Resolutions such as losing weight, quitting something, or exercising more are common resolutions that are made each New Year. These resolutions are for the most part hollow, and generally groundless.

New Years resolutions are rarely followed over the whole year. The first days and weeks resolutions are fresh and part each days focus. As weeks three, four and beyond arrive, resolutions that were made so firmly, start sliding down the what is important today scale.

Should any of these resolutions really have been be made? Are any of these resolutions really important in life? Are those resolutions only space fillers or place holders, forgotten by the end of the month? Most importantly, do resolutions make anyone feel good way inside where it counts?

Perhaps it is time to make real choices that mean something, and will potentially make a real difference each and every day of the next year, and every year after. I suggest my rule of three to help make real resolutions. This rule of three creates a timeline of the year. Use the rule of three to split the year into: this week, this month, and this year.

Instead of making resolutions, add value to your life this year and create intentions. An intention is to have a course of action, resolution is simply finding a solution but not acting on it. When creating your intentions, make intentions having a path making real changes in your life.

Pretend it is possible this next year may be the last year you will be alive. If the idea of this next year being your last year alive is scary, think about people you knew or heard of, who thought they would be here this year, making yet another list of resolutions to be forgotten after a few weeks. Being alive means accepting we may be one of those people that someone alive pauses to think about this time next year.

Now that resolutions are out and intention is in, it is time to take the next step. Look at your next week, starting tomorrow, the day after, or whatever day you pick as the start of your week. What can you do to make a real difference in your life that will make you feel and those around you feel good? What will you intend for the next month that can not be done in a week? What will you intend for the remainder of what may be your last year that you can not do in a day or a month? What changes can you bring into your life that will actually mean something.

Here is my New Years rule of three. What are you going to intend for the next week? What are you going to intend for the next month? What are you going to intend for the next year? Thinking in this way is acknowledging our mortality, and focusing our intentions in manageable periods. Combined in this manner intention becomes a powerful reality, and a life tool everyone can use.

Each of our lives are unique, as are our life situations. Below are some suggestions of what you may wish to intend in your life. Intention will improve your life, and the lives of all who will enter and leave your life next week, month, and year. Read these thoughts over and change them for use in your life or use them as starting points for totally new intents in your life.

Resolutions are generally weak and lead to yet another failure on the list of many. Thought out meaningful intentions are powerful life changing tools which make you grateful to be finally alive.

Here are some thoughts to help create intention for your personal use:  Tell a parent, sibling, or friend what you really want to tell them; Find out peoples names who are peripheral in your life, and tell them how they change your life for the better by doing what they do; Be grateful and respectful to the once living things that are now your food; Learn about a people or culture you know nothing about; Learn more about your spiritual self.

Learn more about your religion and why you believe what you do; Read autobiographies, listen to audio books, or watch movies about people you admire; Learn another persons culture and beliefs; Create quiet time to be outside; Buy, plant, and care for a plant(s); Plant or place a potted flower in a needy public place and take care of it; Find someone you can help each _; Attend a church you have never been to; Eat a meal of food you have never eaten; Talk to strangers, strangers have something important to tell you about your life right now, ask them what it is. Look for ways to make a difference in someone’s life.

Here is an easy to remember thought: ‘To be resolute is to be unwavering, to intend is to have action and purpose. I create my life with intent.’

I read a book put out by the founder of Scientology a number of years ago, and I have to admit, at the time it did not make a lot of sense and appeared to be a lot of smoke and mirrors. That being said, the belief system was already established, and my opinion of it accounts for little, as it still does.

Perhaps if I reread the book now, I am sure I would have a different viewpoint of Scientology. As I have learned over the years, the world is not always what it seems once you scratch the surface and actually look at what is going on, instead of ‘knowing’ what is going on in the world. Things are quite a bit different when one takes the time to observe what they see rather than simply placing what they think they saw into what they believe to be true.

Back to Scientology, I fail to see why there are so many strong feelings about this belief system? I thought maybe it was the name, Scientology, which I do not think you can find many people who would say Scientology sounds religious. So the word, Scientology does not sound very religious in nature so people could be upset about someone believing in something that does not sound religious. People have attacked other people both verbally and physically over a lot less.

