Every year around this time my mind wanders to a book that someone recommended to me some years ago on how to handle a new year. Your Best Year Yet, by Jinny Ditzler is subtitled 'A proven method for making the next 12 months your most successful ever,' and it takes you through an exhaustive process which helps you to lay aside last year, having drawn every useful thing you can from it, and look forward to the next. An early task that she sets the reader is to work out the paradigms by which you live, and how they limit you. A paradigm is defined as: 'A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality'. These beliefs about ourselves or t

A number of years ago, shortly before Christmas, I remember talking to my sister on the phone. 'I've bought myself a camera,' she said with some glee, 'a really nice one.' 'Oh,' says I, thinking of my frantic schedule of buying presents for other people, 'that's nice.' I must have done a poor job of concealing my slightly censorious surprise because she went on to explain that she always bought herself a Christmas present. 'It means that even if all the ones I'm given are disappointing, I can be sure of getting at least one really nice one!' What a fabulous idea, I thought, could be applied more widely, indeed much more widely! I was reminded of that story by a woman I met rece