New Years Day is around the corner and the inevitable question looms: what are your new year’s resolutions for 2008? These suggestions, accommodated by some online offerings, are a helpful way to incorporate changes into your daily lifestyle to make a great 2008.

Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions

1. Stay in Touch with Friends and Family

Are you feeling guilty because your mailbox was full of holiday greeting cards from friends and family and you only had time to send them to a small smattering of relatives, including your grandmother and your favorite aunt? Get the year off to a good start by beginning a new tradition of sending New Year e-cards. Everyone will be happy to get some post-Christmas cheering up and a fun update on you and your family.

2. Spend More Time with Friends

Spend less of your week doing time-consuming, tedious errands; instead, take some time this year to relieve yourself of life’s hustle-bustle. Invite your friends or co-workers to join you for a lunchtime walk, a yoga class after work, or a girls’ night out by sending an online invitation from http://americangreetings.com. Resolutions are meant to be good for you and hopefully enjoyable, so what could be more fun than spending less time in supermarket lines and more time laughing with friends?

3. Reduce Stress

Do you find yourself overwhelmed with family correspondence and constantly unable to keep up? Start small by putting all of your family members’ (and your in-laws’ too) birthdays and anniversaries into a secure, online reminder service, such as the one available from American Greetings. They’ll even notify you when it’s time to send e-card! Score some extra points and surprise your sister-in-law with a thoughtful card after forgetting for the last five years. Shock your mother and send a card before her actual birthday arrives.

4. Organize the Address Book

Did you have trouble getting Christmas cards out this year because of your messy address book? Was the last time you updated your address book when you got married 10 years ago? Streamline your outdated efforts by keeping all of your family and friends’ information logged in a simple and secure online address book, so sending holiday cards will be as painless as it has ever been. You can conveniently access your address books at work or at home, allowing you to update your files whenever you get an opportunity.

5. Enjoy Life More

Bring more balance to your life by simplifying your daily schedule and prioritizing what you enjoy most. Take up a new hobby: try a creative project. American Greetings has a wide variety of projects that allow you to utilize your creative juices, from making your own business cards to personalizing your own stationary and more. Express your inner art student and impress your friends with your latest artistic creation.

6. Lend a Hand

Step outside of yourself and give some of your time to help those around you. By committing to a cause that is in line with your core values, you will be more likely to stay involved and feel rewarded by the experience. Since many of us lack time, take a moment to send a breast cancer awareness card or other inspirational greeting to help lift someone’s spirit during a challenging time. You will feel better about yourself after helping make someone’s day brighter.

7. Manage Your Finances

Set a realistic plan to allow yourself greater financial freedom, alleviate financial headaches and start saving for future goals. Make an effort to limit unnecessary drains on your wallet by tracking your finances online. Begin logging all of your expenses for the month and see how quickly those delicious lattes add up. Free greeting cards are a great way to save money and allow you to dedicate the savings toward something fun. Hawaii anyone?

8. Learn to Cook & Dine in More Often

In tandem with number 7, start spending less money on dining out. Pledge to dine in more or find a cooking class to satisfy your unending cravings for ethnic cuisines. Get new recipes emailed to you and experiment cooking new dishes in the comfort of your own kitchen. For an added touch of you, print your favorites on personalized recipe cards.

9. Make Memories

Do you always complain that you don’t have any recent pictures of you and your college buddies? Has another office get-together come and gone without any proof that you were there? Take out the old memory box and compile some old pictures. Create a printable ecard and complete it by inserting a favorite photo to commemorate the good old times and send to a friend for that special occasion. Or, if remembering your camera is the problem, buy an inexpensive disposable camera to leave in your car or purse, so you will have it with you wherever you go. Print the pictures on CD so next year you can send a personalized photo Christmas card.

10. Reduce Your Vices

In a perfect world, there would be no battle against biting your nails, eating unhealthy food, drinking too much caffeine and a myriad of other terrible habits. Experts say that when you feels the urge to engage the in bad habit, try to busy yourself with another activity. Instead of hitting the office coffee pot again, try sending an e-card when you have an urge and will also help you achieve number 1 by keeping in touch with friends and family.

