We're almost at the end of January and it always interests me to see how people are doing with the resolutions they set at the New Year. Are they lasting?

I find it funny (funny peculiar not funny ‘ha ha') that we set resolutions for the year ahead on New Years Day – I mean, we've all been doing it forever and start off the year with the best intentions for the future and put even some intentions out ‘there' where they are sure to manifest because that's what we're taught will happen.

And yet it's become something of a joke that New Years resolutions are almost always doomed to failure but the internet and the magazines and other media are still advocating it. So we try yet again with the best intentions and yet again we miss the mark. Oh well, there's another year when we can put our intentions out there and surely next time we would have learned something about how to make our resolutions stick? But time is running out isn't it? Shouldn't you have exceeded all your resolutions by now?

Stop doing this to yourself already!

Stop trying to be ‘good'!

Stop trying to aim for something that is someone else's idea of ‘good'!

Stop living up to an ideal that gives you so much pain and anxiety to think about that you are destined to sabotage whatever conscious effort you put towards it!

Instead:

Celebrate your uniqueness!

Celebrate your ability as an adult to make decisions for yourself!

Celebrate what truly makes you happy and brings you joy!

Celebrate the fact that you recognise your preferences and have the courage to stand up for your own values!

Moving on

How do you create a better future for yourself?

There is not much point in putting a ‘should' in your future – I should lose weight, I should make more money, I should have a better marriage, I should get on with my kids better.

[Tweet “Drop the ‘shoulds', decide for sure what will really float your boat and make that your resolution instead.”]

Connect with what you have right now – what did you ask for in previous years to get all that?

It might not be what you thought you asked for. For sure it started out as a good intention for a better life, but often the pure intention gets muddied along the way and we get results that we hadn't foreseen or intended.

It's important to be specific. The specificity does not need to be around ‘things' though. You do, however, need to be absolutely specific about how achieving your desires will make you feel.

Money, cars, houses, luxury, soulmates, love, recognition: all of these things are just ‘things'. Work out how, if you have these things, you will feel?

Free, peaceful, at one with life? Those are the resolutions worth setting! And you just might find that what you ask for and receive is completely different to what you thought it would be, but better!