At this time everyone starts to think about New Year's resolutions - out with the old, in with the new.
I can hear you all groan.
Most people, if pushed, claim to hate new year.
If they have had a bad one, seeing in 1 January is just a reminder of the awful year they just had. 2009 was my worst ever. My dad had just died and I couldn't bear the thought of rejoicing about 2010 - the first year without him.
I did an anti-New Year's Eve - I went to Pizza Express for dinner, drank one glass of bad prosecco and went to bed at 10.30 pm.
Or, if you have had the greatest year of your life there's always that undercurrent of superstition that the disaster will fall in the next one. I guess this is why people don't like making promises to change or evolve.
It's why New Year's Eve is such a drunken affair, as people lose themselves in partying and frivolity.
The pressure to be happy and have fun is ridiculous. It's no wonder it often ends up being an anti-climax - you have a row with a friend/partner or the party isn't quite as good as you'd hoped.
Last year we were in Dubai - sun, fireworks off the biggest tower in the world (the one in the new Mission Impossible) and DJ Axwell from Swedish House Mafia. It was all pretty cool as we were far away but I felt disconnected from reality, which is why I went a bit nuts on the dance floor and nearly fell off a podium.
If you open the newspapers, 2012 has a pretty gloomy outlook - euro crisis, recessions and, if you believe in the Mayan calendar, the end of the world.
Rather than get bogged down in all the negative stuff let's try reverse the cynical wave that wants to send us into a depressed and depressing new year.
Buddhists and many spiritual movements actually believe that this is the era of enlightenment. We have had the industrial one, the digital one. And now it is the creative one, the year of self-fulfilment. Its the year when we will create bonds within communities, friends are reunited and families come together.
That may sound like hippy claptrap. But in essence its about simplicity, about getting happy in yourself and best of all making good decisions for you. Its not about money or jobs. Its about realising dreams.
Many of us are stuck in routines that just don't feel right with a passion buried deep down somewhere. One of my close friends wanted to act since she was five. She went to college to study media production, wrote a screenplay, directed a musical - in fact, did everything to do with acting but never had the courage to act herself.
Now later on she has bitten the proverbial bullet and is training up with one of the greatest actor's studio coaches and is manifesting her desires no matter what the outside world says.
I feel this is what 2012 is all about. Allowing yourself the freedom to be you and shedding all those niggly doubts that you will be judged.
I can hear the cynics muttering that this is not practical, financially anyway. Again I'd challenge that. In the spiritual Buddhist realm, if you are fulfilling your true purpose in life abundance will flow. Look at people past and present like Steve Jobs, JK Rowling and Arianna Huffington.
They love what they do so they are good at it and very successful as a result.
Let's try this 31 Dec to affirm the New Year, not through wild unrealistic plans but through simple dreams. Let's avoid bringing in the negative baggage of 2011. And if the year 2012 is the end of the world let's make it a truly brilliant one.