeping and having a comfortable bed is wonderful until it starts to be something that's pulling you away from other things that need to be happening in hours outside of time that we should just be sleeping. Maybe it's sugar. Maybe your bad habit is that you wake up and you start throwing sugar in your body and you use it to fuel you throughout the day and you use it the last thing at night, and it makes you feel horrible and your brain doesn't operate the way it should. And again, it affects your mood and how you feel. Maybe it's anger. Maybe your bad habit is that you have a bend towards anger and it impacts everything around you and the people around you and the peace that's in your home. And so one thing to really look at is what is the bad habit that I need to focus this year on quitting, not just what are all the new habits that I want to add in. Because again, when you look at any of these ones that we just went over, the drinking, the phone, the staying in bed, the sugar, the anger, those are most likely playing into your ability to be successful in the new goals that you have set. And so maybe this year for you is a year of breaking a handful of bad habits that will set you up for a foundation to be able to, maybe in three months or six months or in 2027, to really have a solid foundation on which to start to build new normals, new routines, a new better version of how you're showing up for the world. And the reality is that not every year begins with this crazy energy. Some of us, depending upon what last year brought us, there are people that I've talked to that are like, I just didn't know if I was going to make it out of 2025 alive. It was a really hard year. It nearly took me out. And so I'm excited for a new year, but I also am coming into it just exhausted. And so some years we come in just with grit, not necessarily energy. And so wherever you're coming into this year, whatever goals you have made, whatever goals maybe you've already walked away from, maybe you're listening today and you're still rocking and rolling. I hope that you keep it up and you keep going and that these things are just encouragement to you to continue to get clarity and to set a really good foundation and to be able to show up well in every area that you're trying to make improvement on. Or maybe you're listening and you're like, Nikki, I had all of these great things and health and routines and margin and patience that I was gonna implement in 2026. And I am the epitome of the person that didn't make it past Quitter's Day. And I have already fallen back into bad habits. I want you to know that's okay too. This series is not gonna be about grit your teeth and just push through no matter what, and crazy hype motivation, but rather about your race, clarity and moving forward and the importance of making progress in areas of your life that really matter. Not a complete overhaul, but really again, next week after we talk about gaining clarity, I think it's gonna help a lot of people to evaluate and step back and maybe readjust some goals or restart in some different ways because you're gonna have a why behind the goal, not just something that you feel is what you're supposed to be doing or you're supposed to be changing because it's what the world is throwing at you. And so I'm excited for next week as well as we walk through that clarity conversation and true growth. When we look at really true growth, when I look at the things that happened in my life last year that I'm really proud of, most of them start small. It looks like this little grace meeting effort, like over and over and over, giving myself grace, also putting in effort and staying. Staying and consistency is the key. When it's easy, when it's hard, when it's convenient, when it's inconvenient, when I'm in routine, when I'm not in routine, when I want to, when I don't want to. It's this continuing to show up, even if showing up looks different. And what does that mean? Showing up looks different. 365 days is a long time. And not all 365 days are gonna look the exact same. And so for me, last year, one of the things that I set out to do was to read the Bible in a year. I did accomplish it and I'm so proud of that, but it took consistent showing up. I I didn't have the luxury of having large gaps of time where I didn't show up because the compound of what I would have had to catch up would have been too massive, wouldn't have been able to do it. And so I knew that. I knew looking at it over the course of a year that if I got behind a day or two because of life, because of illness, because of unexpected things that happened, I could make up a day or two here and there, but two weeks, three weeks behind. And I probably would have not been able to accomplish the goal or not been able to accomplish it in the way that I wanted to. And so it took making new habits, creating routines, habit stacking, which we've talked so much about, that I had to show up over and over. I had to give myself grace on the day that I missed it. And then I had to put in effort the next day. So I didn't, like I said earlier, didn't stack a bad day upon a bad day upon a bad day, or a missed day upon a missed day upon a missed day. I had to figure out what am I willing to give up today so I don't fall into the same habit? How am I going to get creative? How am I going to adjust in whatever is coming into my life, in whatever is working against me that's pulling me away from staying consistent? Maybe it means that I'm sitting in a car waiting for a kid. And now I'm going to have to get real intentional about running and grabbing my Bible and throwing it in my bag and sitting in the parking lot and doing my Bible reading instead of scrolling on my phone. Or maybe it looks for you if you have made the commitment to go to the gym. And there are days