How to Keep Your New Year's Resolutions

Perhaps the most important ingredient in perseverance is hope. If we have no hope, it is impossible to persevere. We lose heart and give up. We need to believe something is possible in order to keep trying.

So where does such hope come from? If we are lucky enough it comes from a loving parent who gave us sufficient belief in our abilities in our early days, to imagine we can and will eventually succeed in whatever we undertake.

Sometimes, we are able to find someone later in life who has sufficient optimism and interest in our well-being to inspire us to keep on trying, or at least someone who by his/her example is able to lead the way. We can learn so much from so many people in our lives: teachers, professors, therapists, friends, and spouses. It is from one another that we can learn surely and not only from our early impressions, important though they might be to give us sufficient belief in ourselves to persevere.

Habits once formed are hard to lose, but we can gradually develop those that are beneficial to our lives. By simply doing something again and again, we can master much that we set our minds to accomplish. If we are able to develop regular routines in our busy lives we are likely to be able to accomplish a great deal.

Our new year's resolutions often involve food, drink, and exercise. It is necessary to remind ourselves that it is possible to attain a reasonable aim at any age: We can drink less, eat less, and exercise more. All of this is possible if we set goals that are attainable and reasonable, if we establish routines to carry them out. The old adage "Practice makes perfect" has merit. It is also important to allow oneself a certain freedom, not to set unrealistic goals, and to realize one may fail along the way. What is essential is to realize that it is in the searching, the seeking, the perseverance, in trying again and again to do our best that we are most likely to succeed.