I hope my readers have been having a very merry time during the last week or so. Tomorrow it is traditional to make some resolutions for the coming year. Beware of resolutions – they often do not work and can even be counter-productive. It is the ‘resolve’ part that is the problem.

Think about it. The things you will list are the ones that you have tried and failed at. They would not be there if you had succeeded with them; they would not be there if they were branded new goals and not yet tried. So they are not things that you can just tell yourself to resolve to do.

My advice (for what it is worth) is to make the list of goals that you consistently fail to achieve and would really like to reach. Forget about giving yourself a pep talk because you are really not listening to that. Forget about interrogating yourself on why you have failed in the past because you will get your own justifications back. Instead, ask how you can achieve your goal. Get yourself thinking (actually thinking – as in solving a problem) about the ‘how’, the path to getting there, a method to get over or around the bumps. What is needed is not resolution, that is easy, but a good plan.

Whether you take my advice or not, it is for free and we know what that is worth, I want to - thank you for visiting my blog in 2011 – wish you a great 2012 – and say Happy New Year .