"This is your year! This is the year when you can take positive control of your mind, make peace with your past, and heal that amazing heart of yours more deeply than ever...

After spending a beautiful week celebrating with friends and loved ones and sharing our New Year's dreams, goals, and plans, I became acutely aware of how we often breed discontentment by wanting this, wishing for that, and desiring things to be different than they are. Although we're conditioned to believe that our checklist of desires is absolutely necessary in order to get what we want, we're often generating dissatisfaction and regret by focusing on what's missing rather than acknowledging and appreciating what we already have.

How many years have you been wishing and wanting your body, your relationships, your career, your future, or your life to be different? How many precious moments would you say you threw away last year wanting something to be different than it was? I must admit, I threw away a few too many myself.

But, my friends, discontentment is a trap that you can escape by seeing it for exactly what it is: a primary addiction and dis-ease of the ego. Here are just a few of the warning signs to help you to identify when you're in its grips:

-One of your relatives or friends calls you on the phone and, even though there were ten things that went great that day, you tell them about the one thing that went wrong.

-You're beating yourself up for not having what you want or not getting where you thought you should be at this point.

-Something opens up for you or comes your way, but it's not enough.

-In order to create what you want, you find yourself racing around, trying to figure things out, manipulating, controlling, scheming, and grasping for any tool or technique that will MAKE IT HAPPEN.

-Your attention is on the past.

-You're no longer at ease and in the flow.

Are you ready to step off the ego's treadmill where the more you want things to be different, the more they remain the same?

The key to freedom is satisfaction. Think of a time when you've felt at ease, peaceful, and "just fine". When accompanied by genuine and heartfelt gratitude, appreciation, and acceptance of what is, satisfaction is an essential key to encoding your consciousness with contentment.

It's a profound paradox, but when you honestly acknowledge and accept that this may be as good as it's going to get, unexpected miracles can occur for you. In those moments when you're with God, you have everything. And beyond any attempts to MAKE things happen, things just open up.

My prayer for you as you start this brand new year is that you choose God's will rather than your own will (more on this next week) and that you are filled with the satisfaction, fulfillment, and contentment that are the natural state of your divine self - right here and right now.

Just imagine what will be possible for you from this state of consciousness. It's not that you won't have desires and go after them this year, but you can do it from outside the ego's never-enough paradigm. You won't be ruining this moment for one that may never come. And this momentous internal shift will result in external shifts (and manifestations) that will make your old list of wants pale in comparison!

Take Action Now!

To nurture the mental and emotional state of contentment, ask yourself the following questions each morning for the next 28 days:

What would I need to do today to feel content with my life?

Who would I be?

How would I act?

What boundaries would I set?

What thoughts would I think?"

-- Debbie Ford