Bad habits can be difficult to dismiss, and new habits can be difficult to incorporate into our daily routine.

Yet, as the new year dawns, I encourage you to think about the changes that may make a difference in not just your business, but your life.

Remember, 2005 is a fresh start, a new beginning, another chance to do something different and better. You may want to consider the following, and if you do them already, then do them better:

• Encourage people: Everyone has something great to offer. Everyone has talent, creativity and a special combination of abilities that separates that person from everyone else.

Compliment and encourage people as sincerely and as often as you can. If you are having a lousy day, try not to let that happen to others. Taking our bad days out on other people is counterproductive.

Booker T. Washington said, "If you want to lift yourself up, lift someone else up."

• Make being positive a priority: Beyond a shadow of a doubt, our attitude is the most important human element, unequivocally, irrefutably, undeniably and without question.

Each day, we are granted the choice as to how to behave. We can focus on what we don't have, how much money we're not making and constantly re-evaluate our happiness. We often spend way too much time searching for the answer to happiness out there, when, in fact, the answer is inside each and every one of us.

• Constantly practice perspective: Perspective is a matter of what is relative to us.

For example, if you live in southern California and the temperature plummeted to 39 degrees, you would think it's bitterly cold. But if you visited your cousin Johnny Salami in Chicago during January and the temperature was 11 below zero, with a wind-chill index of minus 46 degrees, you just changed your perspective on what cold weather is.

Habits are easier to practice when we first practice perspective. On Christmas day, my father had a seizure that scared our entire family. He works out every day, eats well, is as sharp as he has ever been and this happens?

Since then, he's passed every major test with flying colors — no stroke, no tumor, no infection. So which way does he turn? Where does his perspective go?

The choices are to either dwell on the fact that he can't drive for a while and that he will be on anti-seizure medication for a good stretch. Or, he and our family can respond to feelings of sadness and fright of this situation with the knowledge that his health is actually very good and another seizure is far less likely to occur.

These are perspective questions to keep all of us aware of the importance of attitude. But to affect your disposition and self-esteem, it's necessary to visualize and take time to think about some of these things.

Regardless of what your aspirations, ambitions and goals are for the next year, I wish you good health, success in business and most of all, an enthusiastic appreciation for every day you have the opportunity to enjoy.

Remember, good habits make you a better worker and better person, and the longing for constant improvement may be the best habit of all.

Happy New Year!

Joe Takash is a professional speaker and president of Victory Consulting. He also serves as director of corporate relations for Robert Morris College in Chicago. E-mail him at .