Veronica Canning, author of Shoeisms, shares her top tips to make sure that your business thrives in 2010.

1. Change your thoughts
Your thoughts are the basis of everything. Thought comes first, then action. Every day, we have more than 20,000 thoughts which surface to our consciousness. From these, we can often focus on problems and fears. This keeps us looking at the half empty glass. Change those thoughts. Make more of them positive and make them work to move you forward.

2. Keep an Idea Box
Buy some small note cards and use them to capture ideas as they occur to you. Keep the idea box on your desk and keep adding to it the cards with the ideas. Constantly empty your handbag, your briefcase, your pockets and your conference folders. In no time you will have built a fantastic treasure chest of usable ideas. Believe me, this will be one of the most nourishing things you can do for yourself and your creativity. A small notebook in your purse will do the same job for you. I have many notebooks in my office and they are a constant source of inspiration to me. Sometimes I am amazed at what good ideas I had; go ahead and amaze yourself.

3. Abandon the twin fears
As we build our careers or our businesses, we feel fear. Some of us are afraid of failure, others of success and of shining too brightly. You will always get those thoughts. From now on, identify them, isolate them, and quarantine them. Leave them there. Stop carrying them around with you.

4. End each week by making your plan for the following week
On Friday, set out your principal goals for the following week. That way, you start Monday morning organized. Take an overview of the week and plan your activities for each day so that you reach your goals for the week by Friday.

5. Until Now
When you find yourself saying self-defeating things like ‘I am useless at this’ or ‘I can’t do that’, stop and use a wonderfully liberating phrase –’until now’. So the thought changes to ‘I can’t do that…until now’. It stops the negative stream of thought. Use it all the time and let it go to work on reducing the unquestioned negativity.

6. Act like a tortoise
When you are facing a challenge, don’t ask for permission to act. If you know you are correct stick your neck out of your tortoise shell and go for it. You can always ruminate over it all later. Remember success favours the courageous.

7. Fake it till you make it
If you have set yourself a goal to achieve something, then act as if you have already achieved it. Live as if it is yours. If you want to be a successful businessperson then act like one. Speak like one. Dress like one. Fake it until you make it. If you think you will succeed, you will. Soon it will be yours.

8. Always Look Forward
Magic happens when you decide to always look forward. Decide on your Big Audacious Aim (BAA) and plan everything around achieving it. Once you achieve an aim in your mind you can then achieve it in reality.

9. Donate to the favour bank
Live a life of donating to others from a sense of abundance. Give of your time and gifts. Donate to the favour bank by doing favours for good people. Other like-minded people are also donating – so, in time, you will be repaid a hundredfold. You just don’t know when and where the repayments will come.

10. Don’t be a hoarder – Let things go
Too many possessions clutter your life. Start decluttering with your wardrobe. You only wear 20% of what you own. Let go of all the things you don’t wear. Do the same with your other possessions. Let things go when they have served their purpose. What can you let go of now?