where your kids are sick or it's not happening. You can't make the decision just to walk away because you can't go to the gym. This is where grit comes into play and effort comes into play that you can go grab a couple of, if you don't have weights at your house, you can go grab a couple of jugs of water, you can go do a YouTube body weight weightlifting program. There are things that you can do that might not be perfect. Or might not be what you had envisioned, but are still moving you forward, are still putting in effort, are still making you show up. And I think a lot of times in our goals, we want things to look a certain way. If we say, I'm gonna really focus on my health this year. And so getting to the gym or doing the exercise and eating the food is super important to me. And so I'm gonna meal plan on the weekends and I'm gonna go to this specific gym. And then our kid gets sick and it's like, well, I can't go to the gym and I didn't get to the grocery store, get the meal prep done. And it's easy to say, well, next week. And the reality is sometimes we just have to adjust. Sometimes we have to lower the expectation to not walk away, but to still commit, even if it's 70%, even if it's just 70% towards that thing, it's still forward movement instead of backwards movement. Because in life, you're either moving forward or you're moving backwards because stagnant is backwards and growth is forward. And so you have to ask yourself, am I moving forward or am I moving backward? And then it comes back to how important is this to me, which is why the clarity piece that we're talking about next week is going to be so important. So I want to share a story with you guys that is one that I've been reflecting on this last week. I actually put a Facebook post up about it and had a ton of good interaction with people on it. I think it resonated a lot. And I don't know what made this come back to mind this last week. This is something that happened, I think, five or six years ago. My daughter's best friend was a track, she was a track and field athlete. And so it was senior day at track and field. And we went out to the school for senior day. And I have never really attended um track and field, not cross country, not any indoor, nothing track and field. None of my kids were involved in that. And so I walked up to that meet, not knowing at all what to expect. And it was a beautiful day out. And my daughter's friend was an amazing athlete. She was, we knew that she probably was gonna set a PR, she was gonna be a top performer. She had already decided where she was going to college and she was gonna be running in college. She was very good at what she did out there on the track. And so we got there, we lined up at the fence. It was so exciting. Race day, we were watching, and the horn goes off and everybody starts running. And I was amazed how within a couple of minutes, literally a couple of minutes into the race, the 25 or 30 runners had really all blended together. You really can't tell who's in what place. So you're just there and you're cheering on. I started to notice one gal in particular who was running her heart out, but I was noticing that I'm pretty sure she's a lap behind. And so I'm watching, just giving everything she had. Again, running next to people because there's a lot of people out on the track. And as our friend that we were watching crossed the finish line 20-some minutes into that race, I think it was a 3K. Clearly, a top performer. Clearly, that day she had a PR. She killed it. And then one by one, people crossed the finish line and walked off the track because they had completed the race. And that's when you started to see oh, there are a few people that are a little bit farther behind that have maybe still a whole nother lap. And it was at that point that same gal, she was a sweet redheaded girl. Her name was Sophia, and she was running her sweetheart out. And she had ended up being the last person on the track. And she still had one full lap to go. And there was something in my heart that just I, there was something in me that was like, this is my girl. This is my girl. It was so fun to see my daughter's friend, who we knew was going to be at the top of the heat, do so well and succeed. And I was proud of her. But really, my favorite runner very quickly became this sweet Sophia because now all of the athletes were off of the track. All of the fans were watching. It was clear now it she didn't blend in with the other runners. Now it was obvious to everyone that she was the only runner left and was a full lap behind. And I just, I couldn't scream and cheer and clap for her more than I was because I was emotional. I had tears in my eyes. And honestly, a part of me was thinking, I don't know if I could do it. I don't know if I could have the entire stadium looking at me, knowing I was the last. I was the loser in this situation. And so I was emotional and I was cheering and I was clapping for sweet Sophia. And it was at that moment that I saw my daughter's friend grab a couple other of girls that had finished in the top of the pack and run across the football field that's in the middle of the track, run across the football field to meet sweet Sophia on the other side to come around the bend before that final straightaway. And they jumped in with her. And you could tell that her cadence started to get a little bit faster. There was some new energy that came because these other runners that already had finished, that already ran their hearts out, ran to be with her, to get her around that bend. And then they backed off as Sophia sprinted that final straightaway, the crowd screaming and yelling and so proud of her all alone on the track as she finished the race. And as I walked away, like literally, I was like, that's my girl. I can relate to her like so much