My Biggest New Year's Resolution for 2009, and How I Plan to Keep It

My biggest New Year's Resolution for 2009 is to read ten life-changing, inspirational books. After some of the things I have experienced over the past year, I need a serious attitude adjustment and some inspiration. I plan on drawing on the considerable collective wisdom of my family, friends and other people I am privileged to know (or know of) in selecting this list. I'm sure they will all point me in the right direction.

The reason I am focusing on inspirational books as my biggest New Year's Resolution for 2009 is because I have learned over the past few years that the "how" is not nearly as important as the "why" of a situation. In other words, let's assume for the purposes of this example that I want to lose twenty pounds. I can join a weight loss program and try to follow it, but if I don't have a rock-solid reason for losing the weight in the first place, I will drop out before too long. By contrast, if I read a book on nutrition and thus really understand what good nutrition can do for me, versus eating bag after bag of potato chips, I will have much more of an incentive to move in this direction. (By the way, if you're looking for a book like this, my sister recommends Skinny Bitch by Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman. I have listed the Amazon URL for this as one of the references for this article.) I gained my knowledge of the power of inspiration from Tony Robbins, who wrote of it in his book Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny!, which, if you have not yet read it, is a great way to get a leg up on 2009. (I have also listed this URL as a reference.)

Now, the ways I plan to create my book list, and thus proceed with my biggest New Year's Resolution for 2009:

I will ask my other sister, who is a college professor, if she has any recommendations for me. I am sure she will come up with something spectacular.

I plan to ping a bunch of my favorite political figures and ask them about their favorite motivational books. On my short list is our district Supervisor, my son's school principal, and maybe a senator or two. It's always been my impression that people love to share this kind of information, so maybe I'll have some success here.

I plan on researching this online. Amazon is always a good start, as they are very helpful in listing books they think I might like. Maybe they'll throw me a bone or two.

I am very lucky to have a friend who is a law librarian. In addition to being brilliant herself (and well-read), she also knows many other super-literate people, and she would be a great resource for this project.

Lastly, I'm asking you! What are some of your favorite inspirational books? Would you please send me a list of them, and help me fulfill my biggest New Year's Resolution for 2009? It doesn't have to be very long. What I'm planning on doing is compiling a list on New Year's Day and posting it as one of my next articles. If I'm going to do this kind of research, I might as well make it available to other people. Would you please help me out? You can comment to this article - that would work well. Thanks so much in advance if you decide to do this, and have a wonderful New Year!