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How Abraham Lincoln Would Have Approached New Year’s Resolutions

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“We must think anew, and act anew.” – Abraham Lincoln

Did anyone in history understand the importance of thinking and acting anew more than Abraham Lincoln? When President Lincoln wrote the words above, his beloved country was facing its darkest hour: The Civil War.  He wrote, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.  We must think anew, and act anew.”

2010 is on our doorstep.  In fact, as I’m typing these words, he’s making his way into many homes.  The type of house guest he’ll become is, to a large extent up to us.  If we are able to approach old problems with new solutions, he may be the finest house guest we’ve ever had.  However, if we keep doing that which isn’t quite good enough, he’ll be like the overbearing uncle that always wears out his welcome as he wears out our nerves.

Thinking and acting anew is pretty much what New Year’s Resolutions are all about.  When the man who is 40 pounds overweight sits down with his pen and paper and writes “Eat out less often….  Walk for 30 minutes each day…. No more fries!… etc.” he is, in fact, finding new approaches to 40 old problems.  In the period of time that he spends with his pen and paper, his mind searches for new actions that’ll solve his problem, new ideas that’ll lead him to a happier and healthier life.  If he just wrote “Lose weight” on his paper, he wouldn’t be making a resolution as much as he’d be making a wish.

If you want your own New Year’s Resolutions to help guide you along the path to making your dreams come true, be specific.  Take specific problems and come up with specific solutions.

As one of the greatest Americans to ever live said, “We must think anew, and act anew.”

I’d like to take the opportunity to wish you the happiest and healthiest 2010 imaginable.  I hope you laugh daily, love deeply, and live life as it’s meant to be lived – out loud and with a smile on your face.  If you have big dreams, I hope you’ll never quit running toward them and if you have high hopes, I hope you never quit reaching for them.  God bless you and those you dearly love!  Happy New Year! – Joi

Goal Setting – Why New Year’s Resolutions Waste Your Time & What to Do to Accomplish More Goals

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When I first received the following guest article, I thought “As if!” I mean, I’m the queen of all New Year’s Resolutions and truly believe in them (personal experience backs me up). Yet here’s an article wanting to present itself to my friends on Self Help Daily and it’s waving its anti New Year’s Resolutions flag.

Ha! Like I’m ever going to publish that sort of thing. I thought, “I’ll be kind enough to read the article, then I’ll get back to my resolutions…” Problem is, I read the article and I totally liked the article.

What’s more: I’m totally publishing the article. Enjoy! I’ll be back later with the other side of the story – when I wave my PRO New Year’s Resolution flag. 😉

Goal Setting – Why New Year’s Resolutions Waste Your Time & What to Do to Accomplish More Goals
By Karim Ismail

If you’re looking to accomplish more goals this coming year then forget about New Year’s resolutions. The people that profit the most from New Year’s resolutions are…

* Owners of fitness centers
* Authors of weight loss books
* People who sell programs about how to make money online
* Other sellers of things we use to try to fulfill our dreams and fantasies

The people that make the resolutions don’t tend to benefit as much from their resolutions. Case in point: When is the last time you heard someone say something like, “I started my successful business as a result of a New Year’s resolution?”

I’ve never heard anyone say that and I suspect you haven’t either. That’s because resolutions are mostly based on feelings. It’s the beginning of a new year and we want it to be a new beginning for ourselves as well.

This desire for change is well and good, of course. The momentum that comes from change helps propel us forward. But instead of expecting a resolution to give you this momentum (it won’t) I recommend trying this exercise instead.

What You Should Be Doing Instead of Relying on Your New Year’s Resolutions

1. After the first of the year, schedule an appointment with yourself. Grab a notebook or a laptop and go to a quiet place-a coffee shop, a room in your house, or even a night alone in a hotel-and write a letter to yourself as if you were writing from the future, one year from now.

In my book Keep Any Promise I write about the importance of setting audacious goals.In this letter, describe what you are doing a year from now and make sure what you’re describing -career, house, vacations or whatever your writing about is audacious as possible. But, don’t make it totally outside the realm of possibility.

2. Remember, you are writing the letter to yourself from the future. Address the letter to yourself and sign it with your name. Here’s an example of something I might write:

“Dear Karim,

No doubt that it is a freezing cold Canadian winter day as you’re reading this. Rest assured that a year from this date you will be spending a vacation in the Fiji Islands. The weather here is perfect.

The Keep Any Promise Live Workshops were more successful this past year than I could have possibly imagined. Enrollment was more than triple what it was last year, making the Fiji trip possible…”

Write in this way for as many paragraphs and pages as you wish. Don’t worry about grammar and writing style because no one else has to see this letter. The whole purpose is to get you thinking beyond mere resolutions and thinking much bigger and more long term than you normally would.

