There seems to be one time of the year that our best intentions come to the fore and that’s the beginning of a new year. Our hopes of making a new start all hedges on a promise to ourselves that we can be better, or we can change. Losing weight, getting fit and quitting smoking or drinking are always the most popular things that one wants to change. Most of us at one time or another have set New Year’s goals for ourselves and had the experience of not sticking with them. Why do these best intentions sometimes fall by the way side or end in failure? The day you start your resolve is key to implementation according to Chinese astrology.

Not all days are created equal. Each day brings with it a different energy or Qi, which has an effect on various activities and influences certain individuals more than others. We all know that timing is everything, so by knowing what a particular day is useful for, allows you to do the right thing at the right time, thereby infusing a positive note to the start of important events. Some days feel perfect, I’m sure you’ve felt one, it just gels, everything just falls into place and you end up having had a great day while others can be disastrous, nothing seems to go right, you’re having a bad day. The key to success is to know when these bad days are coming and avoid them for important activities.

The art of selecting the right day for a particular activity is known as Date Selection. Date Selection has been used for thousands of years, and today has many personal applications such as opening a business, getting married, getting divorced, having medical procedures, and many more. Feng Shui also uses date selection, as a good date is always recommended for moving into a house or starting renovations. The importance of a good date is essential to the savvy businessmen of Asia who don’t make a move without it.

So back to your New Year’s resolution; if you are traditionally starting on New Year’s Day you should rethink. For example, January 1st, 2010 is a “Close day”, not a good day to use for anything important, including starting a new regime like quitting smoking or losing weight for example. A “Close day” is a day when the Qi is at its lowest point and is unmoving; therefore, it doesn’t bring any usable energy to your endeavours. January the 3rd 2010, would be a better day to begin a quit smoking or lose weight campaign, however, to fine tune the choice of day for a specific individual we would also need to make sure the day had an influence over that person’s natal chart. Another good day to start a new year’s resolution on would be the 11th of January 2010; again, whether or not the good benefits of this day affected you personally would depend on your personal chart.

The first step in Date selection is to know your natal chart which has been calculated from your date of birth. Then find a day that has the right energy available for your required activity and that day must also affect you. In other words, the day must have a relevance to your personal chart so you can personally reap any rewards of the day. This also means that if the day happens to possess some bad qualities and also has an affinity with your chart, you will more than likely expect some setbacks. Just by knowing when the “bad days” are and avoiding them will already go a long way to assisting your achievements.

Depending on your endeavour, a good day can be hard to find so sometimes it requires patience to wait for the right day to present itself. By going with the flow of the universe and working with it, not against it you can use these energies towards your success.

Have a Happy New Year.