Happy New Year - One Day at a Time

Ah, the New Year. It's that arbitrarily selected day on the calendar when we all feel like we are getting a fresh start. A time when we can put the past behind us and begin anew, hoping to avoid the mistakes of the previous 12 months by resolving to do better. But the problem with New Year's resolutions is that they require us to change our behaviors in order to accomplish those things we have resolved to accomplish. And researchers tell us that up to 90 percent of the resolutions we make on New Year's Day have been abandoned before the end of January.

What if every day was New Year's Day? What if, every time we wake up in the morning, we can have the sensation of a new beginning that the new day brings that encourages us to learn from the previous day's mistakes, put them behind us and then resolve not to repeat them just for the day ahead?

As a poker player, most of the serious mistakes I have seen made by players (and at times have made, myself) occur when a player who has been losing tries to "get even". This impulse will cause a player to make unprofitable decisions, usually resulting in increasing his losses and resulting in still poorer play in later hands. One of the world's best poker players once provided me with a valuable suggestion to avoid falling victim to this downward spiral. He said, "Remember, you are even at the beginning of each hand that is dealt. Every hand is a new game, and what happened before that is history."

The same can be said in every area of my life, whether professional, personal or financial. Although there certainly are consequences that must be faced and endured as a result of my mistakes, those consequences and the mistakes of the past that led to them do not have to negatively affect the way in which I conduct myself today.

If I have a New Year's resolution to make, it is that I resolve to treat every new day as if it is New Year's Day. I will try to learn from my past mistakes, and more importantly, I will try to remember that if I continue to do what I always have done, I will get what I always have gotten. And if I want to achieve a different result (whether it's losing weight, acquiring more wealth, becoming a better person, etc.), I cannot succeed unless I do something different. With the beginning of each day, I have a chance to try something new in order to achieve what I want to achieve.

With that in mind, I wish all of you a very happy and prosperous New Year, and more to the point, have a Happy New Day!