Summary: Happy New Year Everyone!! I'm hoping you all rang in the New Year with some festive cheer! Of course, there may be some of you out there who brought it in a little less cheery. Yup, I spent New Years alone on the couch as my wife was asleep in our room and both kids - even the dog were out! With no one to kiss I practiced a little self love and kissed my hand (okay, it was a peck) and wished myself "Happy New Year!". We're a bunch of party animals, huh? With the new year brings new resolutions. I wrote about resolutions and how you might not want to have any back in 2013. However, in this podcast we're taking a bit of a different approach. The great news about this particular episode is that whether you have resolutions or not you're going to benefit greatly from what I'm about to share! In this episode I give a shout out to some new Facebook Friends so if you've recently joined us on Facebook you might want to see if your name was mentioned by listening! I also give some appreciation to Bernadette Logue of PinchMeLiving.com. Finally, I wanted to mention that I'm going to be on the Your Kick Ass Life Podcast this coming week. Andrea Owen and I discuss marriage and relationships. Specifically we talk about what seems to work and what doesn't! If you're in a relationship or even just wanting to get into one I encourage and invite you to join us! The link won't be live until January 9, 2014 but just in case you're reading this on or after that date, check it out! Andrea and I talked about Marriage - what works and what doesn't work... Listen to the podcast for much more but I've got some cliff notes below just in case you can't listen right now! Perhaps you can argue that the first thing on your mind when you wake up is NOTHING! Okay, so if you fall into that camp then consider that what I'm about to share with you should be the next two things...What I'm talking about is Gratitude and Practice. Let me explain... Our friend Brene Brown talks about gratitude and how it needs to be cultivated. True, gratitude isn't something you are born with. Rather it's a feeling, feeling grateful... There are many techniques for incorporating gratitude into your life. Some suggest making a list of 5 things before you go to bed. Others suggest using a smartphone app and jotting down something you're grateful for throughout the day. Gratitude is a very powerful source of energy and what better time than in the morning to harness that power, right? We all want more out of life but how often are we grateful or appreciate just having a life? Waking up every morning is the perfect time to thank God, the Universe, or whomever you want to thank for just having the opportunity to breathe another day. Every day is a good day because you get to live it! Simply being grateful for having another day in your life is motivation to do so much in your life. Have New Years Resolutions? Great! Starting your day off grateful to be in it will give you powerful energy to enable you to make those resolutions stick this time! It also give us a different perspective on the world around us. How many times have you woken up dreading going to work, school, or bussing the kids around? Compare this to waking up in full gratitude of just being alive. You can begin to appreciate how much more energy you'll have to bring to your day. In addition to gratitude I'm going to invite you to live your life with practice in mind. What do you get to practice? Living!! When you look at life as an opportunity to practice it changes everything! No more having to make the perfect dinner, build the perfect fence, write the perfect letter or make anything perfect for that matter. Did you mess up that New Years Resolution on the first day of 2014? Great!! Celebrate that because life is a practice. No, this doesn't mean you just run around blowing everything off because you're just practicing. Rather,
