New Years Resolutions....or Bust.........

Did you know that 40 to 45% of American adults make one or more resolutions each year? Did you know that the MOST Popular resolutions are about weight loss, exercising more and to stop smoking!? Studies show that after 6 months over 50% of the people who made a New Year Resolution have stopped maintaining their goal.

While a lot of people who make new years resolutions do break them, research shows that making resolutions is useful. People who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don't explicitly make resolutions. Resolution Statistics.

We are 4 weeks away from the New Year! 2012 is right around the corner, and a lot of people are thinking about how they can improve themselves for the future. I don't know about you, but I personally think about self improvement and self development on a regular basis, NOT just once a year! New Years Eve though (or the approach of it) always brings my thoughts zeroing in again on how I can be the best that I can be. I find my BIGGEST challenge is not what I want as a resolution, but keeping true to that resolution and reaching the goals I have set for myself as time goes on. All of us (the 40-45% of peeps who make resolutions...lol) have grand ideas of stepping off the new year on the right foot, we are full of enthusiasm and hope for a new start, but it can be difficult making changes and even more difficult to keep true to those changes.  The sad part is that, year after year the same thing happens, after a while all the enthusiasm starts to fizzle out and we become disheartened and feel like we have let ourselves and/or our loved ones down by breaking our promises to ourselves. Take heart....there is a way to take on those resolutions and make them stick! You might not be able to meet all the goals you have set, but you CAN achieve enough to feel accomplished.

I am sure you have heard of being a person who sees ,"the Glass is Half Full", vs. "the Glass is Half Empty"! Well I have found a great book, that can guide you towards being the person who looks at the glass as being Half Full! Life can be difficult, things do not always turn out the way we want them to and it can be really hard to keep on trucking along when things do not go the way we expect them to.

Try this book for free: Download the PDF eBook, readable on any computer. Note: It takes a moment for the PDF to fully download.

Resolutions That Work addresses what to do when you’re not able to keep your resolutions.

It challenges you to learn to deal with all of yourself: The part of you that wants to change... as well as the part that is resisting change.

As you get into this process, you’ll find it has the potential to free up tremendous energy toward reaching your goals.

I personally have a lot of things I want to improve! My resolutions list for this year is long and complicated...but most important to me, and at the top of my list is to be a better Human Being, I want to give more to others, love with all my heart, and be a friend to everyone in my life. I also want to be a better wife, mother, sister and daughter.  This year I also plan to make a list of short term, easy goals, that I know I can reach and I am going to start on them NOW! I am not waiting till January 1st! Why put off till later what you can do today, that is my motto!

The pursuit of Happiness.........

Have you ever had one of those moments in life where you look back at all that you have done, and all that you are doing....and realize it is just not enough? Not enough fun, not enough memories, not enough good deeds. You realize that you have just been 'living'. You get up, eat, work, spend a little time with the family, eat some more, sleep and then start all over the next day. No real fulfillment, no real excitement...you just kind of exist.

When I was 23 yrs old I had one of those moments. I was sitting on an examination table in a doctors office, holding my husbands hand. Before me stood a doctor who had just two weeks before Biopsied a mole from my lower chest. With a somber look in his eyes he told me I had Malignant Melanoma and I needed to go to a hospital and have it removed and have my Lymph Nodes tested...and that if it had Metastasized they had a bed waiting for me in North Carolina at a Cancer Research Center, where they could 'try' to help rid my body of this cancer.I am not really sure how far modern medicine has changed since that fateful day, but back then if you had MM you had one option, excision of the lesion, Chemo and Radiation had no effect on it. So here I was, a 23 yr old wife and mother of two small children, having barely lived my life yet, and I was looking death in the face. That was my moment, the eye opener that made me take a look at how I was living my life and realize I wasn't truly happy. I was content, I could have kept going on the way I was, but I wanted so much more!

Thankfully, after my surgery and my tests, and many months of regular check-ups with my Oncologist, I was given a clean bill of health. Though my tumor had been quite large and I will carry the scars of its removal forever, it had not Metastasized and I was safe.

Since that day, I have had a new outlook on life. I want to be the best that I can be, I am always reaching for the Golden Hoop and trying to share my joy in life with everyone I can. Granted, I have my low moments, life isn't all sunshine and rainbows, but my outlook on life and the way I handle the pitfalls has altered as well. Things don't always turn out the way I want them to, but life is an adventure...and I will live it to the fullest!

I now take time to enjoy the little things....the taste of snow flakes melting on my tongue, the budding of new leaves in the spring, the sharp bite of a cold wind, the laughter of my little boy and the warm bear hugs of my husband. 

To me Happiness is life, in all its glory and all its pain. No matter where I am or what I am doing, I will always pursue my experiences to the fullest.

The Beginning......The Formative Years-Love and Marriage

My childhood was rich and vibrant. I feel like such an incredibly lucky person to have grown up in the family I have. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't perfect, I have not by any means lived a charmed life.  My family has a lot of skeletons in our closet, some forcefully shoved in there by yours truly, but those life experiences make life richer too. What is that old saying? 'What doesn't kill, you makes you stronger.'? Not that I have actually had things happen that threatened my life, just altered my perspectives, tremendously.

Obviously, to protect those I love, I cannot actually let the skeletons out, but I can tell you how I have learned and grown from my experiences.

So to start with, lets talk about my parents. My mother and Father met well over 50 years ago. As the story goes, it was the wee hours of the morning, mom had just finished up at her job as a cocktail waitress at one of the posh nightclubs in downtown Chicago and was walking down the street in search of a cab. My dad, being a young and randy lad of 21 had just finished up a night of hustling the unwary out of their money at the local pool hall. Dad was also wandering along the quiet early morning streets in search of a cab. My mom swears when they both waved down a lone cab at the same time, that she thought he was out to mug her, but dad had other thoughts entirely....'what in the world was this beautiful young woman doing out on the streets at this hour?'. So in thickly accented, broken English my German Gentleman of a dad, offered up the lone cab to my mom and opened the door for her, planning to continue walking till he found another (highly unlikely at 3 AM).  My mom, upon approaching the cab, got her first good look at the gentlemanly young man and thought him so young and sweet, she decided to share the cab. So began a whirlwind courtship that lasted only a few months before they married and have since spent 50 years in wedded 'bliss' (though the courtship has truly never ended).

So what did I learn from my parents? My mom is no shrinking violet and my dad is a hard headed and 'olde world' manly man. Their 50 yrs of marriage has been full of clashes and thrills not really very 'blissful', as my mom says they have a truly passionate relationship....they fight passionately and they make up passionately...(.lol...TMI right?) I thought so too as a kid, but as I grew older I longed for that same type of relationship.

I learned that a good marriage is about compromise, passion, love, friendship and equality (even if you have to fight for it). Nothing is perfect and if you expect perfection, you will only be let down and give up. Though my parents lives together have been far from perfect, they truly do love each other and they fight for what they love. How can I do any less?