The beginning of the year is a great time to figure out how you want to improve your life and become more of the person you’d like to be. However, all too often people make only half-hearted commitments and attempts at self-improvement, which inevitably fail. Most often, this is because they really don’t know WHY they want to make changes and/or the reason for making the changes doesn’t really resonate with them deeply enough or aren’t really important enough to make the tough choices necessary to meet their goals.

Therefore, we suggest that you make one – and only one – resolution right now – take a set amount of time every day or every week to figure out what you’d like to change and more importantly WHY. Let the resolution sit with you and write down all the reasons you can think off to make the change; the closer you can come to getting at some deep, emotion-driven motivators, the closer you will be to finding a sure-fire way to stick with your resolution(s).

Here’s a plan – take 30 minutes daily (or at least 4 days/week) to do this exercise. Make a commitment to do this for one month. For each resolution, write down every idea/cause that you can think of that is driving you to make the change. Don’t censure yourself – put down everything. This could include outside pressures (i.e., my wife/husband/kids want me to do it), dissatisfaction with the current situation (i.e., I don’t like feeling/looking the way I do now), wanting to look/feel better (i.e., I want to look better in my bathing suite this summer), or internal drivers (i.e., this is more like the person I want to be).

As you add to your list over time, see which of the motivators really stir you up inside and sit with those reasons for a while; write down whatever comes to you and explore your reasons – you may be surprised by what you find.

After the month is up, look at your resolution(s) and reasons for committing to them and pick the one that resonates with you most strongly. If you want to take on more than one, that’s fine, but you may want to start with one resolution, give yourself a month or two to get moving on it, and then add in another once you get going.

Make it easier to succeed by keeping those emotive-drivers in mind as you work toward your goal. When temptations present themselves that could derail your efforts (and they will), get in touch with those emotional-drivers. They’ll help you stay on track and keep you headed in the right direction.