New Year, New You?

Is the coast clear?

Are you all sober enough after the two weeks of festivities?

Great! Perfect time to write this post.

It's around this time every year that everyone publicly tells everyone else what their 'New Year's resolution' is..."New Year, New Me" they say...."What a load of piffle" I say.

The point is not that we cannot make resolutions, but that perhaps we are approaching our resolutions wrong.

New year, New me, what do you mean by that? Are you suggesting that you are starting all over again? Are you suggesting that you are going to throw away the book that you are writing and start a fresh one?

Is this the right way to approach our lives?

Most of us seek success, yet any successful man or woman will tell you one of the secrets of their success was continuity and consistency, how can we be consistent if we are continually attempting to "change" ourselves so abruptly?

In fact, how many of us even follow our resolutions past January? How many of us fall into the same old routine?

In my humble opinion, I believe this is because while we are trying to achieve a new look, new school of thought, new ventures, we fail to take into account what has already occurred.

What happened in 2010?

What did I achieve in 2010?

What negative experiences did I have in 2010?

Can you see what you are doing? you are now assessing the previous year, you are evaluating the previous year and putting your focus on your successes and my failures and from assessing and evaluating your year, you can take on the POSITIVES of the previous year and build on them in the following year. You are, in effect, beginning a process of consistency.

Now some of you may say, I had a bad year so, how do I build on that?

Well, every cloud has a silver lining, even in a really negative year there are the smallest of positives to build on, but because we try to forget what happened the last year and start something new, we miss out on small opportunities to make small steps out of a big hole, and we condemn ourselves to making the same mistakes again the following year.

In my opinion, "New year, new me" can cause us NOT to reflect on our past, on our mistakes and we all know what happens when we don't learn from our mistakes.

Oh yeah...umm HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone...umm a bit of advice? Don't try to create a 'new you' - take a look at the positives and the negatives of last year and continue to build on the positives...CONSISTENCY is the key to success, and you cannot be consistent if you keep trying to recreate yourself without learning from your mistakes....you will only repeat those mistakes again the following year.

Write a new CHAPTER in the SAME book, chapters continue...books start from the beginning, unfortunately, we are too far along to start from the beginning.

Good Hunting!