During New Year, most people make resolutions but often very few are able to keep them.

Psychologists, Janet Polivy and Peter Herman, reported that 25% of new year’s resolutions will be abandoned in first 15 weeks; average number of times an individual makes a new year’s resolution is 10, and that those whose resolutions lasted for about 6 months or more often tried 5 or 6 times before they succeeded.

For many years until recently, I was unable to keep any of my new year’s resolutions. So, my friend, you’re not alone.

This caused a lot of hardship in my life. I had many personal bad habits I wanted to get rid of, but due to lack of self-discipline and control, I was unable to do so.

Since 3 years ago, my life has changed and improved because of a few strategies I developed that helped me kick my bad habits, improve myself and achieve my ambitions in life.

What is your new year’s resolution? Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to stop smoking? Do you want to stop drinking? Do you want to kick your drug habit? Do you want to stop gambling? Do you want to make three times more money this year?

Whatever your resolutions and goals may be, you can succeed if you adopt a few easy strategies I want to reveal.

Permit me to share with you 10 of these easy tips that have helped me keep my new year’s resolutions and make them work for me.

(1) Be reasonable

Know your weaknesses, define them and commit to improving yourself. Do all that is reasonable and legal to kick your bad habits and change your life for better.

Have reasonable expectations.

For example if you’re 100Ibs overweight, it will be unreasonable to expect to lose all of it in a week!

However, if you make a commitment to engage in more physical exercises, eat healthy food and allow about 3 months, then that will be reasonable and you may succeed.

I was 100 Ibs overweight for many years, but by being reasonable, I have lost all extra weight!

Make a resolution because it is right for you and will help you succeed in life and not because you want to please others or because it is fashionable.

You can’t please anyone until you’ve pleased yourself.

Set priorities. Start with small goals and resolutions and work your way up to jumbo ones.

(2) Don’t bite more than you can chew

Take it easy on yourself. You’re human, not a machine. Don’t make too many resolutions, which will then be hard for you to keep and cause you to fail and feel disappointed and hopeless.

Make about 2-3 resolutions at a time. Be very clear about bad habits that you wish to kick or goals that you desire to achieve.

Don’t make a decision to kick a habit unless you’re ready for it.

For example some people who have been smoking or drinking alcohol for many years have noticed that each time they decided to quit they have failed.

The reason is that they may not be physically or mentally ready yet to stop.

When you smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, there are many biological and chemical activities involved.

The cells and organs in your body change and become dependent on chemicals in cigarettes (nicotine) and alcohol.

Therefore even though you have realized dangers of smoking or drinking, you may not be able to suddenly wake up from sleep and decide to stop.

Those cells and organs in your body may still continue to need chemicals.

This is cause of “urge”, “desire”, or “craving” that you feel to smoke or drink.

So, take it easy. Withdraw from bad habits slowly. If you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, start by cutting it down to half a pack daily and continue until someday, suddenly, urge to smoke will stop.

And stop blaming yourself for bad habits. Accept your bad habits, but determine to kick them.

Acceptance frees you slowly from bad habits. Guilt and self- condemnation splits your energy and ties you more and more to bad habits, so avoid these feelings.

You can apply same strategy to kick any bad habit. Slowly and steadily, if you persevere, you’ll win!

(3) Write your resolutions down.

After you’ve clearly realized and defined your weaknesses and bad habits, write them down in a notebook. Write all your goals and ambitions down in a notebook. This is one way to get mentally and physically committed to taking action.

Bad habits are all behavior and personality traits that block your way in life and make it difficult for you to achieve your dreams and ambitions.

If you don’t know your weaknesses and habits in life, perhaps you can do what I did and ask any of your enemies to tell you. (Tip: Don’t ask family members or friends. They will never tell you truth because they are afraid of offending you. Only enemies can help you. And if you have no enemy, make one on purpose!)

(4) Picturize your resolutions daily.

Be sure you have easy access to your notebook in which you wrote down your resolutions, goals and ambitions.

Read your resolutions at least twice a day, first thing in morning and also just before you go to sleep in night. Think about and mentally picturize your resolutions. See yourself in eye of your mind succeeding with all your resolutions, goals and ambitions. Smile and tell yourself all time that you have willpower, self-control and discipline to run your life and to achieve all that you desire.

This is a good way to program your mind and thoughts. Instead of allowing others, TV, radio and magazine advertisements to program your mind and thoughts, control you and thereby force you to engage in bad habits, take matters into your hands and begin to constantly program your mind and thoughts with positive affirmations for success and happiness.

(5) Search for and obtain tools and resources that can help you actualize your resolutions, goals and ambitions.

You may know of someone who has what appears to be a perfect life … a loving family, a beautiful home, an amazing career … but if this person is filled with negative thoughts, he or she is not able to fully enjoy what life has to offer. This person may be focusing instead on what is missing or what is perceived wrong.

You may also know of someone who has faced a difficult situation, lives a humble existence, has to work two or three jobs to make ends meet, but regardless of situation, always has a smile, a wave and an appreciation for everything good in life.

The good news is regardless of our current circumstances, we can choose our thoughts and how we react to any situation. We can choose to be positive, loving, and appreciative or negative, judgmental and critical.

When you find yourself caught in negative thinking, recognize what is happening and stop yourself. Then ask yourself one or more of following questions:

1. How is this negative thinking serving me? 2. Am I willing to let something beyond my control consume my thoughts and ruin my day? 3. Is there something I can do about this to make it better? 4. How can I turn this negative thought into a positive one?