This time of year is always a time for reflection and an opportunity to adjust your mindset for the upcoming year. Resolutions are soooo last year (and generally make you feel bad if you fall short). Resolutions are more about “fixing” your perceived failures and not about building a better life. Instead, I’m calling this a…shift in focus, and I’ll be concentrating on habits and mindsets that make me feel better in all aspects of my life.

Recently, the whole Missoula Bookkeeper team sat down to talk about our own successes and failures for the podcast. As we were talking beforehand, we all came up with a dump truck of things we felt we could have done better and projects we didn’t complete. Budgets not met, pounds not lost, deadlines long passed without payoff…and then something interesting happened.

While trying to organize a party earlier this year, I had a strange realization.

Geographically speaking, I have no friends.

It’s not often that I toot my own horn, but here goes: I made a shift in my personal life and won pretty big.

I had considered myself to be a reasonably healthy eater. I have my splurges, but for the most part I was conscious about making “good” choices most of the time. To some extent, I was right but here’s the thing: