Happy New Year to you and your loved ones from everyone here at Modern Dog! I hope that 2014 brings you much happiness, prosperity and growth.

If you haven’t yet declared your New Year’s resolutions, it’s never too late. Personally, I’m starting with my usual January de-cluttering resolution. As many of us can attest, it's very easy to accumulate stuff that you intend to deal with later and after a while, you don't even see it. Upon standing back and forcing myself to take a realistic look at the stacks of papers, boxes and "stuff" piled up in my office I realized that my build-up of clutter was breaking one of the most basic laws of Feng Shui, i.e., clutter blocks the flow of auspicious energy and in basic terms, if energy gets stuck, nothing new can come in.  So, I’m clearing out the old to welcome in the new…  getting rid of junk, sorting through piles of paper, recycling and generally clearing and beautifying my work space. I always feel better after, more organized and ready to dig into some new projects. 

For those more elusive dreams or goals why not try affirmations to make them become reality? To start, you will need to create a deliberate intent. For instance, if you’d like to get more fit, your deliberate intent might be to go to the gym three days a week to work out. Then, rather than saying you’re going to go to the gym three days a week, you say, “I go to the gym three days a week to work out and stay fit”,i.e., put it in present tense. Using this logic, you can train your mind to accept a yet-to-manifest outcome as being true, at which point your subconscious mind will begin to accept your positive statement as reality and start transforming your attitude, behaviour, and actions to align with your affirmation. Over time, you will see results.

A theme for many of us involves money (i.e., having more/enough of it). Oftentimes our beliefs about money cause us to never realize financial abundance. I’m sure most of us have heard “money is the root of all evil; money isn’t everything; money doesn’t grow on trees; if I get rich I’ll lose my current friends…” so creating a successful affirmation will oftentimes require first looking inward to understand just how you think about money (or relationships, body image… ). You can thereby create an affirmation to assist you in releasing those limiting beliefs and start welcoming abundance (or health, balance, happiness.. ) into your life. Affirmations have really helped me achieve my own goals and I encourage you to give them a try. A few years back I blogged about this topic, so if you’d like to learn more as well as find some useful books on the subject, please visit: http://moderndogmagazine.com/affirmations-secret-realizing-your-dreams#s…

Good luck with your goals and resolutions!

Connie