3. Don’t restrict yourself to things like career and vacation. Feel free to talk about things like home decor and other small goals you might have. Those are important too. For example, maybe there’s an expensive appliance you’ve wanted for some time but couldn’t afford. Things like this have a place in the letter too.

4. After writing the letter, read it very carefully and meditate upon it. In your mind’s eye visualize the things in your letter coming to pass. Then put the letter away until the next year. Resist the temptation to pull it out and read it during the year. Wait and reread it a year from now and before writing your next letter. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how close you’ve come to achieving the audacious goals of the previous year-maybe you will have even surpassed some of them!

Accomplishing Goals Can Become Automatic
If you follow my advice, you will accomplish more goals than if you just set mere resolutions that fade away before Valentine’s Day. You’ll find yourself automatically making decisions throughout the year that will make your audacious goals possible. This will happen without you even realizing it. For example, if I had set the audacious goal of a trip to Fiji, throughout the year I will automatically notice ads for Fiji. I would find myself making decisions in my business to increase my income so that I can pay for the trip. It has a snowball effect!

The story format really helps pull everything together and it will help you visualize your audacious goals and implant them in your subconscious. Now, you will be able to achieve more in the next 12 months than you have in the previous 12 years.

In his new book “Keep Any Promise,” Karim Ismail provides many other exercises and tools that will help you achieve your audacious goals this coming year so you can be successful in business and life Now, you can get started with my free Life Quiz at: http://www.KeepAnypromise.com. This Life Quiz is a survey about YOU (think of it as a 50 Point Personal Check Up) and will help you create your successful life blueprint for a satisfying life.

*** What are your personal thoughts about New Year’s Resolutions?  Let us know in the comments! – Joi

Quotes About Character

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Character: Crashing Waves
Buy at AllPosters.com

There have been a lot of news stories lately exposing a ridiculous lack of character in household names. Sports, television, politics – everywhere you look, someone is throwing away their reputation and giving a black eye to their good name. Sometimes I wonder if true character is a dying trait.

Maybe we all need to shine a spotlight on character and try to make IT a household name again. It couldn’t hurt, that’s for sure. Below are some of my favorite quotes about character – one of the most attractive and positive traits anyone can lay claim to.

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving. – Dale Carnegie

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost. – Billy Graham

If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others. – Haim Ginott

Character is simply habit long continued. – Plutarch

Character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self respect springs. – Joan Didion

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming. – Jim Rohn

Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them adequately and not wonder whether someone else’s traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own a man’s character is, the better it fits him. – Cicero

Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up. – Thomas J. Watson, Sr.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. – Helen Keller

Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit, and you reap a character. Sow a character, and you reap a destiny. – Charles Reade

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street. – Elbert Hubbard

And my current favorite:
The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back. – Abigail Van Buren

More Quotes about Character….

Thursday Throwback to 1923: How to Get What You Want in Life (Part 2)

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Continued from How to Get What You Want in Life Part 1

HOW TO MAKE YOUR DESIRES MATERIALIZE by Elsie Lincoln Benedict, 1923

A friend in Denver once told me she “wanted a new spring suit more than anything.”  We were walking down Sixteenth Street a few days later and there in a front window she saw the VERY suit she was looking for – for $35.  In the olden days$35 actually bought a suit good enough for anybody, you remember?

“How lovely,” I exclaimed, “and to think you have the $35 right in your purse.  Let’s go right in and get it before somebody else does!”

Would she?  No.  She had said she wanted that suit more than anything else in the world.  But she didn’t even want it as much as she wanted the $35.

She WISHED she had a new suit like this one, but what she really WANTED was the money.

“But what about the person who hasn’t the $35?” I hear you ask.  And the answer is you will find is the utter truth.  It is this:  You can GET it, honestly, legitimately, quickly, and surely, provided YOU WANT IT.

…Decide to restrict yourself because you “can’t get the money for things you want” and the money you do get will come that much harder.

But make up your mind to MAKE ALL THE MONEY YOU NEED for the things you want – and from the hour of reaching that decision you will make five dollars easier than you now make one.

The richer you become the easier it is to make money.  The less you have the more difficult it is to get more.

…. All successful men and women who are frank will admit that many good things followed in the wake of that first big effort, and followed almost without further effort.

“Nothing succeeds like success” is an old and true saying.  Another not so old but equally true is that nothing fails like failure.

The world always helps you along whichever way you are going.  If you are headed uphill it will help pull you up.  If you are headed downhill it will give you a push.  We should not complain of this, but awaken to the fact that it IS a law, and instead of fighting it put it to work for us.

If you want to go uphill you must manifest this to the people around you.  They are all driving along Lif’e’s Highway too, and they see you, think of you, and get an impression of you.

If you want to go down all you have to do is to let it be known and you will have plenty of kicks and company.

