New Year’s Eve is just around the corner, and if you are like many of the millions of other Americans, you have probably already spent quite a bit of time thinking about what your New Year’s Resolutions will be for the upcoming year.

It is human nature for a large majority of the population to look forward to the upcoming year with optimism and hope. For this reason, it is also easy to define a set of goals that you would like to change about yourself.

For example, start a weight loss program, exercise more, quit smoking, get promoted to a higher position at work, go back to school, and so on. This being said, literally millions of people define their New Year’s Resolutions year in and year out and thereafter, fail to achieve them.

In fact, the unfortunate truth is that there is a high probability that the majority of New Year’s Resolutions that are made each and every year will not be achieved, let alone even survive through the first couple weeks in January.

Tips for Consistently Achieving Your New Year’s Resolution Goals

However, there are ways in which you can improve your probability of sticking with, and obtaining, your personal New Year’s Resolution goals. Below are five tips designed to assist you in not only defining your personal New Year’s Resolution goals, but achieving them as well.

1. Hope for Success, but Plan for Failure

   Although it may seem silly to plan for failure when setting a new goal, the fact is that most New Year’s Resolutions do indeed fail. For this reason, it’s best to remain cautiously optimistic while looking to the future and identifying what factors or decisions could potentially lead to failure. By making yourself aware of any possible roadblocks ahead of time, you’ll be better prepared to avoid them when they do present themselves.

   For example, let’s say your resolution is to quit smoking. If you know that a stressful day at work is coming up later in the week, you may also know that you’ll be tempted to smoke as a coping mechanism. By being aware of this type of future potential pitfall, you can already have an alternative coping mechanism in place, such as a plan to drink some relaxing herbal tea while listening to your favorite music as a stress reliever.

2. Define How You’ll Achieve a Goal

   …and not just what you hope to achieve. For example, if your goal is to lose weight, simply saying that you’ll drop 15 pounds is abstract and leaves the process of achieving the goal open to interpretation. Will you achieve the goal through dietary changes, increased levels of exercise, or maybe even with the help of an appetite stimulant or metabolism booster? FitnessHealth101 recommends a combination of healthy, calorie-conscious eating and regular exercise as the safest and most natural path to sustained weight loss.

   For these reasons, it’s important to state exactly how you’ll reach your goal of losing weight. Saying that you want to “lose exactly 15 pounds” is far less important than saying “I’ll consume no more than 2,000 calories per day, stop eating dessert, jog immediately after work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and weight train on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.” By defining the steps you’ll take toward achieving your goal, you give yourself something very tangible to hold onto. You’ll be more likely to correct mistakes when you make them, rather than simply noticing down the road that you didn’t meet your abstract goal.

3. Change Your Habits Instead of Eliminating Them

   Many New Year’s Resolutions are based on the notion of eliminating a behavior that you perform habitually, perhaps even ritually. If you want to successfully reduce or eliminate a behavior such as this, you need to fill the void it will leave with something healthy and positive, ideally that you can still perform as a sort of personal ritual.

   Let’s say that you’re accustomed to eating chocolate every night before you go to sleep for the night. Instead of simply eliminating this ritual entirely, modify it to a healthier approach. One example might be eating fruit instead of chocolate. You could modify your behavior even further by opting to replace your chocolate sessions with a non-food activity, such as checking up on emails or reading to your children. Eventually, you’ll learn to associate your late evenings with the new activity instead of the old one.

   The most important point with this tip is that you replace a bad habit with something positive instead of simply eliminating it.

4. Start with Small Changes

   Although you may be tempted to use a New Year’s Resolution as a method of making a broad, sweeping change in your life, it’s more realistic to start with a smaller goal that may be part of a larger restructuring of your behaviors and habits. For example, if you’re a heavy smoker, you might decide to limit yourself to half of the cigarettes you normally smoke on a daily basis. Once you meet that goal and it becomes sustainable, you can further reduce your consumption with the eventual goal of quitting entirely.

   Similar to Tip #2, your New Years’ Resolution may even be to take some sort of action that will facilitate the completion of an important future goal. If you’re quitting smoking, you might define your Resolution as “explore, research and experiment with various smoking cessation techniques (nicotine gum, “the patch,” increased exercise, etc.) to find out which best suits me.” Similarly, if your goal consists of some form of weight loss, your Resolution may be “visit several local fitness centers to compare prices, amenities and equipment to determine my ideal facility.”

5. Don’t Let One Mistake Ruin Your Resolution

   Since New Year’s Resolutions are notoriously precarious and easily broken, many people go with the trend and give them up immediately after making a single mistake or deviation from the plan. When you do this, you sell yourself short and waste the careful planning and execution you’ve already devoted to your goal.

   The key, of course, is to learn from your mistakes instead of using them as an excuse to quit. Let’s say your Resolution is to lose weight and you make the mistake of eating far more than you’d planned during a meal. A negative approach would be to say “oh well, I broke my Resolution already so I might as well eat a big dessert too.”

   A much healthier approach is to briefly analyze the chain of events that led to the mistake. Perhaps it began in the grocery store when you chose unhealthy foods to make for dinner. Alternatively, you may have failed to stabilize your blood sugar earlier in the day, letting yourself go hungry for hours instead of satisfying your cravings with a healthy, whole grain snack. Whatever the reason, it’s important to identify it and correct it tomorrow.

New Year’s Resolutions: The Bottom Line

Keeping your New Year’s Resolution will be much easier if follow a few simple tips. Start with a small, realistic goal that lends itself to a bigger lifestyle change, and carefully define the steps you’ll take to achieve it. Plan ahead and envision the types of pitfalls that could arise, as well as how to deal with them when they do.

If your Resolution consists of eliminating a bad habit, think of a good habit you can use as a replacement. If you find yourself making a mistake or succumbing to temptation, identify the factors that led to the mistake and correct them.