In what is quite clearly a shameless attempt to get pictures of scantily clad women into the Daily Telegraph, this august publication has published a review of weird and whacky 2010 calendars. But one of far the most interesting ones was one which did not resort to such cheap thrills at all, but was an attempt at humour: the 2010 Credit Crunch Calendar. This alliteratively-titled work features pictures of Britons (not) coping with the current recession, e.g. pictures of boarded-up branches of Woolworths, people going on staycations in Birmingham, etc. The idea being that it is meant to show that Britons can laugh in the face of adversity.

I say interesting, because it suddenly struck me that this was in fact a good example of how not to create a 2010 Calendar. I shall explain.

Several years ago I read The Cosmic Ordering Service by Barbel Mohr. It consisted of one page of sound, practical advice. Unfortunately the book itself was 112 pages long. Nevertheless, not to be completely underwhelmed by this publication, I have myself tried cosmic ordering in the past, based on the little amount of advice there is in the original book and have found some success with it. My attempts consist of – every January 1st – instead of making New Year’s Resolutions, I cosmically order what I want to achieve in the year ahead. Which brings me back to the subject of Calendars.

There is a common practice nowadays for people to create their own Calendars to give to others as Christmas presents: for example, a Calendar consisting of a set of family photographs to give to relatives. More to the point, there are an increasing number of resources availabe which are making it easier for people to do so, and also easier for them to make better quality items. For example: lulu.com. So here is my idea: instead of creating a calendar to give to your friends and relations as presents, why not create your own Cosmic-Ordering calendar for yourself?

Write out a list of twelve things you want to achieve in 2010 – one for each month – and then find or create a picture which visually represents each of your objectives. Do this now – do not wait for January 1st 2010, because by then it will be too late. Once you have assembled your list of 12 objectives and corresponding pictures, head on over to some site like lulu or if you are feeling adventurous and have access to a good quality printer and desktop publishing software, have a go yourself. Whichever way you decide, it should be of quality sufficient enough to impress you.

Once it is printed out and ready, try to spend some quality time next New Year’s Day contemplating gratitude to the Universe generally and its inhabitants in particular for all good fortune and blessings which have come to you in the past. Then, once you are in the mood, review each of the twelve objectives you are setting yourself, visualising the corresponding picture and mentally describing in words what it is you want to happen – and when you want it to happen by. You must be utterly convinced – at both a Conscious and Unconscious level – that you deserve all the success for which you are visualising / cosmically ordering – otherwise this exercise will not work. You can thenceforth use the calendar normally, displaying it somewhere where you will see it often.

The great thing about creating your own calendar in this way is that you can tailor it to your own personal aspirations. If you tried to make do with a commercially produced one, you would have to put up with affirmations which are only very general in character – which would thus lessen its importance for you.

This is why I thought the so-called 2010 Credit Crunch Calendar was such a bad idea. Instead of showing a load of pictures of Britain in recession, how much better it would have been to have twelve pictures of how we would like Britain to become in the forthcoming year – because maybe then we can all make it happen.