I am really excited about this week. Actually I used to always get excited about new years resolutions and the anticipation of a new me in the new year.

I used to set a complex set of resolutions every year and then would promptly let them slide after the second week of the year and quickly forget them so that I would not have to deal with the disappointment of failing to make the changes necessary.

The last couple of years I have avoided new years resolutions really so as not to disappoint myself.

So this year I have changed. This week I am going to show you how to change you life for the better and give you a better chance to keep yourself on track. This is what I will cover over 4 posts.

1. Today, we will do this little intro and I will also write about looking back over this past year.

2. Tomorrow, I will write about your goals for next year

3. Day 3 will deal with how to identify and use your strengths and weaknesses. You need to know what you have to work with.

4. On this last day we will see how to make sure that you put action steps in place so that you will be able to successfully declare victory in your resolutions as well as looking at your values and the affect they have.

Today you need to look back. Try to get a couple of pieces of paper and see what the last year dealt you both good and bad and start letting the ideas of what you want to see in 2010 swirl around. You don’t want to commit to anything but we all know what we would like to see in our future and unless we start taking steps our dreams will never materialize.

This is what you need to do. On one sheet of paper draw a line down the middle and on the left side write down all the great things from last year, both things in your control and things our of your control. On the right side of the paper do the same with all the bad things and disappointments. Once you have this list all written out I hope you feel good about this last year but maybe not. This is a really in your face way to bring everything that has happened to the forefront and is a method that I use anytime that I am feeling a little out of control. You have no way to know what to do next if you do not know where you have been already.

So just do this one exercise. This is a tool that will make tomorrow a lot easier and tomorrow is the exciting day of looking at what you want to see happen next year.

Ready to move forward? Here are the rest of the posts:

Day 2 of creating great new years resolutions
Day 3 of creating great new years resolutions
Day 4 of creating great new years resolutions