With the beginning of a new year, are you happy with your life the way it is now? You just set new goals and resolutions for 2003 but are you satisfied with where you are now?

This is a serious question that you need to ask yourself. You can't get to where you're going if you don't know where you've been. You need to appreciate what you have now in order to be able to receive more.

You want more money to flow into your life but are you grateful for what you have now? True it may not be as much as you would like to have but doesn't it pay the bills now? And if not all of the bills, doesn't that money help in some way?

Instead of looking at the negative aspects of life - turn them around and find the positive part. Just like a battery, everything in life has a positive and a negative side.

Your outlook on a potentially negative situation can alter your future. By focusing on the negative parts, say you have an older car in need of minor repairs, you're causing more negativity to fall into play. Like attracts like. So the more you focus on the bad things - your car isn't running perfectly - the more bad things are going to happen.

The flip side of that is if you choose to focus on the good things, you attract more goodness into your life. If you acknowledge the fact that you have a car and even though it doesn't run in perfect condition anymore - it does get you where you need to go everyday. Being grateful for what you have and showing it opens the doors for new possibilities.

You're unhappy with the way you're body is shaped. You want to change the way you look You want a little less here and a little more there. Have you stopped to thank your body for the thousands of daily miracles it provides to keep you going on a daily basis? The human body is a miracle and yet we complain day in and day out about what we don't like about it. But thanking your body for what it does for you is very beneficial.

Stressing over your body image only causes more stress - not a new look. You might get into the gym for a week or two but after that it's back to the same routine. But appreciating and admiring your body for what it is now will lead you to take steps to improve on it. And these improvements won't be lead by your ego but your heart instead, so these will be permanent improvements in your lifestyle and body.

Once you begin to love your body a chain reaction starts - you begin to love your body, then you love your self and then you start doing things that benefit your self and your body by exercising more and eating healthier foods.

So it all depends on how you look at things. There's a negative and a positive side to every situation. As the new year begins, ask yourself which side do you want to focus on in your life situations.