(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Hi, this is Pastor Roger Jimenez from Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento, California. Today I'm making a video to answer the question, how do I set up effective New Year's goals? As we end the year, this is a great time to begin to think about some of the goals that you'd like to accomplish in the coming year. Unfortunately, a lot of people set up goals for the year and they end up failing because they set up ineffective goals that are really just wishes and not goals. In this video, what I'd like to do is give you four steps to setting up effective goals that will make it more likely for you to succeed in the New Year. What I'd like to do is use an example and I'll use the example of weight loss since that's something we can all wrap our minds around and it's actually one of the most popular goals that people set up for the New Year. So the steps to setting up effective goals are this. Number one, an effective goal must be specific. You want to be very specific with what you want to accomplish. Instead of going into the New Year saying, I'd like to lose weight, it'd be good for you to go into the New Year saying, I'd like to lose 15 pounds. Or, I'd like to lose 20 pounds, or I'd like to lose 10 pounds. But make it specific as to what it is that you're trying to accomplish. The second step for setting up an effective goal is that your goal should be time sensitive. You should give yourself a date in which you desire to accomplish that goal. So instead of just going into the New Year saying, I'd like to lose weight at some point in the New Year, you can go into the New Year saying, I have a goal of losing 15 pounds in the first six months. Or maybe saying, I have a goal of losing 10 pounds in the first quarter. But when you give yourself a time frame, when you give yourself a date, then that gives you something to work towards. The third step to setting up an effective goal is that it must be measurable. You must be able to track your goal and to track your progress. So for example, with weight loss, you might say, not only am I going to lose 10 pounds in the first quarter, or 15 pounds in the first six months, but I'm going to weigh myself every day. Or I'm going to weigh myself every Monday. I'm going to track it on a notebook. And that way you can see, am I succeeding? Am I winning? Am I on track to accomplishing my goal? The fourth way to set an effective goal is to write it down. It's not enough for you to just have it in your mind, but you should write it down somewhere and put it somewhere where you'll see it on a regular basis and preferably a daily basis. In 2006, the USA Today reported a study in which researchers studied a large group of people that set New Year's resolutions. They divided the people into two groups, those that wrote down their goals and those that did not. Twelve months later, they found that of the people who did not write down their New Year's resolutions, only 4% accomplished their goals. But in the group that did write down their goals, 41% accomplished their goals. And there is something about writing down your goal and reviewing it on a regular basis that helps you stay motivated and helps you stay concentrated on accomplishing your goal. Lastly, I'd like to say this, don't forget to make sure that you have some spiritual goals for the New Year. Proverbs 16 and verse 9 says this, a man's heart deviseth his ways, but the Lord directed his steps. So go ahead and have some financial goals and health goals and things like that, but make sure you have some spiritual goals, maybe goals about reading the Bible or going out soul winning or your church attendance. If you like these videos, we want to encourage you to subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you have an idea of a video that we could make, maybe a biblical question we can answer or something going on in current events, we'd love for you to leave it in the comment section below of this video. And if you would share this video with your friends and family, we would really appreciate it. Hope that was helpful. Thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next video.