In January, when most people's focus turns to starting the new year, I'm finishing off the old one, trying to catch up with everything that's happened from Thanksgiving on—like sewing buttons back on clothes, breaking down the Christmas wrapping station, and going through the piles of nonessential mail. I love to read, and I have freelanced at one time or another for just about every different type of publication that arrives in my mailbox—newpapers and newsletters, catalogues, magazines, nonprofit missives, annual reports, academic magazines—so reading these is also a professional undertaking. At the moment, the stack is REALLY high, so yesterday, I began to tackle it.

About an hour in, I opened the October O magazine (okay, clearly the schedule started to go awry before Thanksgiving but I had actually read half of this magazine; I just hadn't made it through to the end). This issue featured Breakthroughs, a topic that works well for January, too, so I figured my timing on this one was just fine. What I soon discovered is Number One on the list of how to achieve a Breakthrough, to get by that dreaming stage of a project or goal and start to make it happen, is to go public. Tell people what you are going to do, like the woman who decided to run a marathon in every state that year, and not only told all her family and friends, but started a blog. This technique, of EVERYONE knowing what you are thinking of doing, is supposed to motivate you to follow through, overcome your fears, get off your butt, conquer whatever is holding you back.

This tip immediately converged in my mind with the article I'd perused early in the hour in the Erickson Living Tribune, a senior community newspaper I receive courtesy of one quick visit to the community years ago with my mother. This article was about ANXIETY, offering up symptoms of General Anxiety Disorder, or GAD. Here they are: heart palpitations, upset stomach, difficulty sleeping. I have them all. I know I can be plenty anxious, so the fact that I could have GAD wasn't a big surprise, although one has to admit that giving anything a name that includes Disorder certainly raises the bar. The article also said the best treatment is regular exercise, also part of my daily routine, so perhaps I can continue to keep this newly-diagnosed condition under control.

What I immediately knew for sure was that broadcasting what I'm thinking about accomplishing in 2012 far and wide so that everyone I know, and anyone I don't know who cares, could witness my progress, or lack there of, was not my path to a breakthrough, but to a full-blown crisis-level case of GAD.

Years ago, a fellow mother/writer and I wrote a proposal for a common sense guide to parenting. This project was the result of all the years the two of us spent raising young children, reading each expert who had the absolute way to raise children, in contradiction to the absolute ways espoused by all the other experts. At the core of the book was that once you enter into parenting with consciousness and positive intent, we are best off trusting our common sense and our gut on what works best for us, and our families, in parenting—and in life, I believe. (The proposal garnered an agent and a lot of interest and may still become a book some day...) This is not to say I don't read self-help experts and articles. I do, all the time. I write them, too. But I'm learning to read with a filter. What's right for you might not be right for me, and vice versa.

I had a Breakthrough in 2011—I made a long-time dream a reality—and it wasn't by broadcasting my ideas before I started. I achieved this breakthrough by engaging in the project with consciousness, positive intent, energy, and a strong belief that this was the path for me—because my gut, or really, my heart, kept telling me so. And that's what's on my mind for 2012 that I am talking about, listening to your heart. Happy New Year.