about what just happened. She's the person I want to cheer for. And I think I took two huge lessons away that day as I walked back to my car and I processed this. And now, six years later, the story still resonates with me. Is one, I think we all feel like everyone is watching us as we set out for new goals. I think there's something coming into a new year that, A, we can be afraid to set a goal and speak it because we're afraid if we fail, everybody will see that we failed. And none of us want to set out and say we're going to do something and not do it. The second thing is I think that we feel like everybody is comparing us to other people who are on that same journey. And it was just such a reminder to me that we aren't setting goals to look good for others or because we want perfection. That is not why we set goal. I'm telling you right now, if you set any goal in 2026 and you set it because you felt like this will make me look good to other people, you have probably already quit by Quitter's Day because that is not motivation enough. Or if it is, you need to examine like why is that so important to me? Because it's doing it out of wrong motive and it's not doing it with something that's gonna last long term. Or we're doing it for perfection and it's an all or nothing. I can get caught in either I'm a winner or I'm a loser. And to me, that day, Sophia a thousand percent was a winner. In my book, she was one of the biggest winners on the track. But statistically, on the scoreboard, on the stats later, she was the loser, the technical loser of the race. But we have to remind ourselves that whether we're walking a 20-minute mile or we're walking a 13-minute mile, we're winning because we're out walking. If we're running a 12-minute mile or we're running a seven-minute mile, we're still killing it because we're lapping people that aren't even doing it. And that doesn't even matter because we're doing it for ourselves. We shouldn't be doing it because of who we're beating. If I'm eating 75 grams of protein, I'm doing excellent. Yes, maybe I want to be eating 100 or 120, but we have to recognize that setting goals to look good for others or for perfection is never going to get us where we want to be. Watching her that day made me realize that finishing the race is what matters. And sometimes wisdom looks just like adjusting instead of quitting and not necessarily pushing harder. I think sometimes wisdom tells us, go a little harder. And sometimes wisdom tells us you need to come back a little bit on some of those things that you have set out for yourself. Maybe that was a little too ambitious. Maybe that's not in alignment with what's going to be good for you or good for your family to do so aggressively. For me, watching Sophia finish that race, I when she was alone on the track, I wondered for a second, is she gonna finish? Is she gonna finish? And everything in me was like, there is nothing I want more than for this sweet girl to finish the race. Because I know if she gets this far, if she gets to the final lap and then looks left to right or behind her and realizes I am the only one still here. Everybody else has already accomplished their goal. If she would have chosen to walk away, the amount of disappointment that I think she would have felt, that I would have felt, I could see how close she was to success. And in the thing that I wrote on Facebook, I said, if I am the last person to finish my biggest goal, that is okay. That is okay. This is my race. You are running your race in 2026. And if it takes you to the very last person finishing the race, finishing that goal, whether it be for your health, to read the Bible in a year. So many people reached out to me this year that they were disappointed that they had set out to read the Bible, but they didn't make it all the way through. Maybe they made it halfway. I had a couple people that say I got off track in the summer when schedules got weird. And the reality is you made it through half of the Bible. You are halfway done with the race. And often we get stuck in, I didn't do it, so now I need to have a new goal. No, finish the goal that you set out for. You wanted to read the Bible all the way through. Will it be unsuccessful if you pick it up right where you left off and you go another six months and you've completed it? Are you going to be disappointed that you finished just because the timeline didn't look exactly like you wanted it? Or are you still going to absolutely rejoice and reap the benefits of doing something that was important to you for a reason? If it's your health goals, if you maybe feel like, okay, I need to lose a certain amount of weight. And last year I didn't hit that goal. I lost 10 pounds instead of 30. If you continue this year and it takes you another year or it takes you two years to get to that final goal, when you get to that goal that you set out to be the healthiest version of yourself, are you going to cross the finish line and say, that was a waste because I was the last person, or it took me three years instead of one, or are you going to absolutely celebrate the victory of finishing what you set out to do? One thing that I read said, God is interested in formation, not flawless follow-through or an instant fix. And he's wanting us to be dependent on him to be able to make these things happen in our life, to be able to get better in our health and wellness, to be able to show up with more joy and peace, to have more patience with our family. He is interested in our formation. And it's weird when you think about goals and you think, does God even care about these goals that I'm setting? I honestly have not been great at in the past really stopping to think about, I know the overarching ideas that I'm in alignment with God and these are the things that I know are good for