Maybe you feel a little bit of both — excited at the possibility of success and intimidated about the potential for failure.

Most of us do give up on our resolutions within weeks of setting them. We begin with bang and end with a whimper, once again feeling like we don’t have the “right stuff” to follow through on our new year’s resolutions.

If it makes you feel better, you aren’t alone. Setting goals and developing new habits is hard if you don’t know what you’re doing. Most of us don’t know how to approach goal-setting and habit creation in a way that fosters success.

When we make our new year’s resolutions, we often begin with goals that are ill-defined and too big:

• • I’m going to lose weight this year.
  • I’m going to start running.
  • I’m going to write a book.
  • I’m going to learn to speak Spanish.

Then we just start — without a plan, without breaking it down, without any accountability. And of course, it gets overwhelming or boring or painful, so we give up.

What Are Great New Year’s Resolutions?

In this post I’m going to show you how to approach your new year resolutions in a more productive way and give you some great ideas for resolutions you can adopt that are actually doable — so you don’t feel like a failure before you cross January off your calendar.