A new approach to new year's resolutions

I always find this time of year a bit weird. You've made your resolutions and promised to be yourself only better. Then, if you're anything like me, you wait to see how quickly you'll fail.

But rather than setting yourself up for disappointment with unattainable goals, a better tactic may be to reflect on last year and think about the things you could have done differently.

The Salon Doctor, David Drew, has got a really simple and effective method for doing this:

• Divide a piece of paper into four sections and mark them as follows:
  
  Top left - Successful experiences (2011)
  
  Top right - Unsuccessful experiences (2011)
  
  Bottom left - Lessons learned (2011)
  
  Bottom right - Goals 2012 
• Fill in each of the first two sections in as much detail as you can. 
• Now move on to quadrant three. Be rational about this; you might want to talk it through with people and you really need to look at what you have learned from the top two sections and what habits you can change to make sure you have more things in the first quadrant and less in the second one next year.
• The last quadrant is the exciting one. List everything you would like to achieve in the next twelve months. Now think about how you can apply your lessons learned to make this happen. If you have a team, speak to them and work together to come up with things that you can aim to have in your successful experiences in 2013.   

Try it and let me know how you get on.