me. I know he wants me to be healthy. I know he wants me to spend time in his word. I know he wants me to be joyful in my day-to-day when I show up for my family. But I've never really sat and thought about does God really care about my habits? Does God really care about my habits? Does he really care if I go to the gym? Does he really care if I eat good foods? Does he really care if I show up 30 minutes every day in quiet time and meditation? And I believe over and over and over the answer to that is yes. I believe he absolutely does. And there's a couple of reasons why. Actually, there's a ton of reasons why, a couple that came to me right away. I think about the verse that says, Why do I do the things I don't want to do? Like I'm a believer, I love Jesus, I know that I am in the process of becoming a new creature, of becoming more like Christ, right? That upon my accepting Jesus as my savior, I was justified and he paid the penalty for all of my sin. And now the rest of my life as a believer walking with Jesus is this process of sanctification, is this process of refinement and discipline and growing in wisdom. And growing in wisdom, I think also a lot of times means growing in, becoming new in how I use my time, my energy, my focus. I think about how the Bible talks about idolatry. We can instantly think an idol is another God, a statue. It's something that we're bowing down to. And idolatry is any single thing that takes the place of God, anything that is taking more attention and more focus than our focus on God. And when we look at that and we think again about our time, our energy, our focus, our idols, where do I spend my time? Do you think God cares about the fact that I'm spending a half an hour scrolling social media, but I say that I have no time to open the Bible for five, 10, 15 minutes? Of course he cares about that. Do you think he cares about the fact that I recognize that maybe alcohol or sugar is preventing me from living my best life? A hundred percent I believe he cares about that. And he wants us to make steps to change and adjust, to become more Christ-like. And you guys, we're never gonna get there. If you look at the things in our life, the how we use our time, how we show up in our focus, the idols that we put before ourselves, how we parent, how we show up in our marriage, the integrity that we show up with in our work, it can be exhausting and overwhelming. But when we think about this refining process of making ourselves, becoming a new creature, we're in this lifelong journey of sanctification, of putting away bad, evil, immorality and putting on the things that are good and lovely, the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. Even if you are not listening to this as someone who is a believer, who is on a faith journey with Jesus, I think every single person would say, if I made a list of all of these bad habits that I have, maybe you're not looking it through a lens of these things break the heart of God when I don't have them ordered and when they are becoming things that are idols or things that are taking the place of attention that I should be putting on things that are pleasing to Jesus, maybe you're just seeing it as a list of bad habits. I don't think there's anybody that would look at that list of habits and say, if I replaced those habits with things like discipline and self-control and integrity and joy and patience and peace and goodness and kindness, that my life wouldn't be better. And so, regardless of how you're looking at it, I'm looking at it 100% from a lens of the Bible and wanting to become more like Christ every single year. Every year we get a new opportunity, every day we get a new opportunity. The Bible talks about his mercies are new every day. So I can have a really bad day today. And tomorrow I can wake up and have brand new mercies to try again. And so, what breaks God's heart in your life that's unordered? And I don't think we think about it like that all the time. But I do believe that there are things that break the heart of God when we are not disciplined enough to show up the best that we can, that we are not disciplined enough to put away things that are distracting us from looking at our kids in the eyes, from having meaningful conversation with our spouses, for making good choices, for our bodies to be strong and able to carry out things in our community and in our homes and in our nation, to love other people, to take care of others who are less fortunate. When we don't show up at work with integrity and give 110% and do things the right way, when we show up with integrity and we do things well and to the best of our ability and we're blessed with income to then be able to take care of our families. I think when we don't steward these things well, it's more than just bad habits. It's things that break the heart of God because we aren't managing our resources and our time well. And so that is a totally different way to look at how we show up every day. It makes it feel more important and to have more value than just I want to be healthy this year. I want to put my phone away this year. It makes me want to say, when I don't put my phone away and it steals my time and attention, and I'm exhausted and burned out. And the ripple effect of that is I'm impatient with my kids. I lack communication and connection with my spouse, which is dangerous for our family. I don't show up in a way that's joyful, which puts a weight on everybody in my house. I don't take care of my body, which then makes me exhausted and unable to do well in the things that God has placed me in front of. I think that breaks the heart of God a little bit when it just comes down to discipline. And you guys, when we're tired and we're exhausted and we are worn out, that is the playground for the devil to catch us in our