The world gets one of its deepest impressions of you FROM THE DIRECTION IN WHICH YOUR CAR IS MOVING.  Everything about you tells what that is.  Even children and those who catch a glimpse of you for only a moment sense this and act toward you accordingly.

You never deceive them very much of very long in any way. Bluffing and pretending do not deceive anyone.  These only make you resemble a man who tells you he is traveling north when at every corner possible he turns south.

All of life is a journey along the great Highway.  We are always coming to crossroads.  We always make our own choice.  We turn or go straight ahead – as WE CHOOSE.

We come to scores of these corners every day and the world notes the turns we make.  It will give you plenty of time to get to your destination in the North, and many a lift besides, provided at the crossroads you keep heading in that direction.

Another strange thing about it is that the higher up you get the MORE help the world gives you, and the lower down the harder it gets.

You can see it for yourself.  If you haven’t a cent and ask the world for a quarter to keep you from starving, it will not give it to you very quickly or very graciously.  It says it “cant’ encourage that kind of thing.” It is afraid you “might not deserve it.”

But if you are a millionaire, with more money than you know what to do with, people will gladly loan you millions…

To the big dinners the hungry are not invited.  The guests are those already overfed.

“This is all true,” you say, “but how is one to get started in the right direction?  Especially when, as you say, the whole world is busy helping us downgrade already?”

The answer is: Change the CAUSE and you also change the EFFECT.

Your present condition…  is the natural and inevitable outgrowth of the attitudes and feelings HARBORED in your subconscious mind.

Most people secretly cherish the delusion that this is not a law-ruled universe, and that somehow they will be able to get something for nothing.

Look again at the word “harbored,” for it reveals the crux of your situation.

All kinds of things come into your consciousness.  You can’t help seeing and hearing and even sometimes thinking these destructive things.

But you CAN refuse to HARBOR them.

The things that get down into your subconscious mind come out in your life.

But remember, nothing can get into your subconscious mind save as you dwell upon it and encourage it.

“But how can I start forward NOW, from this very spot?,” you ask.

To begin to go uphill in life instead of down…. it is only necessary that you TURN AROUND.  Other things will come later, but for today this will be enough…

To get anything you want, gently open your mind to the idea that you CAN get it, somewhere, somehow.  Do not dwell upon the things which just now seem to stand in the way of your getting it.

It is a law that two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time.  So, turning your attention toward the good thought drives the bad one out.  Soon this becomes a habit, and then out of your subconscious will comes the ideas of HOW to get what you want.

Act YOUR Age, Not Your Great Grandparents’ Age!

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My husband and I love to watch movies – it doesn’t really matter if the movie wants to tickle us, scare us, baffle us, move us, or leave us breathless (AVATAR!) – We simply LOVE movies, old and new.

A few nights ago we did the whole pile up in the bedroom with cookies and tea and watched an old Elvis movie: Spinout. We’ve been taking Elvis movies and reliving the fun one at a time. I can’t honestly say this one was one of the best written Elvis movies (our cat Alexa could have written a better story…. asleep), but it was still, like all Elvis movies, a lot of fun. It was cute, in spite of a weak plot:  I’m going to marry him. No, I’m going to marry him. I’m a girl! Well, I’m not marrying you. You will marry me. I will not marry you. Or you. You will marry me. I’m a girl! Daddy, make him marry me…

I’ve been thinking a lot about one particular scene from this movie. Elvis’ character, Mike barges in on a couple (Bernard and Violet) as they’re sitting at their dinner table.  Bernard has his newspaper up in front of his face, Violet half-ignores Bernard.. that sort of thing.  They’re obviously in the rut to end all ruts.

Bernard: I’m not as handsome as I used to be. Nor as young either.

Mike: You’re not as old as you’re behaving either.  (To Violet) And neither are you.

I think this scene really struck me because it has always been something that I feel strongly about:  I just hate to see people who aren’t living out loud!  It’s as though they’re wasting the precious life that has been given to them – a life, and health – that many aren’t lucky enough to enjoy.

Everyone has their excuses for living in a sad little rut:

  • I don’t have enough money…
  • I’m overweight…
  • My spouse is a nightmare…
  • My kids are nightmares…
  • I’m a nightmare…
  • I’m too old…
  • I’m not old enough…

Excuses.  They’re always a riot unless we’re the ones spouting them off.  Each of these excuses is utter nonsense, of course.  You can be happy no matter what you weigh, no matter what your age is, and (thank goodness) in spite of your savings!

One of the greatest, and saddest, ruts people fall into is summed up by the scene in this movie – by our poor Bernard and Violet.  For some reason, some people simply tend to act older than their age – and they start doing so far sooner than they should.   Being an only child probably contributed to the fact that I’ve never acted my own age, let alone an older one.  Yet even I, a few days ago, caught myself.  Here I am, only in my 40s, and I honestly came close to skipping a trip to the store because I knew it’d be crowded and the weather was cold.  Just as I was in the middle of a decrepit thought, I’d really like to bake another batch of Cake Mix Cookies, but I need a few ingredients, and the store will be packed. Plus, it’s cold…. Fortunately, I caught myself and pinned my own ears back with a little biting sarcasm, Well, granny grunt, why don’t you just put your gown on and go to bed?  Want a little warm milk first?

