2008..Your best year yet?

Dear Diary, the beginning of a new year prompts me to reflect on what has been in the 12 months before and what I would like to create in my future. As I look back on 2007, it was definitely a year of contrast. On the positive side, I achieved many of my goals... I moved to a fabulous house, became an NLP Trainer and even achieved recognition by being named runner-up in Women in Business "Most Inspiring Female". And yet, there were still many challenges and disappointments and I know there is much more that I am capable of. This leads me to an interesting question.. "what do I need to do to ensure that 2008 IS my best year yet?"

Over the last 12 months, I have been blessed to have discovered the work of Abraham Hicks and to have deepened my understanding of the Law of Attraction. One of the metaphors they often use is the idea of our lives being like a river. Our natural state of being is to go with the flow but cultural expectations and conditioning have taught us that achieving what we want "should" be hard work and so we often find ourselves paddling upstream in a desperate attempt to create what we want. As Abraham says "nothing that you want is upstream"! If we can learn to let go of the oars and to go with the flow, the river will take us towards our goals and life becomes a journey of joyful and effortless creation.

In principle, this sounds easy, and yet as I have tried to incorporate this into my life, I have had mixed results. I have been astounded by the synchronicities that have magically appeared... such as discussing with my business partner how much we would like the opportunity to appear on radio or television and getting a surprise call the very next day from a coaching client with an offer of a radio show! Yet there are still areas of my life where I am not yet getting what I want and now I have the awareness of the principles of the Law of Attraction, I can get even more frustrated that I still appear to be holding myself back!

Abraham say that as we gain clarity about what we want to create, this causes our river to speed up flowing towards our goals. So when we come up against any blocks (a bit like bumping into rocks in the river), it will be more noticeable because the flow of the river is much faster!

So the first step in making 2008 your best year yet is to be really clear about what it is that you want to happen. Make a list of what you want to achieve or create a vision board to help you to gain this clarity (for more information on this see my earlier blog page http://tiffanykay.typepad.com/inspired_life_blog/2007/01/is_today_the_mo.html#more)

The second step is to be aware of how you hold yourself back. What is it that you say to yourself to explain why you don't yet have what you want. Create a spider chart by drawing a circle and writing your goal in the centre. Then draw lines radiating out from the circle (like spider legs) with all of your beliefs around that topic. Eg you might write financial abundance in the circle and then your beliefs maybe "having more money would improve the quality of my life",  "money doesn't grow on trees" etc. Identify beliefs that do not support you in achieving your goals and re-write them as a positive statement (eg "people want to give me money"). These statements may not feel "truthful" when you first write them, but if you practice them over the next few days and weeks, you will literally start to create changes in your neurology that will bring you into alignment with these new empowering beliefs.

For more tips and hints on making 2008 your best year yet, you may be interested in that radio interview with BBC Radio Manchester on the topic of "New Year, New You" which you can listen to here.