Roll up the Holly, and toss out the tree. Not to mention that still unwrapped fruitcake sitting on the dining room table that is now stiff as a brick. Xmas is over as is the previous year and for many, ne’er a moment too soon.

It’s time to pop those Champagne corks filled with ambitious wishes and plant those New Year’s kisses exploding with fireworks. Fireworks themselves explode in full color at the countdown to ten as the clock chimes midnight.

2013 is gone and 2014 has arrived. So put it all behind you. Sequester it to the past.

We’ve already crumpled Santa’s List and we’re ready to pen a new one—that infamous Resolution List. Auld Lang Syne never sounded so good as this year and this time…..it’s gonna be different. But is it?

Looking back on the year as we try to make those resolutions, we count our blessing and our curses, our successes and our failures, and more oft than not the latter outnumbers the former. Too often those resolutions come undone before Valentine’s Day rolls around as we fall into the same patterns, face the same issues, make the same choices and mistakes. I know that I do.

Why is this we wonder. The answer is simple: Probably because we most likely write the same list year after year after year. It’s that old comfort zone of repetitions rearing its ugly head. Lose weight. Get that promotion at work or quit your current job and find a new one. Exercise and even join a gym…..it’s endless. Then when we fail to check the majority of those resolutions off our lists we fall into despair of facing the fact that looks like the New Year is just more of the same old one.

But what if we wrote a new list?

What if we wrote a different one, one we’ve never tried before? Could that change our usually traveled path?  If for no other reason than the one that we are embarking upon is truly new.

This week’s LOI quote of the week features the words of Edith Lovejoy Pierce. The quote resonated so deeply with me that it inspired this week’s, blog, which is 2013’s final blog. It reads as such: “We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”

So this New Year’s Day, I plan on opening that yet unwrit book. I plan on starting anew with not only a fresh and blank page but a new chapter for what hopefully will craft the way for not just the new year but the for the rest of my life . One filled with more blessings than disappointments, one filled with more joy than sorrow.

As such, I decided to chuck the Resolution List and write a contract instead. I call it the “Promise Yourself” contract.

And I intend to cement its legitimacy with my signature to ensure I’ll follow through and hold myself accountable. My Promise List is quite simple and one even a child could do. It reads but one request—Be fully present in the moment you are currently engaged in for that is perhaps the only moment you have left to live. So don’t waste it…treasure it to its fullest and most of all try to be a blessing in this world, one that leaves it and others better off than before.

That’s it. That’s my first line on the blank page in a new chapter that celebrates the advent of a new year. What’s yours?