I recently had the pleasure of seeing the movie, “50 First Dates” starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. (Note: this article contains spoilers for the movie. If you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want me ruining the surprise, you might want to put this article aside until after you’ve seen it.)

The main character, “Lucy” (Barrymore) has virtually no short-term memory due to a car accident. She remembers everything up until the point of the accident, but retains no new memories of anything that has happened since. When she goes to sleep at night, she forgets everything that happened that day, and awakens thinking it’s the day before the accident happened.

I’m sure you can imagine the challenges of such a condition! Anyone she meets, she forgets. Holding a job is nearly impossible since she can’t remember the previous day’s events. Relationships present another challenge. When Henry (Sandler) meets Lucy, there is instant attraction between them, but each day she forgets she met him the day before. It seems impossible to have a long-term relationship with Lucy, since she can’t even remember him! Finally, Henry gets the bright idea to make a video that she can watch each morning, detailing her life since the accident and her budding romance with him. Lucy also begins to keep a written journal, so she can skim through the previous entries and read about her life from her own perspective.

Though the situation is difficult to say the least, this movie contains a beautiful metaphor for new beginnings. How much baggage do we bring to each new day in our own lives? How many grudges do we hold? How many disappointments do we cling to, and let them color today?

Though we can’t fully forget like Lucy, we can certainly make a decision to wipe the slate clean each morning and start over again! It is often our own refusal to let go and move on that causes the most pain. Each day can be a new beginning if we choose to make it so. Each night before bed we can choose what we want to keep and what we want to release. We can become someone new, purely by the power of our thoughts and intentions. The toughest part is deciding exactly who we want to become, and having the courage to see it through!

I am currently doing this in my own life. I’m pulling out the old, dust-caked parts of myself that I deemed unacceptable years ago, and giving them another look. And I’m discovering they aren’t so bad. 😉 What about you? Are you ready for a new beginning? Are you afraid of starting over? There really isn’t anything to fear but fear itself. Once you actually begin the process, it becomes wildly exciting!

Maybe you’re happy with yourself already. If so, that’s wonderful! No need to fix it if it ain’t broken. But if you’re living in a vacuum of dissatisfaction and boredom, it might be time to write the next chapter of your life. Or even a whole new book. You are the author. What do you want the storyline of your life to say?

So it is with duty. The idea of duty varies much among different nations. In one country, if a man does not do certain things, people will say he has acted wrongly; while if he does those very things in another country, people will say that he did not act rightly — and yet we know that there must be some universal idea of duty. In the same way, one class of society thinks that certain things are among its duty, while another class thinks quite the opposite and would be horrified if it had to do those things.

Two ways are left open to us — the way of the ignorant, who think that there is only one way to truth and that all the rest are wrong, and the way of the wise, who admit that, according to our mental constitution or the different planes of existence in which we are,duty and morality may vary. The important thing is to know that there are gradations of duty and of morality — that the duty of one state of life,in one set of circumstances, will not and cannot be that of another.

To illustrate: All great teachers have taught, “Resist not evil,” that non – resistance is the highest moral ideal. We all know that, if a certain number of us attempted to put that maxim fully into practice, the whole social fabric would fall to pieces, the wicked would take possession of our properties and our lives, and would do whatever they like with us. Even if only one day of such non – resistance were practised, it would lead to disaster. Yet, intuitively, in our heart of hearts we feel the truth of the teaching “Resist not evil.” This seems to us to be the highest ideal; yet to teach this doctrine only would be equivalent to condemning a vast portion of mankind.

Not only so, it would be making men feel that they were always doing wrong, and cause in them scruples of conscience in all their actions; it would weaken them, and that constant self – disapproval would breed more vice than any other weakness would. To the man who has begun to hate himself the gate to degeneration has already opened; and the same is true of a nation.

To get more information visit : http://www.spiritual-simplicity.com