By now everyone has given up on their New Year’s Resolutions and if not we all will within the next week or two – Guaranteed!

With no real motivation and accountability changing habits and behavior are virtually impossible. Allow me to offer an idea for you. Take on my suggestions for the New Year instead of making up your own.

Here are three winning moves for you in the New Year.

ONE:        Supportive Friends

TWO:       Positive Outlook

THREE:   Self Censorship 

Supportive Friends

Okay so you have known this person or a specific group of people for many years. The last few years you feel you have been growing and learning and this group of friends seems to be stuck in their own stuff. They are always questioning you about why you choose to do what you are doing? Each time you speak with them or meet with them or go out with them you find yourself depressed the next day.

Time to say good-bye! Either cut the cord or slowly wean yourself from this group of friends. They need to be replaced with people who are more supportive and positive toward you and what you are thinking about, learning and growing as an individual.

There are a few companies who follow this rule – the bottom fifteen percent of employees based upon certain performance measures are let go every single year.

Positive Outlook

When you begin each day with a positive outlook, a positive frame up of the day ahead, you will be in a better mood, a better state of energy and you will think more clearly. Bottom line you will perform more effectively and efficiently. A way to make this happen on a regular basis is to utilize positive affirmations.

Positive affirmations actually reprogram your patterns of thought. They change the way you feel and think about almost everything. Positive change happens naturally as you have replaced negative thinking with your new positive thoughts and statements.

Create a series of positively worded affirmations and have these either on your electronic device or utilize index cards so these are available to you each and everyday to read and state aloud especially first thing in the morning.

Self Censorship

You may be a TV or Cable TV person or subscribe to online feeds where each minute of the day you are bombarded with negative news stories or horrifying or sad incidents.

STOP IT! STOP IT NOW! You must be your own best censor. Either select a few defined minutes of each day to get your fill of these stories or stop listening to or reading these stories from this point forward. There is not one piece of positive energy flowing to you while you are absorbing this negative information in a multi-sensory environment.

These Three Winning Moves For You In The New Year will have an immediate and tremendous impact on your business life and your personal life. In fact, Psychologist John Gottman at the University of Washington, found that there is a method of self measurement, like a thermostat operating in healthy marriages that regulates the balance between positive and negative. He found that relationships run into serious troubles when the negative to positive ratio becomes quite imbalanced. Gottman found that the optimal ratio is five positive to one negative.

In summary, the point is we can change our habits, and we can focus on the positive aspects of life in everything we do. When we acquire new habits, our brains acquire “mirror neurons” and develop a positive perspective that can spread to other people like a virus. This is not about a bunch of ‘WooWoo’ stuff or ‘GoodyTwoShoes’, it is about being able to reprogram our brains!

Mitch Tublin is an advanced certified executive and personal coach who resides in Stamford, CT.