Scientology sounds really foreign, way beyond some of those vague eastern religions. I think those ‘vague’ eastern religions are more tolerated because they have been around for a while, and were not invented within the last fifty years or so. This makes them more established, and possibly more acceptable because someone did not just invent them.

In defense of Scientology itself, a belief system sometimes takes on a life of its own. We grow up and are told what to believe and how to perform whatever rituals come with that belief system. When we grow older and realize there are other ways of perceiving in respect to a belief system other than what we were taught. If we are open to possibility it becomes obvious that most other belief systems have the same end goal in mind that our belief system does. Other belief systems simply they just go about arriving at the same end differently. This usually happens because they come from a culture different from ours and they have a different way of viewing the world.

Then there is the question of the actor himself. We determined a long time ago that people have the right to believe as they deem proper for themselves. That does not mean that someone can only have a belief system that meets within the narrow scope of approval of another person’s idea of what is a proper belief system.

People are free to believe what they want as long as it does no harm to others. If Scientology is a person’s belief system, we have no right, and we should have no public opinion on whether it meets our own standards or not. That is not something we as individuals have the right to decide for other people. As the popular saying goes, or at least as well as I remember it, “I don’t have to agree with your beliefs, but I will defend them to te death.

The work was okay, it was sort of boring, but it paid better than most jobs I could get so I stayed with it for those two years. The manager of the grocery store though never really seemed to like me. I never knew why, perhaps my personality was a little to colorful for a grocery store worker.

As I had graduated, I decided that as I was going to school full time, and working almost full time, I could now take on a second job. It would double up my money in a few months, and then it was college, so it seemed like a good idea. I went looking for a second job. I was up front with my boss about it, and of course he was not too pleased. He told me that was fine, but my first obligation was to the job I currently had.

I found a job as a dishwasher on a local military base and it paid more than what I was making bagging groceries. It was sixteen hours, two days a week, on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I took the job, as there was no problem with the schedule I was on which was Monday through Friday, mornings and afternoons…. When I told my grocery store boss I found a job that did not interfere with my current schedule, and was only two days a week, I thought he would be okay with it.

How naive I was to think that it was not a problem. On the second week of working two jobs, I came in and checked my grocery store work schedule, only to discover that I was now working Saturday and Sunday days. I went to my boss, explained again I was saving money for college, and I could work any schedule during the week except Saturday and Sunday. Of course that was a problem for him. I mentioned again that I had already spoken to him before this second job, and thought I was clear about what I could work.

The boss turned it into an ultimatum, and told me if I was not here Saturday morning there would be problems. Me being me, I told him I would not be there Saturday morning and he should start looking for someone to work Saturday, and Sunday in my place. I needed money for college, and I thought he was being totally unfair. Of course that is exactly what he did. When I came in to work following the weekend, he gave me my paycheck and told me I was fired.

I thought that was the end of my college world, what would I do for money now as there were only a few months to make any before my school started. As luck would have it, they liked my work on the base, and once they heard my predicament they made it possible for me to work full time as a dishwasher food line helper!

After all these years, I never have understood what the problem was with my grocery store boss. It was possible that the boss knowing I was leaving at the end of summer decided to cut his losses and get a new kid hooked on money during the summer when the pressure of working and school was not there.

Or, it was possibly, he never liked me, and wanted me gone, but I never did anything bad enough to be fired. I always, and many future bosses agreed, I am a good person to have in their business, whatever business it was. At any rate, life goes on, though on days like today, I ponder what was the real reason he did what he did, being fairly sure he knew what the outcome would be.

Some people I have noticed never use their second chance. They are too timid, or too something to even use their first chance. It seems they miss out on so much in life. It has to be something they develop after their formal schooling is complete. No one is let out of school because they quit trying after failing the third grade, or any grade for that matter. We are forced to keep on trying until either someone feels sorry for us and passes us, or we finally learn those things we need to learn to go on the next grade.

