The Ultimate New Year's Resolution

6 Swift Lessons in Life Planning

It's that time again. Time to vow that this year, you really will quit smoking. Or lose 15 pounds. Or pay off that mounting credit card debt. Whatever your goal, you're determined that 2007 will be the year you finally make a resolution that sticks. You're tired of feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, trapped by a life that, frankly, feels more like an endurance race. If you can just get a handle on one corner of it, maybe you can start turning things around. By 2008, everything will be better, right?

Well, if you follow your usual path, no, says Tripp Friedler, author of Free Gulliver: Six Swift Lessons in Life Planning (Trost Publishing, 2005). You're going about the New Year's ritual all wrong. If you're not living a life you love, the symbolic little goals you keep setting (and abandoning) are meaningless. You need to set the mother of all goals – FREE GULLIVER.

"To free Gulliver is to slice through all the problems that are keeping you from doing the one thing you daydream about," Friedler says. "You know, that thing you keep putting off until the kids are in school, or until you get the house paid off, or until you retire. That's the resolution you should be setting. All those other yearly promises are just bandages – usually bandages with no adhesive!"

Friedler, president and CEO of freeGulliver, a life-planning firm that offers seasoned advice on money and all the issues that come with it, has an unusual focus: helping clients ensure that their lifestyle doesn't tie them down, but rather centers on a relentless pursuit of their true

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