Making small changes can have a big impact on your life

Countdown to New Year.... 12 days to go

By Neil Hobden

Christmas is less than a week away, so by now you’ll have your plans for the festivities in place. In all likelihood, you’ll have New Year’s Eve sorted too.

But have you planned for 2012?

New Year is about far more than having a knees-up into the early hours of January 1.
Whether or not you’re looking forward to Christmas and New Year; now is the time to look beyond the festive season and into the reality of the coming 12 months.

Does the thought of being on the cusp of a new year fill you with excitement – or dread?
If the latter, then it’s fairly obvious that something needs to change.

But however big the challenges or problems, you don’t necessarily have to make sweeping life changes. A few tweaks here and there can make a world of difference.

New Year is, of course, associated with making resolutions and many people fall into the trap of vowing to give this up and that up, with most failing to stick to their vows before the month of January is out.

There are two main reasons for this: firstly, New Year resolutions tend to be negative – they’re about censure and denial. Secondly, the enormity of a brand new year encourages people to try to change their lives dramatically.

The truth is that most change – both good and bad – comes about gradually. The most successful dieters, for example, lose weight little by little through adjusting their food habits and increasing the amount of physical activity they do. Crash dieters almost always put the weight back on – and more – as soon as the regime is over.

Similarly, marriages don’t usually fall apart overnight (although the damage wreaked by the discovery of one partner’s adultery can have an almost instant, catastrophic effect) but deteriorate over time.

If your relationship has been going downhill over the past year or more – perhaps as the result of the strain caused by the financial situation – it doesn’t mean it will continue to do so.

A new year could be the ideal time to start rebuilding your partnership, slowly, over the coming 12 months.

Rather than thinking “new year, new us”, resolve instead to take each day at a time, but with your attention on the positive, not the negative, aspects of your relationship.

If one of the problems has been that you don’t spend enough time together, try to build in just a couple of extra hours during the week that you’re in each other’s company, just the two of you.

If money is tight and likely to carry on being so, sit down with your partner and talk about how you can make small savings, such as planning a less expensive holiday (which might be more fun anyway).

In short, rather than try to iron out the problems by stopping this or giving up that, concentrate on the good things in your relationship and build on those.

And don’t expect miracles. A new year is a new dawn if you want it to be, but Rome, as they say, wasn’t built in a day.

• Neil Hobden is a partner with Benussi & Co