January 3, 2022
Happy New Year!
I remember back when everyone had high hopes for 2021. Collectively, I sense it was kind of meh. And I’m not hearing too many optimistic sentiments about 2022. Although I understand why, it still bums me out. It just seems that the entire world has gone… awry.
But! That doesn’t mean you have to have a bad year.
I’ve never been a big fan of New Years Resolutions. Like most people, those always flamed out hard for me by mid-February. Also, it occurred to me a long time ago that if I wanted to set some resolutions or goals to improve myself, then why should I wait until January 1st? Surely improving myself should be a constant, continuous thing.
When it comes to deconstructing your faith, are there any reasonable goals or resolutions that can be made? In my opinion, yes and no.
If you’re struggling through a painful deconversion, it’s not very helpful to make a bunch of vague goals about “getting through it” or “moving on” or “feeling better.” Here are some examples of some poor deconstruction-focused goals:
- I will stop grieving over my lost religion.
- I will start to be happier more often.
- I will stop thinking about religion altogether.
These are positive notions and beneficial for anyone, so why do they make bad goals? Because they’re not quantifiable. They’re also broad and vague; there aren’t any clear action steps in them.
So if you want to set for yourself some goals to make progress in your faith deconstruction and improving your life post-religion, it helps to break it way down into several manageable sections and then give yourself some goals from these.
This is exactly what I did when I realized it was time for me to rebuild my life after I left Christianity behind for good. I describe the entire framework, in detail, in my book, but here’s the gist:
In general, your life can be broken down into seven main areas. They are:
Your money
Your health
Your family
Your social life
Your hobbies
Your relationships
Your spirituality
These are, incidentally, the seven areas of your life that can also be damaged by leaving religion. That’s definitely what happened to me.
When I was still in the Church, I made New Years Resolutions. But I felt pressure to make “church-y” resolutions and goals. That’s a problem. Why? Because everyone in the Church generally has the same goals, which are influenced by the pastor and other members of the congregation. Below is a common list of goals I was instructed to have while in the Church, almost all of which I failed:
- Read my Bible more.
- Have a quiet time every morning.
- Pray more.
- Spend more time preparing for Bible study.
In most instances, these goals were converted into vague prayer requests, and you probably already know how I feel about that. Basically, I turned the goals over to God and expected him to magically make them happen.
If setting goals in regards to your life after deconstructing religion interests you, look over the list of the seven life areas again. Pick the two that have been most damaged by religion, or the two that you feel like if they improved would bring you the most amount of happiness (any more than two and you risk spreading your efforts too thin).
Once you have those two, spend some time brainstorming what the ideal version of that life area would look like for you. Don’t take into consideration anyone or anything else at this point.
Let’s take your social life as an example. Your ideal vision for your social life when you were a Christian might have been having a strong community of friends who prayed together, read the Bible together, went on mission trips together, and rebuked and corrected each other when someone sinned.
Well, your new vision of your social life after religion will probably look very different. You might envision it as consisting of more diverse people, people of other nationalities, people of varying sexual orientations, etc. You may also prefer it to be smaller so that it’s more manageable for your busy schedule and so that you’re able to go deeper with these friendships. The beauty of creating an ideal vision once you leave the Church is that you get to decide. You no longer need to make any arbitrary considerations that are meant to make God happy instead of you.
Once you have your vision laid out for whatever life area you’ve chosen, the next step is to brainstorm some action steps to get there.
Returning to the example of your social life, action steps may include making an effort to go to events downtown in your city more often. They may include asking one of your existing friends to introduce you to some of his other friends. They may include you showing up alone to a bar during happy hour and chatting with some of the regulars who hang out there. They may include you signing up for meetup.com and looking around for group activities that interest you.
Since we used social life as an example, here is a quick list of some good goals for the other six life areas:
Money
- Take steps toward that side hustle you always thought would be fun.
- Get out of debt.
Health
- Begin a novice workout plan and stick to it.
- Begin keeping a closer eye on what foods you eat and monitoring your hormones.
Family
- Finally tell your family that you’ve left the religion they raised you in.
- Cut off certain family members who just aren’t adding to the quality of your life.
Hobbies
- Purchase an instrument that you’ve always wanted to learn.
- Take the first step on a creative project you’ve been thinking about for a while, whether that be writing a novel, creating a short film, or painting.
Relationships
- Download some dating apps and start swiping to get back out there.
- End a marriage or relationship that just isn’t serving you or your partner any longer.
Spirituality
- Begin a meditation practice.
- Read some new books that don’t have a purely atheistic view of the world.
Now that you’ve left the Church, you’re no longer stuck with those boring Church goals. You get to pick and choose for yourself what areas of your life you want to invest in and work on.
What I found is that by building up each of these seven life areas after I left religion, it did wonders for my own mental health and recovery from my time in religion. It got me back on the right track in life. Overall, it made me feel better and more in control of my life.
My hope is that the same is true for you, and if it isn’t, that it will be soon. Please feel free to reach out to me if this article has inspired any ideas and you’d like some help getting started.