Yes, it’s 2015…and my ‘Happy New Year’ post is a bit, well, late…so sorry about that. Rest assured that although late by some 12 days, it’s a heartfelt Happy New Year!

The New Year, I think, is an interesting time. I’m not talking about New Year’s Eve when people seem to seize the opportunity to drink their body weight in alcohol and make a complete fools of themselves, I’m talking about the hopes and ‘resolutions’ that people make for the New Year. I’ve actually given this a lot of thought recently, not just as the clock struck 12 on 31st December, but in the following weeks too. I was chatting to my niece about New Year’s Resolutions at the weekend. She’s 10, but actually speaks quite a bit of sense (not all the time, just in case she’s reading this!). Her resolution was to ‘be more generally awesome’, and I have to say I kind of like that. An all encompassing ‘be a better version of you’ seemed rather good and uncomplicated. I didn’t follow up with the next question, that I’d ask any friend or even client, which is ‘and how are you going to do that then?’. See, that’s the interesting bit of the puzzle, isn’t it. The how. And, another interesting point, what stops us from ‘being more generally awesome’ on any other day of the year? Is it the thought that we can’t, or the thought that we might not, or the memories of previous things that stop us from just kicking on? New Year is a good excuse to have a vision, a plan, not just for ourselves but actually for our businesses too. But so is the start of any other day of the year. It’s a new day as much as the 1st January is a new year, isn’t it?

So, now for the how. How are you going to achieve your resolution. Let’s just take the ‘being more generally awesome’ example…because, let’s be honest, it’s a pretty great resolution to have. How can you be more awesome? How can your business be more awesome? And what does that mean to you? Would being more awesome involve stressing less? Getting more done in day? Having a plan? Being less tied to the desk and more free to enjoy your life? Is it getting the work/life balance fixed? For your business is it getting more people to know about you? Is it having a plan for your social media? Is it going to more events? Is it selling more product? When you’ve narrowed down what you want to achieve, it’s easier to pull out the threads and see how you can achieve this. If you need help, in whatever aspect of your life or business, whether this is PR support or even how to make your iPhone receive emails when you’re out and about or how to manage your stress levels, then crack on and do it. We all need a little help sometimes. It might be that a Youtube tutorial fixes it. It might be that you need to employ the help of an expert or consultant in some field. It might mean that you have to change habits and form new ones…and that takes some doing.

So, here’s to a New Year where we can all be more ‘generally awesome’…