Turn Your Basic Holiday Card Greeting Into New Year’s Aspirations

Happy New Year to you! We were taking one last perusal through our holiday cards, all filled with so many greetings we’d love to have happen. Here’s a typical one: “May 2011 bring you happiness, peace, prosperity and wisdom.” Well, who could say no to that?

I read those hopes every year but do I really try to make them happen? How about turning each one into a goal for 2011 that you can achieve? My husband told me he heard that many new year’s resolutions fail because you can’t control them on your own (like “get married” or “find a new job”) — they’re externally dependent. But there are ways each of us could work on our own toward those holiday card sentiments…

• So for “peace”, you couldn’t set a goal to “achieve world peace” (beyond our control) but you could say, “yell less and listen more” — OK, maybe that could be mine.
• For “prosperity”, maybe “make a million dollars” wouldn’t work (externally dependent), but “look at smarter ways to invest my nest egg” could.
• “Wisdom” — learn five things that are going on in the world every day; or listen more closely to the other side of an argument.
• “Happiness” — decide to be happy for 5 things a day; I liked these tips for recognizing happiness from The Positivity Blog, with quotations, too — I love a good quote! I also thought it was interesting that the first definition in Merriam-Webster for happy is “fortunate” — I think I tend to overlook that one and usually think of it as the third definition: “enjoying well-being or contentment.”

Now, next year may I please ask that someone send me a holiday card that wishes me an abundance of daily bonbons, and an extra hour of sleep a night? I would be happy to work toward those in 2012.