Mark Twain has written the best possible advice regarding New Year’s Resolutions:

“Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever”.

Because most of us make a resolution away from something negative, instead of towards something positive, it’s hard to develop the urge to complete a resolution. Themes like losing weight or quitting cigarettes will be broken before January ends because it will mean deprivation and most of us are too weak to suffer withdrawal for any length of time.

If we, instead, considered a resolution towards something positive we would have a better chance of succeeding. A plan that addresses areas of our life including finances, health, relationships, career, or even spiritual would be more fulfilling. Instead of promising to decrease debts, promise to increase your income – it achieves the same goal, but gives your psyche a positive instead of a negative.

For those in free-fall living from one crisis to the next, this is a positive approach but even if you attain a fraction of your goal, you have achieved something good.

Esther Smith
Author/Publisher
http://thepermanentventure.com/2up.htm