It is the time of year for new resolutions. People like to evaluate their life at the beginning of a new year and decide what changes they would like to make. Unfortunately, most new year’s resolutions fail.

I stopped making resolutions a while back. I found they were easy to give up on as most people do. In fact, I read somewhere that 97% of resolutions won’t be kept. I think that the reason it is so easy to give up on your resolutions is that you always know that there will be another new year to try again.

Here is a different approach to making the changes you want. Try writing down on a piece of paper all of the changes you would like to see take place. Make that list something to work on throughout the whole year. Don’t set yourself up for failure by forcing it to be a make or break situation. That way if you fall off the wagon on a particular goal, you can continue to work on it rather than thinking "I failed, better give up and try again next year".

I will admit something here that I am not proud of. I smoke. I am ashamed of it and want to quit very badly. I decided NOT to make a resolution to quit smoking January 1st. Instead, I decided to make quitting something that would happen sometime this year. I started a quit smoking blog where I write about how much I hate smoking. I am hoping that by working the situation out in writing, it might just be what I need to make the final quit.

Whether you want to quit smoking, lose weight or spend more time with your kids, you can make that happen if you give yourself a realistic time frame. Work on it every day and don’t give up on your goal just because it didn’t work out right away. Make your goals a lifestyle change to take place throughout the year rather than a resolution. Good luck!