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S pring is here and many of us have long forgotten the resolutions and promises we made at the beginning of the year. We vow to spend more time with our family, work smarter not harder, eat less, and exercise more. We expect everything to magically fix itself without doing a thing to carry out our plans. It’s time to reprogram our attitude and spring into action a new way of moving forward with our plans.

Let's start by adopting a new attitude by changing the words we use. Removing the old word RESOLUTION from our vocabulary and substituting two new words: reflect and project. Concentrating on reflecting and projecting would help us redefine our attitude and work toward our goals. The goal is to review your life and learn from the lessons of the past.

Reflecting on the past is a great starting point; we can’t change the past but we can learn from it, no matter how imperfect our past may be. Bad situations are made worse by absorbing the negativity of that situation. These bad situations can sometimes sabotage our perspective on life. When we define our life we reflect on those good situations and the bad. We can gain a new perspective on those “bad” situations, they can be redefined with one of our new words: reflect. The definitions for the word reflect include: to think seriously or look back. Let’s think seriously—or REFLECT.

Take a piece of paper, write the heading REFLECTIONS 2006. Quickly jot down five to ten reflections, limit to five or ten—we don’t want to overwhelm ourselves. Reflections are life lessons learned. Lessons we learned like how to forgive, should we forget, do we need to be more accepting of others. Feelings from every situation we internalized can be written down. Writing them down removes the significance they hold in our life and creates a clear path for us to start projecting our new plan.

Setting our reflections aside, let’s extend forward—or PROJECT. If reflections are life lessons, the projections are plans for goals we set in life. The definitions for the word project include: extend forward, plan or proposal. Label the next sheet of paper PROJECTIONS 2007. Quickly jot down five to ten projections. Projections can be to put family first or work smarter, and exercise more. Projection list can include accomplishments and tasks to be completed. This is the list to encourage our new attitude to spring forward.

Placing the lists side by side can give us a new focus on what really matters. The reflection list is a starting point. Learning from what we can't change is a testament to our strength to knowing ourselves. We can learn from the past and put our projections in motion. Focusing on our projects list we learn what we want our future to be. We want to spend more time with our family, we don’t want work to be overwhelming, and we want to lose weight. The projection list is a your life progressing.

Combining reflections and projections is a new way to look at the people we are instead of making a resolution we won’t keep. The real goal of this exercise is to review lessons of the past and put in the motion our decisions to project a good attitude toward life in the future. And spring is as good a time as any to adopt a new attitude.

Copyright ©2006 Sure Woman.com

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