What I am not to sure of is when and how we start not trying, or giving up before we have to. There are so many people around me who have have worn the same style of clothing all their adult life, have never taken a risk, or have refused to taste a food that their Mom didn’t feed them as babies. In short they have never taken a risk that they were not forced into and had no choice but to take.

What happened in the life of someone who just stops in their late teens and never tries anything new again? What could possibly have happened that was so terrible that they choose never to do anything different than what they do already. I can not imagine something so painful that people stop and if they can help it life never changes again.

I think that would be such a dull confining world, especially in the friends, and romance department. Friends are rarely forever as much as we would like them to be. Unfortunately life changes whether we like it too or not, and friends do too. We move, move on, take on new interests, get married, get divorced, the list goes on and on. Friends move, spouses wake up and decide the life they are living is not for them any longer, and they leave. For whatever reason these adverse to risk people go on without trying to change their situation.

The same problem I see happening daily with our career choices. It is a uncommon today to know someone that has worked the same job all their working career. Companies grow, grow old, are bought up or simply stop being. Changes in the way things are done make some jobs obsolete. Changes in peoples thinking make other jobs fade away. I remember when the wearing of furs was a sign of prosperity. Now it’s in very bad taste to walk down the street covered in some animal’s skin.

How do people who refuse to change, or try something new adapt? Is it a life stressor for them to have their schedule interrupted by something they had no control over? Are they okay with making changes in their life only if they are forced into it? Or perhaps they just omit from their day that portion of life that no longer exits? They simply go into a holding pattern of doing nothing in that time when they used to do something?

Very few of us really like change. For the most part we like our world to be comfortable and predictable. We enjoy our schedules, calendars, and routine. Then again when most of us have to change, we grit our teeth, steel our nerves and do what has to be done. Perhaps there is a benefit to the human race, always having a few people on each end of the spectrum, and most of us clumped in the middle. I just may not have noticed it yet.

I remember many times when I was out walking the streets of places I had never been to before, where one or more people have told me after the fact, they would never walk down those streets by themselves because they are just too dangerous. For myself, I went out in those areas with the thought that the people living there were just like me, and they were trying to do the best they could for their own lives using what they had to work with.

In all my years of wandering in places where the more cautious would not go, I only had a problem once, and I brought that on myself. I have walked into some of the slums of south Chicago, Gary, Los Angeles, Jerusalem, Minneapolis, Munich, and Seoul, and never had a problem, even though I had been lost more than once into areas where I clearly did not fit in

In south Chicago, there were two men at my departure point. One said to the other, twenty he doesn’t, and the other said okay. I thought nothing of it as I completed my one mile walk to a place where a cab could find me. When I returned the same two men were there, and one was giving the other money. I asked what the money was for. The man told me it was a bet on whether or not I would be murdered before I made it to a cab….

It is a perfect example of how people in the same neighborhood can have completely different expectations about how their life is, and they can both be correct. In almost any city in the country, in any neighborhood, life for the most part is how the individual perceives it. When we choose only to see gangs and violence, that is what we see. When we choose to see a drug riddled neighborhood, that is what we find.

On the other hand, if we expect to find good people trying their best to live a good life, that is what we will find. If we believe we are alone, we find loneliness, if we see the world as a friendly helpful place, we find goodness. Of course there are places that are exceptions, because the world that exists there has been in place so long, and the peoples minds so beaten down, that no other type of thought can penetrate the thinking of the people in that area. Short of a major life altering event, their perceptions and existence will never change.

Our minds operate like this for us in all our states, both conscious, unconscious, awake, and asleep. We are the creators of our world, and whatever we choose to think, our mind goes to work to start creating that world for us. It happens in a way we never notice, but it happens just the same.

We create our own world around us, therefore we can also change our world any time we wish. Rarely does something happen without our allowing it too or even anticipating it happening. As an extreme example, think about someone addicted to drugs.

