The conventional Happy New Year approach is to think of the New Year as something that happens outside ourselves.  It is a good luck wish that the New Year, in some magical way, will bring us our heart's desire.  We look to the New Year to make us happy.

When we expect happiness to come to us from the outside we are usually disappointed.  Happiness is not guaranteed by sunny weather, a raise in pay, a new car, a beautiful home or anything else of a material nature.  External things are often possessed by very unhappy people.

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Happiness does not come out of a New Year; it comes out of men and women.  Life does not change when we hang a new calendar on the wall or when the clock strikes midnight and a New Year begins.  The only way life will change for us is when we change ourselves.

The source of happiness is not in events happening outside of us; the source of happiness is within us.  We cannot control the outside world but we can control our own thoughts and emotions.  All true happiness is an inner experience.

There is a new phrase to speak to each other as we face the adventure of a New Year. . . "Happy New You!"

The way to make the New Year the best year of your life is to look to yourself, not to the year, for your happiness. . . .

To realize that happiness does not depend on the birth of a New Year, but on the birth of a New You.

To know that the months, weeks, days, hours and minutes of the New Year are empty until you fill them with happiness.

To face the fact that time is dead until you give it life, and that your happiness depends on the quality of life you give it.

Happy New You!