This month I leave the NC coast for the mountains. It was a decision made of necessity, and my struggles this past year were worsened by the life I lived inside my head. So I want to be intentional about using the change to affirm goals, strengthen positive habits, and create opportunities for a greater sense of connection with myself and others. John Updike wrote, "You must imagine your life, and then it happens." This is not a passive imagining, but a passionately active one. We can't get where we want to be unless we know where we want to be, plan a route, pack provisions, and walk the miles. Recently, I noticed anew lines from a poem that have been tacked on my refrigerator for years. They helped me notice I had fallen back into passive imagining and it was time to get passionately active again. This path, this road that is one perfect straight line even if it goes around the world through heat and fog and rain and snow and it's my life I keep thinking. It's my life. --Deborah Keenan, from "Small History" 1. Positive Thinking for Writers by Barbara O'Neal

"...someone gave me a book that introduced me to the idea of visualization and positive thinking. It seemed ridiculous, honestly, that it could work, but I needed some way to keep believing, so I tried it. Lots of different kinds of positive thinking and visualizations and affirmations. My husband thought I was crazy. My grandmother, good Southern Baptist, thought it was probably a sin.

And yet, you know, it kind of worked. Visualizations eased my worry and let me work more efficiently. Affirmations helped me understand my fears, what caused them, and how to address them.

Focus is a powerful thing. It can change things." 2. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business by Charles Duhigg "If you can diagnose the habit, you can change them in whichever way you want. So what are the cues, routines, and rewards in your life? What habit do you want to change? Habits aren't destiny."

3. Meditation for Manifesting Your Best Life by Sarah Hall "I have unwavering faith in my power to create anything upon which I set my heart and mind."