Do you make New Year's resolutions?

Happy New Year!!

I hope the holidays were wonderful for you - even the tricky parts dealing with relatives and maybe not having as much money to spend as in previous times. Mine was crazy and hectic and fun especially the time when all the generations in my family play board games after Christmas.

So here it is January again and if you're like most people, you're resolving to make 2009 better than '08. Seems especially tough to do despite our best intentions. So many things pull us away from our goals - well intentioned friends and family members, busy schedules, overwhelming negative news (shut it off please or at least limit it!!) and worst of all, our own brains that don't really want us to change at all.

So what to do? Here's what I did last year. I didn't make any resolutions per se. I decided to change one thing per month. Just one. By doing that, I changed 8 big areas of my life (Ok, I know there are 12 months but I'm really OK with 8 big changes!)

By focusing on only one thing at a time, I wasn't overwhelmed with the huge list of changes. I could deal with one issue slowly and master it. As many of you know, it takes 28 repetitions or days to build a habit. With a month being 30 days, it was perfect. After a month, the new behaviors was a part of me..and they still are.

Here's what changed for me in 2008:
* I now have a much neater house
* I have a much better handle on my finances
* I increased my business income 100%
* I got my singing voice back and went back to theatre
* I dropped my cholesterol 50 points
* I either renewed or began several new friendships/relationships

If I can do this, without a doubt, so can you. If you'd like to try this technique,this week, pick one thing you want to change and start slowly to work on just that.

Check next week's newsletter for tips on working with that one thing (and don't beat yourself up if you're not perfect at changing...I certainly wasn't!!)

Here's to a fabulous 2009!