Welcome to 2010. These first few weeks of the new year are generally crammed with resolution-fired individuals, bound and determined to improve, clean up, trim down and generally revamp their heretofore humdrum lives. All well and good and certainly laudable efforts. Also, unfortunately, largely doomed to failure.

History tells us that most of our resolutions, no matter how well-intentioned, will flame out at some point. Witness the scores of stationary bikes and stair-steppers in garage sales come the spring. Gym memberships, musical instruments and teach-yourself-Aramaic courses are flying off the shelves right now. But give it a few weeks and those running shoes, violins and CDs will largely be gathering dust. It happens to most of us.

And I'm certainly no exception.

Which is why this year, I have boiled all my resolutions down to one simple credo that I think I can actually pull off. And which, in the pulling off, I believe, will make all those other resolutions fall into line. This year I resolve to feel good. In fact, I resolve to make feeling good my prime directive, as Captain Picard might say.

This is no small feat. In fact, I suspect it may require far more energy than consumed by all those stationary bikes and stair-steppers combined. But it's also energizing at the same time. For when you feel good, you are tapped in. You are connected to your Source, to God, to the power that creates worlds. A force more potent even than Jenny Craig.

The trick, however, is to keep that connection open. And how do you do that?

I think you start by not clogging it up with crud. I resolve to feel good means not hanging around with or hanging onto people who make me feel bad or who seem to enjoy feeling bad. It means not starting my day by reading, listening to or watching bad news. It means being careful and selective about what I feed my head with. Doesn't it strike you as odd that some people will be absolutely adamant about eating only pure, whole foods and drink only the most crystalline water but have no qualms whatsoever about sitting down to visually ingest hours of the most depressing, violence-laden images and stories ever told?

How many times a day do we allow something or someone to anger us? How often do we shake our heads or our fists at something we have little or no control over? How much of our time is spent in condemning or judging? Ask yourself if your default setting has become pissed or delighted? I did and I wasn't thrilled with the response.

What might our lives, our worlds, be like if we just deliberately shifted our focus a little? If we chose to see good. If we opted to appreciate diversity and contrast instead of condemning the different. If we decided to discover and dwell on what pleases instead of wallowing in what irks.

There is always a choice. And given that, why would any of us choose to feel bad? I'm going to try and hang onto that thought as I stroll into the new year. And as I bump into my old habits and old thought patterns, I'm going to ask myself again and again; Is what I am about to do, say, or think going to make me feel better or worse? I don't believe there's a more important question we can resolve to ask ourselves.