With 2010 rapidly coming to a close, it got me thinking about all those New Year's resolutions we make, and why, for many of us, they fail to materialise.

So I thought over the next couple of newsletters, I'd provide some tips on how to ensure you create a resolution that you can achieve, and one that will move you forward in your goals for 2011.

The first, and perhaps most important step is to know where you are.  It's very difficult to create a plan to get you from point A to point B, if you don't know where point A is.  In mentoring, I find the most difficult part for the trainee is coming face to face with where they are at that moment.  We've been so trained to focus on the future and where we want to be, that we often overlook, minimise, or deny, where we are right now.  It can mean that we end up building what looks like a dazzling future on unstable foundations. The end result usually is less resilient than we would hope.

While it is often difficult to force ourselves to review, for some reason, this time of year does prompt us to reflect.  It seems to be almost impossible to avoid.  So I had a look at the history and symbols that represent this season and was reminded of some interesting facts.

January, the first month of the original Julian Calendar, was named after the Roman god Janus or Ianus.  However, historians believe that Janus dated back to a much earlier god from Chaldean times, and was closely associated with the pagan celebration of Sol Invictus - or the return of the sun, which in the pre-Gregorian calendar was around the 25th of December.

Janus was a two headed god, said to represent the Sun and the passage of the sun upon its triumphant return during the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. The name Janus or Ianus represents movement or transition, the passage from one state of being to another.  Along with the goddess Jana or Diana, who represented the moon, Janus was said to be one of the oldest and most important of the ancient pantheon.

One face of Janus looks to the past, while the other looks to the future.  So it's no coincidence that once we are over the Christmas festivities and are faced with a new year, our thoughts turn to reviewing our accomplishments and making plans for the coming year.  The influence of Janus and similar deities from other cultures is to unconsciously imprint us with two faces; one looking back to the past with a critical eye and the other looking forward to the future with hope.

So since, as Jung would have said, this archetype is imprinted in our communal unconscious, we might as well take advantage of our ancient instinct to review the past and prepare for the future.

My number one tip for nailing your 2011 New Year's Resolution is:

'Know where you are right now.'

This means having a good, hard, honest look at yourself physically, mentally and emotionally.  If you're having some time off over Christmas, this will provide the perfect opportunity for some reflection.

To get the ball rolling you might like to ask yourself a few questions.

▪   What kind of shape is your health in?

▪   Are you around your target weight?

▪   Are you as fit as you could be?

▪   How's your alcohol consumption?

What about your relationships, are they in good shape?

▪   Are you getting time for family and your significant other?

▪   Do you take time to appreciate the people who matter and listen to them?

▪   Do you and your partner or best friend still share interests in common?

You can do the same for your career and finances, and any other area of your life that is important to you.

Next draw a circle and divide it up into the eight main areas of your life. The following list is just a suggestion, yours could be made up in any order out of the things that matter to you:

1.Physical Development

2.Emotional Development

3.Career Development

4.Financial Development

5.Personal Development

6.Spiritual Development

7.Hobbies and Interests

Then take an audit of each of these areas. Write down your successes and challenges in each area, and then give each area a score out of ten, with 10/10 meaning you achieved all your goals in 2010, and 0/10 representing none of your goals being met.  Do this without emotional judgement.  Remember that negative emotions will switch off your potential, so we want to make this process as emotionally neutral as possible.  Resist the temptation to beat yourself up.  Write down as much detail as you can, because that tends to help diffuse the negative self-talk that runs around the mind whenever we review our performance.

The areas that score lowest are those where you achieved less of your goals, and most likely were areas that received a lower priority and therefore less energy. If any area ranks lower than a '5' it is probably in urgent need of attention.

If balance in your life is a goal, then you'll want most areas to have pretty equal scores, while if you are mainly family or career focused, you'll accept high scores in those areas and lower scores in others because that is part of your strategy.  However, it is important for your long term well being that you keep all areas above a five if possible.

Having completed this process you'll have enough information to know where you want to focus your energy in 2011, as well as an indication where you might need an energy and/or attitude tune-up.

Often clients will say they had a big work goal for the year, but one personal crisis after the other kept getting in the way.  Remember, whatever we focus our energy on will thrive, and correspondingly, whatever we take our energy away from will suffer.

If we take energy focus away from our health or our relationships for a prolonged period, then it is only natural that a crisis will occur.  So neglecting your health for the sake of your career will eventually have an effect on not only your health but inevitably also your career.

The same is true when a crisis in health takes us away from our work.  Sooner or later our work starts to suffer. The secret is to be in tune with all areas of our energetic health so we prevent the crisis before it happens, and give all areas of our life the energy they need to stay healthy.  Wouldn't it be great if there was an online tool we could use to make the process easier, and less hit and miss?