At some point in time earlier in their life, they had to make a decision about their world. An offer of trying a hard drug appeared in their life and they had to decide if that was a life change they wanted or not. At some level they decided they wanted to go down that path. We need to be good stewards of our own life and ensure the life we envision is the life we want to live. If there is conflict between our vision and our life, we can change it.

Unlike the enemy Don Juan may have created, many of us are our own assassins. We rarely need anyone’s help to ruin our plans. We do it ourselves with some frequency. We meet someone special, we want a different job, any number of things that we start to plan out, and suddenly it all blows up without warning. Or does it? In Castaneda’s book, Don Juan said he would not be on the street to start with. What could Don Juan know that we do not?

Don Juan knew many things about human nature that most do not, and this was only one of them. Don Juan knew that many of us we get stuck in a rut we call our life. We claim we do not like where how we live, what we do, and talk about how we are going to change. Changing, and talking about changing are two completely different things. I think that is what Don Juan knew. Unless, as in Castaneda’s case where he really felt his very life was threatened, he would have normally taken no action to help himself.

I listened to a couple eating at a fast food place last week. They were poor, looking at their clothing which was worn, and frayed. The man was telling the woman that he was planning on going to Las Vegas, to gamble, and become rich. He went on to say that it would probably take him about a year and a half to get rich. He thought she could stay where she was until he returned. Of course when he returned things may have changed. She would probably be on Welfare. Possibly hooked up with another guy (his words). What would he do then? Would she be willing to leave the guy to be with him once he returned rich? Perhaps he would run into a women, and he would not want her any more – that also was possible (his words). With the conversation half finished, and bristling with possibilities, they left.

As crazy as that conversation sounds, some of us make plans like that all the time. We dream our plans, and never live our dream, because something falls apart. For that couple, I doubt he will ever find his way out of town, let alone to Las Vegas. Not because he was not capable, but because his plans are built on the same sand of everyones who’s plans blow up without reason. They are not really plans, they are simply a string of events tied together by hot air.

We all need dreams in our life. We also need good planning so we can have the best possible life. I think we need to keep the two somewhat separate so we can achieve our dreams, instead of dreaming about our achievements that have never come to pass. We are capable of so much more if we give our self a chance with real plans, and realistic dreams.

As an old dinner house cook once told me. Plan your work, work you plan, and clean up as you go. In the case of our lives, it would be: Plan your dream, work your plan, and repeat as you go. Happy dreaming!

I decided that at 2 o’clock if it was still drizzling, I would stay indoors and do something worthwhile inside. Just before the appointed time the drizzle stopped, synchronicity in action. Okay, I get to go spend a quiet hour outside, but no trash today, it’s too wet and muddy.

As I am walking around the path I noticed trash on the ground was worse than usual. Too bad, I thought to myself feeling smug, I did not bring a bag. As conspiracies go there was not one bag, but three bags laying along the path. Ranging in size of a small grocery bag, to a big forty gallon trash bag I felt a little trapped by the park. I ignored the first bag, also the second bag, but the third bag was too much. I resigned myself to picking up some soggy trash today, synchronicity in action.

There was also a junior high school class out for PE about the same time using the park. I imagine that at least a few of the kids are guilty of dropping candy wrappers, and other assorted things they suddenly did not want while walking home. They and their teachers had a first hand view of someone picking up trash who was not part of the city bed and breakfast program. I thought this was a good learning experience for them, to see little elves do not come out early in the morning and clean up their trash for them.

One thought I had while walking and picking  put everything in perspective. In accelerated learning it is not important that the learner be actively engaged for the lesson to have an impact on them. They only have to be present and quiet when the lesson is given. Studies have found that in this state of mind we are at our most receptive even though from an observational view it looks as if we have checked out.

So these kids, and their teachers were being shown a small lesson in civic responsibility. Nothing as dramatic as the motivational movie, Pass It On as the scale is much smaller, but the idea applies all the same.

That led me to me wondering about other areas of our civic life, and our programming here in the United States. Somehow we have developed into a nation who think there are people who wander around behind us straightening up the mess we leave behind.

