Happy New Year Resolutions to you and yours! Remember to keep your resolution list short, doable, and not to expect 100% achievement. The last New Years resolution on your list should be to keep working on your New Years Resolutions, even if you find you had unintentionally given up or become distracted from your original goals.

In fact, I believe we should just concentrate on one New Year resolution at a time. Staying focused is much easier if we have just one to focus on. Keep a journal with you and record your successes and your not so successful attempts. Think about it and write about it; give yourself feedback. This allows you to be consciously aware of yourself and the influences that help you or hinder you.

I have started and stopped diets and exercise many times this year and years before, so they won’t be included in my New Year’s resolutions. They have become a part of who I am…it is instilled in my being – that is what I do…so it would be cheating to have diet and exercise as resolutions. New Year resolutions should be new and challenging…and sometimes to the benefit of others in our life, too.

So on that note, what is my New Year’s Resolution? It is one I actually started last week…”I’m staying out of it.” It has also become my mantra. “I’m staying out of it” I’ve found actually comes in handy when one of my children want my opinion…perhaps about one of their siblings…or asking what they should do…or their parenting style.

I’m of a different generation when things seemed to be simpler, not always better, but there may have been less thinking, less awareness, less studies…and there may have been more common sense in some ways, too. So keeping that in mind in 2013, I’m just staying out of it. If you want my advice…not my opinion…(there is a difference)…I’ll be happy to offer it with the acknowledgement that whoever is the receiver is not obligated to follow.

Oh, did I just offer my opinion…sorry…please make your New Year’s resolutions your way. I’m staying out of it!

Happy New Year 2013 from Nana and family! May 2013 be a lucky year for all of us…

 …and if your New Year’s Resolution happens to be related to “diet,” here is