This issue is made up of the following sections:

1. Personal Effectiveness Tips
2. Questions for Growth
3. Reality Check - Fresh Starts

1. Personal Effectiveness Tips
1. There's something very uplifting about listening to a good piece of blues or jazz, and a soloist who takes his moment in the spotlight and captivates. In your own life, don't be afraid to do the same. It is incredibly healthy to:
   1. Know where your strengths lie
   2. Accentuate these strengths
   3. Gain notice for doing so

   Take inventory of what you are good at, and use that as a starting point in everything you do. Then, play your heart out.

2. Tired of making New Year's Resolutions? Don't this year. Instead, focus on the act of getting better, and forget about how you will do that. After all, what you're really after is results, right? Who cares if you work out four times a week? What if you can do it twice a week, eat healthier, and get the same results? Don't stress about making goals. Get out there and improve some aspect of your life, even if just a little.

3. Make it a point to surround yourself this year with people that both support you and challenge you to be better in all areas of your life. A good social support network is a key ingredient to sustained success and learning, and always provides as a good safety net in times of trouble.

4. Think critically and take a stand every now and then. Otherwise, you miss opportunities to build integrity in your relationships with others. Rachel Ray, whom I find fun to watch and cute to boot, has never had a meal (on her $40 A Day show) that she didn't enjoy (or at least, she never reports such a fact). The fact that she purports to love every single meal causes me to think twice about her recommendations. She'd gain more respect in my book by occasionally denouncing a cheesesteak sandwich as tasting like an old shoe covered in cheddar.

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2. Questions for Growth
1. How much intentional exercise is part of your daily life?

2. When was the last time you took a risk so enticing that it made your heart race?

3. What stops you from asking for help from those in your life (friends, teachers, colleagues, family, etc) that could obviously assist you?

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3. Reality Check - Fresh Starts

One of the wonderful joys of the annual New Year tradition of setting resolutions is the accompanying feelings of being able to start your life all over again. There's something refreshing about the idea that we can leave the past year's failures, issues, etc behind and start anew, even if the only real change in our actual life is that the calendar month is January. It's almost as if we give ourselves permission to move forward with our lives, dreams, and goals.

This is the most important aspect of the year changing from 2007 to 2007-the mental aspect of letting go of your own shame and guilt and fear. The process of allowing for a bit more imperfection is a powerful one. In my own life, I made a conscious choice this past year to fight through my personal fears, to stop driving while looking only in the rearview, so to speak, and to realize that I am more motivated by not living than by failing.

Sprinters are taught to keep their heads upright and to never let them fall backwards in competition, as the accompanying backwards poundage adds "drag" and decreases overall speed. They are also taught to never look over their shoulders, as this action slows them down even further, mentally and physically. In our daily lives, we are constantly adding "drag" and slowing ourselves down. These small killers include things such as:

• emotional baggage (not letting go of failures, past relationships gone bad, comments someone made about you when you were sixteen, etc)
• irrational fears ("everyone will see that I am incompetent" or "I can't deal with failing")
• doubts ("What if I fail?" and "What if my ideas don't work?")
• laziness
• disorganization

The list could go on and on, obviously. But the key thing to realize here is that most of our problems in life and most of our obstacles are self-imposed. We literally slow ourselves down on purpose, and then complain about how fast we can't run!

As I sit contemplating my own changes and self-renewal in 2007, I hope that you can start running (metaphorically or not) in 2007 towards whatever it is that makes you the happiest. Don't look over your shoulder, keep your head up, and go for it. That's the essence of life.

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