We throw our trash out the window of our cars because we are done eating whatever it was covering. Some of us can even find reasons to justify our actions. Along city streets where trash is prevalent, we walk past it knowing it is not our job to pick any of the trash up. Yet if you are anything like me, you are the first to complain about how unsightly an area looks, ironic as that sounds.

Rather than rambling on farther today, I thought I would end with what I thought is an interesting link. Between the blog entry and comments there is some food for thought about civic and personal responsibility. Here is a blog entry from the founding developer of WordPress software on which my blog runs, and some replies. Hopefully you will find Mathew Mullenweg’s thoughts, and the replies interesting too. Someday civic responsibility may be a non-issue, but for now, your neighborhood needs your help.

There was small town somewhere below one of the great dams, levees, or next to a river. One day it started to rain, the dam was giving way, or the levee was overran. The town started to flood.

The first emergency response was the town sheriff who drove around the town, announcing on his loud speaker that the town was going to flood soon, and everyone needed to pack up and move to somewhere out of the flood zone. There was a man living in one of the houses, who was reading his paper at the time, and when he heard the PA announcement to evacuate, he thought to himself, “The Lord will provide.”

Of course the water came into the town, and soon was at the door of the man’s house. The National Guard had been called out by this time to both help the folks evacuate, and to protect the town. When a truck drove up to help the man gather his important belongings and leave his home, the man refused saying, “The Lord will provide.”

Shortly thereafter the water was in the house. The water was muddy, knee deep and rising quickly. The man took refuge in his belief, and moved his most important belongings to an upstairs room. He said to himself as muddy water filled the ground level rooms, “The Lord will provide.”

At this time a federal government agency arrived in town to help. A few men in a boat thought they saw movement in an upstairs window of a house. It was the man moving his now meager possessions to the roof. They motored over to the house and told the man they were there to take him to safety. The man refused, steadfast in his belief saying simply, “The Lord will provide.”

As the man sat on his roof the water was rising higher and moving faster. The man could feel the pull of the water on the frame of his house. It was starting to groan slightly from the pressure of the water. A helicopter news team was in the area, filming the flood, and spotted the man on the roof. They could not understand how the man was missed by the previous rescue teams. They stopped filming, and flew over the house were the man sat on the roof. One of the men holding on with one hand, hung out the door of the helicopter and reached out with his other hand to the man to take hold of. The man sat where he was and waved off the helicopter. He said to them and himself, “The Lord will provide.”

The house started to groan loudly and twist. The opposite corner was torn away from the house and floated away in the torrent. As the man watched in horror as his house was breaking apart, a tree which had been uprooted, hit the house and stilled for a few minutes before floating away with the current. With a mighty groan, the house shuddered one last time and broke apart. The man was thrown into the muddy flotsam filled water and drowned.

Suddenly he was standing before the throne of God, awestruck in what he saw before him. God looked down and asked the man why he was there? The man was not sure, but then realized he had drowned, and he became angry with God for letting him drown when his belief was so strong that nothing could shake it.

God looked at the man standing there and asked the man this question. “I sent the sheriff to your house, I sent the National Guard, I led two men in a boat to you. I made sure men in a helicopter saw you, and tried to rescue you. I sent you a tree to hang on to as your house was swept away so you would survive the flooding. What else did you expect me to provide?”

Matt at HeroWorkshop reminds me that a hero is not some mythical being, but heroes live and breathe sitting or standing right next to me. Too often we just do not see them for what they are. Unfortunately, many of us have been programmed to replace true heroes with movie stars, gangsters, or band members.

I was talking with a family member who is trying hard to make positive changes in people’s lives by giving of herself, and her time. She meets and speaks with people who are lost and deserted due to personal circumstance. She is in there doing what she can, showing them there can be a better future if they choose it. This is a noble undertaking. This is awesome stuff. What a great thing to do to, and a great way to help others!

A second family member is a Case Manager for a very specialized group of people. She works in their life removing obstacles for them, and helping with problems they can not manage on their own. I am sure most of the people she helps appreciate what she does for them.

