The thing about New Year's Resolutions is that I think they stink. Sure, they're always full of good intentions to start with, but all too often they get discarded around mid-March. Then you shrug your shoulders, smile, and say to yourself,...

"Ah, those New Year's Resolutions! C'est la guerre! Now where did I put that chocolate bomba torte? Mmmmm, chocolate..."

The reason I don't like New Year's Resolutions is because they get weighted down with expectations. There's this sense that you are making some sacred promise, and if you screw it up, you have failed. But, at the same time, a lot of your friends have also failed, so it makes it all acceptable thanks to peer satisfaction.

What I think that does work is evaluating yourself year-round and asking yourself if you are where you want to be right now, in whatever capacity. For example, last summer I decided I was really too fat for words, and so I started a diet and exercise program to change that. Was it perfect from day one? No. Do I still slip sometimes? Yes. But I have lost 10 kilograms since then, and am continuing to feel other benefits from the weight loss and the exercise.

The reason I like evaluating yourself throughout the year is that life is a variable process. Thinking that you can make one or more choices in January that are going to be your sole guiding principles for the next twelve months doesn't really gel with the fact that you cannot predict what is going to happen tomorrow, let alone twelve months from now.

Your moods change. Your circumstances change. Friends and family around you change. The only constant thing is (or should be) your personal desire to review your life and change what isn't working, on pretty well a daily basis.

It's really all about habits. We get into patterns of behaviour because, let's face it, we can't stop and make a decision about every little thing in life. So breakfast is always bacon and eggs and toast at 6:30 am and I always wear that pair of socks when I go golfing.

And there are good habits and bad habits. My belief is that the process of self-improvement is when you evaluate your life on that ongoing basis and change bad habits to good ones. Even being fat isn't always bad, if you know you are heading away for six weeks where food will be scarce and you will be lucky to get 1200 calories a day.

You know you best. So stop thinking about "resolutions", and start thinking about yourself as the guidance system for the missile that is your life. Well, OK, I've written better analogies, but you get the idea. And like a guidance system, you are never going straight towards your target, there will always be obstacles of some sort to make you reroute a bit or a lot. But you have to keep that target in mind at all times and keep heading towards it.

There. One cheesy New Year's Resolutions column done. Next year I can't pull the same stunt.