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Woohoo! The new year is here. I've never been big on resolutions because I was never really good about coming up with them. When I smoked, I said, "I'll quit smoking." I didn't do it because of a New Year's resolution -- I just did it in the middle of the year, with little fanfare. I felt a bit chubby, so I said, "I'll lose weight." Didn't happen because of a resolution; instead, a trip to the Caribbean inspired me to kick my tubby butt into high gear.

Basically, I never took resolutions seriously. I always thought the focus was on taking a negative aspect of my life and eliminating it. Smoke, quit. Fat, lose it. Messy, cut it out.

This year, though, I'm realizing that resolutions can be about introducing positive habits into your life. If you approach something by focusing on the negative, then it's not going to be that important. Who wants to focus on the bad stuff? Instead, this year, I'm going to focus on adding good things to my life, which is a completely different way of thinking and feels much more encouraging. Not only that, but I'm not picking "things" to introduce (like, let me introduce broccoli into my diet this year or let's introduce sit-ups). Rather, I'm going to focus on making lifestyle changes.

After having my daughter in June, I feel like the rest of 2007 was a learning phase where my husband and I got to educate ourselves and really decide what kind of parents we want to be and what kind of life we want for our family. This year is going to be the year to really act on those choices and develop our own lifestyle.

The lifestyle changes we're hoping to incorporate into our lives this year are: Be kinder, be greener, and be more conscious about purchases.

These may seem like simple, vague things to state as New Year's resolutions, but they are tangible and realistic for us. It's a process. Take, for instance, when someone says they want to lose 10 pounds by a certain date. If that date arrives and they've lost only seven, have they failed? Certainly not! In that time, they changed their way of living -- eating habits, fitness levels, etc. Positive life changes have taken place that can't be measured by a number. In the same way, our seemingly vague commitment for 2008 doesn't have to be measurable.

What good will you focus on this year?