To some people, her career, or life choice may sound pretty ho-hum. And my writing about it just some yada, yada, as I fill in another paragraph. From my viewpoint, she has become a true hero! When I think of all the people she must have helped over the years…wow! I sure am proud of her, and now very mindful of what she is doing for others, making their life a little better, and helping their life go forward, which sometimes is no easy task!

I am as lazy as many others in the hero department. I throw a few bucks into the Salvation Army bucket at Christmas, and slip a few dollars to a homeless person now and then. I also donate some of my income to a few formal organizations. But as far as using myself as a tool to directly help make the lives of others better? I would do a better job herding cats across the prairie.

Everyone who chooses to take on a role of service to others is someone to be admired. Anyone can look good, or say something witty in front of a camera for a few seconds. For a few hundred dollars we can all look a little like the rich and famous for a few hours. I say a real hero in comparison is someone who climbs out of bed everyday, go to a job, or calling that not many people could do at all, let alone be any good at, and does what they can to make lives of others better.

At the end of the day these modern day female heroes know they are making a real difference in the lives of people who really need their help. Too many of us coming into direct contact with someone who really could use our help, we normally look away and pretend we do not see them. What these woman do almost every day serves to remind me, how big of a difference one person makes when they choose to. I sure am proud of these two women, and what they are doing! I hope others are too, and they let them know about it also.

I hope when you think about someone you know who chooses to serve others, you think about how they make important changes in people’s lives. What they do is not a dream job, and is probably heartbreaking and thankless at times. Yet they still get out of bed and do it the next day. Maybe you are one of these folks? If you are doing a service for others, be very proud, for you are a hero too!

Once home, I found an email waiting for me from a family member I haven’t spoken with in a long while. It sure was a surprise and a special treat for me on the end of Thanksgiving weekend! The world is so spread out and vast in some  ways these days. We move, move again, and we lose touch with each other as we mold our lives, and our future. One day turns into a week, then it’s a year, and before we realize it, a long time has gone by. Perhaps that is one of the things that makes this time of year so special. We think about friends and family we have not seen or spoken with in a long time. We have those special memories from times long past, when our world was another shade of perfect.

Back at work, some of my friends asked how my blog was doing, and some probing questions around it, audience being one them. I talked about the subjects I find I enjoy writing about.  They offered some tongue in cheek suggestions for increasing readership. Among their suggestions is becoming more political and move out towards the edge, any edge, or both edges where people have strong feelings. They offered up many suggestions which include:

Pro Bush

Pro Clinton

Take an anti green stand

Global warming is a lie

Global warming is going to end our world

Support abortion

Support pro choice

Animal rights – either side

Support baby Seal hunting

Cheer for the whale hunt

Support fur clothing

Motivate people to support burning more coal for energy

Reducing emission controls

Gun control – either side

Pro War, anti War, more war

Suggest we all send money to the helicopter wolf hunt in Alaska

Cheer for China’s use of the U.S. and perhaps World market as a dumping ground for its use of lead and other contaminates in their exports, in a covert effort to dominate the world by poisoning our children with deadly toys

Support RAP and Gang Banging as the American way of life

The list went on of course, the more we talked about it. While I am grateful for their suggestions, and I have no doubt people would get worked up no matter what stance I took on any of those topics, it just is not somewhere I want to be. It took me years to understand that people have their opinions. They usually do not change their opinions for less than very compelling reasons. So if I went down any of those paths as blogging topics, I be forced to move from a place where I feel comfortable to an area where argument and controversy reign. I do not care to be the blogging version of a radio Shock Jock.

While my friends are being supportive of my efforts and want me to quickly move up the ranks in blogger-hood, I will stick topics that I feel are worth my time. I want to come home from work, and write about what I enjoy, and feel is important. I do not want a blog about  something that I may not only not enjoy, but find it gets in the way of my enjoyment of life.

This brings me to the final piece of what I am grateful for this week. I am grateful you take the time to read what I write. I hope you continue to find it worth your attention and more importantly your time. Further I hope somewhere along the line, you read something that helps you or someone you know. Thanks for reading!