The Cake Mix Cookies are delicious.

Before New Year’s Day gets here and I start going on and on about resolutions, I want you to do yourself a huge, huge favor.  Give yourself a little RUT CHECK  (it’s kin to  gut check – a distant  cousin, I believe).  You’ll be a lot better equipped to handle new resolutions once you take care of this pressing, urgent matter.  Take a good, long look at yourself and determine if you’re acting YOUR age, or your great grandparents’ age.

  • Do you “walk old?”  Pay close attention to how you walk.  Your walk can become a habit. Do you scoot, shuffle, or hobble?  If so, what’s the cause?  If your feet, knees, or back hurt, do something about it.  You may need new shoes or even a great pair of insoles.  Look at the lines of insoles and find some that address the pain you’re feeling.   If you keep walking on hurting feet, you’re just making them worse and you’re training your body to walk a certain way.
  • Do you keep from doing things you enjoy for ridiculous reasons?  If you want to go to the movies – go! The longer a person stays “out of the loop,” the harder it is to jump back in.  The good news is, once you jump back into the fun, it’s like you never left.
  • This is a strange, but important, one:  Have you ever paid really close attention to how you eat and drink? This is especially tricky for people who eat a lot of meals alone – manners often fall by the wayside!  Begin to pay attention to how you eat – what sounds do you hear? Let’s be honest, there should be as few sounds as possible!  Do you chew your food slowly rather than wolfing it down?  Remember your manners and never, ever chew with your mouth open.  I will hunt you down.
  • Do you tend to ridicule young people a great deal? Think of cranky “old” grouches in movies, comic strips, and cartoons.  Don’t become one of those grunts!  Live your life, have fun, enjoy it and allow everyone else the same freedom to do the same.  You say, “They don’t dress like I did!  They don’t wear their hair as short as I did! They don’t work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week like I did!”   Who says they have to be mini- yous?!?!  After all, if it were so great, why are you so miserably cranky?!  Let them live their life – you have your own.  Remember:  When you condemn, criticize, and ridicule – you are the one who looks bad.  And old.
  • Every ache and pain isn’t debilitating and every sniffle isn’t swine flu! For whatever reasons, a lot of people obsess over their health.  Sometimes it’s because their parents had a gazillion health problems and they’re worried about facing similar problems.  You have to be so careful because I, for one, firmly believe that we often create our own realities.   When our mind keeps telling our body that something’s wrong with it and that it isn’t well – it will eventually believe it.
  • When men and women are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s – there are a lot of things going on.  There are children, spouses, grandchildren, work, bills, houses, vehicles, and (for the fortunate ones) aging parents.  So many demands! It’s only natural that some information will be misplaced along the way.  Forgetting where you put your keys, for example, or forgetting butter at the store (when it’s the main thing you went for!) don’t signal old age-itis or senility.  More times than not they signal that you have too much going on at the moment!  However, we can’t exactly let everything go – so that’s where notes come in handy!  Use post it notes – they’re bright, colorful, and will make sure the butter comes home with you next time.  As for the keys, put them in the same place every single time – a hook by the door is ideal.  Think about it:  There are more things going on right now than when you were in your 20s and 30s.
  • Stay sharp! Don’t fall into the rut of just reading the newspaper or watching tv each night.  Go places, see new things, learn about new places, people, and things.  Challenge your mind and explore everything around you.
  • Get fresh air every single day – even if the air is kind of nippy! Fresh air and natural sunlight are good for you, if you use common sense.  Just don’t hole up like a bat in its cave or a bear in its den.
  • Eat healthy foods and drink lots of green tea! Healthy foods will make you feel as good as junk food makes you feel bad.  Try eating MORE fruits and vegetables this week and see if it doesn’t make a huge difference in how you feel – and think.
  • Get plenty of rest and quality sleep. Everyone should read the following article: Sleep Deprivation is Dangerous – if you are experiencing anything from stubborn pounds to skin problems, the key may be a lot simpler than you ever thought – zzzzzzzzzzz.  As soon as you get through here, please read this article.

If you suspect that you’re acting, or thinking, older than you think you should – do something about it.  Don’t let your thoughts and actions cause you to age prematurely. Thoughts are one of the most powerful things in the world – everything begins with a thought, then it’ll grow in the direction of that thought.  Start holding your thoughts, actions, steps, and words accountable.  Make no mistake, they’re either aging you or keeping you young.  Fortunately, the choice is yours.