So you’ve listed your New Year’s resolutions and now you find yourself where you always do after announcing your intentions - struggling to act on them, to put them in motion. You tell yourself that you’re not alone, that everyone is in the same boat when it comes to following intentions with empowering actions, but you wish, just once, you could actually follow through. Believe me, I know. I’ve often been right there in the proverbial boat with you. But Dawn and I decided that this was going to be our year and so we took some unconventional, albeit fun, steps to help us give it a kick-start.

It was Dawn’s idea, I think, and pretty soon both her mom and sister had signed on, so there was no way I could shrug off doing my part as well. It seems Dawn (or maybe her mom) had read an article in the January issue of Redbook by shuistrology expert Ellen Whitehurst on some cures to make this the best New Year ever. All we needed, claimed Whitehurst, was a little New Year feng shui! Here’s what she recommended and how we did…

A Clean Sweep. Before New Year’s Day, we were to clean the entire house “to clear the way for new and exciting energies to enter your home.” The task apparently can’t be done on New Year’s Day as doing so is thought to “sweep away” all the fortune and luck that is headed your way in the coming year. If that was too big a project (it was!) then cleaning just the kitchen (we did) would be okay since it represents our health, happiness and prosperity. An integral component was to move 27 things around our home (we stayed in the kitchen) as this simple change up causes the same-old to head out with the old year. We were off and running!

Create a Cash Flow. Next, we headed to the bank for 27 one-dollar bills and 49 coins each so as to make our wallets appear full and bring us “untold and unexpected fortunes in the year ahead.” We even sprinkled dried ground ginger on the wallets and our checkbooks. I’m not sure what that does but we wanted to give ourselves every possible advantage. It wasn’t clear whether we were to leave the ginger in place or remove it. I dusted mine off. Hope that didn’t disqualify me from any untold and unexpected fortunes.

Begin New Rituals. We didn’t refer to anything from the past on New Year’s Day, speaking instead of our hopes, wishes and dreams for the future. The placement of nine mandarin oranges in a bowl in our kitchen was to help “orchestrate sweet treats that will make the coming year’s dreams come true.” And since we were home as the year turned, we briefly opened and closed all our doors and windows, no small task in a home the size of ours, “to let the previous year’s energies out and allow some new, interesting ones to come in.”

We passed on the recommended lighting of firecrackers or the banging of pots and pans to “scare away any maligning influences” that may have been headed our way - firecrackers are illegal in El Dorado County and the cookware too heavy and expensive - but since it’s considered very auspicious if the first thing one sees on New Year’s Day is a red bird, I Googled up a few on the computer screen. Red bird sighting? Check.

Find the Right Words. There was no crying on New Year’s Day as doing so “could have triggered a yearlong deluge.” No losing of tempers, foul language or whining, either. And since the first words one utters at the top of any New Year have “a huge impact on your fortune and luck in the 12 months following”, we chose to say “health, happiness, prosperity” to one another at midnight. (I inadvertently included “and”, possibly a technical foul.)

Chew On This. Many traditions maintain that abstaining from eating meat on New Year’s Day will grant you a long and happy life. Easy for Dawn - she never eats beef, pork or lamb - and not difficult for me either. Eating fish on this promising day is said to aid in intelligence, build immunity and symbolize “a year swimming in abundance and prosperity.” So on New Year’s Eve, I drove to Placerville and bought enough of Steamer’s “lazy man’s cioppino” to cover lunch and dinner on New Year’s Day. For those unfamiliar, Powell’s Steamer makes a dynamite cioppino and removes all the shells. As always, it was delicious and now we’re ready for a big helping of abundance and prosperity. We also avoided using anything sharp, like knives or scissors, as this could conceivably have cut our coming fortunes in half.

All in all, we covered most of the bases and had a lot of fun in the process! These suggestions and much more are apparently covered in Ellen Whitehurst’s new book, Make This Your Lucky Day so, if you’d like to learn how to be prepared for the rest of this year and next, it sounds like a read worth adding to your library.