Unloading Your Backpack for 2011

We look forward and hope for the best in the coming year. Hope is a kindling light that can guide us through the next year. Looking forward is setting our vision towards greater things that we want to happen. With vision and hope our actions can be at pace for everything that is desirable to happen in our life.

To move on, we need to set our mind and eyes to greater things. Likewise, we need to be still for a little while and look back to what we have done. This is because in our journey in life, we can not carry too many baggages, or else we will lag that we will not get to where we want to go.

We are backpackers in this life's journey. Our backpacks can carry only as much as we could. If there are too many unnecessary things in there, we will soon find travelling tiresome. Unloading that backpack is essential so you may have space for the truly important.

But what should really be in there? Nothing too heavy or unnecessary should be in your back pack. All these loads pertain to those feelings of guilt, regrets, worries, bitterness, relational coflicts, vices, unimportant preoccupations, financial debts and other unresolved issues you have with your personality. When you carry them through the next year, you'll surely find the journey too difficult to complete it successfully.

Surely there have been regretful events that you experienced, but don't fret about it, just charge that to experience for your own learning. You may be guilty of doing something wrong as per you moral or ethical standards, maybe you need time to disclose that, ask forgiveness if you wronged someone and express commitment in not doing it again. You must have been wronged too, that you feel bitter, but let not that bitterness eat you away to be more anxious.

People are important, just like how you think yourself is important. We journey with other people, and if there are just things that you don't agree about remember that there are reasons for some disagreements. You don't need to please everybody, just try to be civil, professional or the least cordial. Your family and dear friends are those most important, the rest you can have them as frenemies.

Vices are bad habits, and surely they are hard to break. They are just like the other preoccupations you have that you spend more time with, than those that are important. Habits are learned, and they can be unlearned as well. The first step is to really stay away from them and replace it with something else. The next steps are all up to you, whether to keep that habit or quit it.

Healthy financial state is essential for you to prosper this coming year, or at least for you to have something that you can spend for the necessary and for your own pleasure. But with financial debts above your neck, things will really be difficult. You might need to avail some refinancing for your loans and credits, but you sure need to have them paid in the first months of the year if you can. If not make sure to commit yourself in paying your debts this year.

Nobody can change your personality, and it can not be done in an instant. Because who you are is a product of so many years, people, events and your lifetime experiences. But you and only you can take the initiative to do the fixing for your personality. If you think you have to change something in you, let that be first pleasing to you and not simply to please someone else or to be like someone else. Remember you are you, that thing that makes you different is what makes you unique.

For the next year, make sure you check what's in your life-backpack. Take only what is really important for you. That I think are good memories of the past year, positive outlook for the next year, and just plain you with that hope and vision for the best of this coming year. Enjoy your life journey.

On My New Year's Resolution

After Christmas comes our hopes, desires and plans for the next year. Although not every one is into writing down their life-story, there is a part in all of us to resolve issues that we have had in the passing year. This I understand to be drawn from our construct of constancy of change and motivation to be a better person.

I have always thought of quitting smoking as a new year's resolution.Yet, I have never resolved that issue. Maybe because I don't take the sense of having a new year's resolution seriously. Another concern that I would like to be resolved is over-expenditures.

We usually keep our wishes for the coming year with a prayer of hope and faith, that in God's will things will fall into place. However, just thinking about what we wanted to be improved in our lives would not really work well without our commitment and action.

The commitment to change begins in introspection. That is taking time to evaluate your self, your thoughts and your actions in the time that has passed. This is like self-management. The first step is to evaluate your self in all its aspects if possible.

Next is to level up that reflection a bit by examining what caused those failures you may have had. Those causes must be resolved to find a resolution to your concerns. Let's say you are not so punctual. You can make your resolution and tell yourself you will be punctual. But the thing is, have you ever considered what makes you late? You could think that the problem is you wake up late, but have you thought of the reason why do you wake up late? Perhaps, you sleep late and spend a lot of time doing things that are not necessary.So, the resolution must address what really causes the problem and not the problem in the surface. That is the third step to making workable resolutions.

The last step would be the action. The resolution to your personal problems will demand actions. These should be workable, to be done. Don't just say to yourself what you want, but mean it upon determining what you can do. Believe that you can do it and do it. When all these have been clear to you, reexamine them as to how they may affect others or what will be the repercussions of those actions. Remember that you are not all alone in your life, and so you should make sure that your commitment into actions should also benefit those people around you who are most valuable to you.

No one is perfect, we all have personal issues to resolve and it is necessary that we take the step to coming up with what will resolve our issues. So what is my new year's resolutions? Let me go over to my life-vision mission I wrote 5 years ago,and reflect on the passing year, for me to write those resolutions down just yet.