Happy New Year

Oh, how I love the start of a new year! I have my little notebook all organized for 2010. I've set up the pages I'll need for my monthly list of nice things and accomplishments that I eagerly record as they occur; I've set up the pages for the list of the books I read (last year I read 101 books- though most were children's books, so some were very short - but some were very long!). Because I'm using the second half of the notebook I began last year, I can just refer back to the page that has my list of mantras. My three main ones are "If it is to be, it's up to me" and "Be intent on the perfection of the present day" and a reminder of my four pillars of happiness: reading, writing, walking, friends.

And I have my main resolution for the year, which I'm so excited about: Have all the children's book fun and joy possible. Say yes to everything that has to do with children's books. Say no to everything else, or at least minimize it, or best of all, turn it in to children's books (see my post on Two Lives/One Life a couple of days ago). Then I have my subsidiary resolution: Have all the fun and joy possible of ANY kind, fun and joy, period! Don't pass up any chance for fun and joy, however they present themselves.

This strategy is SO going to work! In the past sometimes I've tried to eliminate or minimize negative things from my life, but I've found that the best way to do this is instead to focus on adding more of the positive. Add so much positive that there isn't any room left for the negative, that the negative gets crowded out completely. I used to work on saying no to things I didn't want to do, but now I focus on saying yes to what I DO want to do, because then there simply won't be any time left to do those things I was trying to make myself say no to.

Yes, yes, yes!