sin. And we have to identify what is the sin that we tend to go to when we're not sleeping, when we're stressed out, when we're anxious. Again, what is it for you? And if nothing else this year, identify what a couple of the bad habits are in your life that if you just started to get those out, if you started to get those bad habits or that one big bad habit out of your life, how would that fix the bucket that would then allow you to pour in over and over in the years to come to make unbelievable lasting impact and change into how you show up, not just in your day, but in the rest of the life that you have here to live on earth with your people in a way that leaves lasting legacy? Not just getting through year to year, not just barely surviving, not living on caffeine and Snickers, not showing up grouchy, but doing your job anyways. What would it look like to start to make changes to eliminate bad habits so that new habits, new formation, new processes in becoming more like Christ each and every year would shape how you set your goals and your plans for a new year? Changes the focus a lot. And again, if you're listening to this and you are not a believer, you do not have a relationship with Jesus, I think you have to just ask yourself, what are habits that I can do that are gonna make it better in my house, in my marriage, in my family, in the way I show up every day at work, in my activities. If you are a believer, I think you can look at it even deeper into a lens of what is in my life that is causing me to not show up the way I should be, to not becoming more a new creature every single day in that sanctification process of becoming more like Jesus. And how is that decision that I'm making potentially breaking the heart of God? A little bit heavier stuff to pause and reflect on and ask ourselves why do we naturally fall back into bad habits? Why are bad habits so much easier to go to than creating new habits? And so I'm excited to come back next week, excited to talk about clarity and just some conversations that I had a couple years ago with my husband that has made Made my decision making process so much easier when getting focused, not just in a new year, but anytime I'm asked to be involved in something, a part of something, this clarity piece for my family and my life that really opened up a new horizon to how I make decisions. And I'm going to share that with you next week when we talk more about this. But I hope that you are encouraged as you leave. I hope that no matter where you showed up this morning to the podcast, whether you are just locked in and you're excited and you feel on purpose and you probably have a big why, if that's the case, that's driving you beyond just hype and excitement. I'm excited for you. I'm encouraged for you to keep going. You're three weeks in. And they say most habits happen in 21 to 28 days. So you're well on your way to forming a habit. If you're listening and you're super discouraged because maybe you didn't even stop to think about what you wanted to do this year to improve your life or to make changes, or maybe you got started really strong and you burnt out and you find yourself one of those that has to raise your hand and say, I was a quitter on quitter's day or before. That's okay. We don't have to wait for a new year to set a new goal, to decide to do better, to decide to show up in a more authentic, honorable way in how we do life. You can do it today, you can do it tomorrow, you can do it next week. We don't have to say it didn't happen this year. So maybe 2027 will be my year. I want you to commit to making some changes this year that are gonna set you up to be in a better position in all areas of your life, how you show up in 2027. And so we'll talk more next week about clarity. We'll talk the following week after that about staying in your race and why we naturally want to root for the person that doesn't give up. Doesn't matter how messy, how off plan it is, we tend to want to cheer for the person that just stays in the race and what victory it is then when you cross the finish line. The harder the journey was to finish, the more people want to celebrate with you because the more relatable it is. Most of us cannot relate to somebody who sets out for a huge goal, who goes 110% and finishes it with no obstacles. The world can relate to the struggle bus stories of I fell off the wagon a hundred times and I just kept getting back up, bruised, battered, bleeding, because I knew the importance of continuing down this path to a better version of me in the end, in whatever area that might be. And so I'm excited to be walking, whether we're walking, running, jogging, sprinting on this race together towards becoming the best versions of ourselves, aligned with the things that the Bible so clearly lays out of the disciplines that we should be chasing after. And so it's so good to be back on the podcast season three. We have so much exciting stuff ahead this season. I'm excited about so many of the interviews, the different episodes that we're going to be having. Again, just pouring into family, marriage, and just cultivating inside the homes of all of the listeners a foundation that is solid, joy that is authentic, and relationships that are real and lasting. And I believe more than ever that the home is the most important mission field that every single one of us has as we're shaping and cultivating the little lives that we have for just a short period of time. And as that process is refining and developing us as much it is those sweet little ones that we're responsible for. So I'm excited that you're here. I'm glad to be back. And I hope that today maybe just inspired some thoughts within you to just commit to staying at it and to getting better every single day on this journey. So until next week, friends, take care of