New Year's Resolutions are a flawed concept, at best. Don't get me wrong: it's awesome to make goals and strive to reach them. But waiting for some fictitious concept like "a new year" to make those changes is just setting yourself up for failure. After a few days, your enthusiasm for the changes will wane, and you'll end up joining the 90 percent of people who fail to keep their resolutions past March.

At the same time, it's good to set goals and strive to reach them. You have to know what you're working toward, else you'll never make any progress.

So let's say you've started the New Year with the goals most of us end up setting:

• Lose weight
• Do more exercise (X number of days per week/month)
• Eat better
• Stop doing X thing that is impairing your health

But now that we're a few weeks into the New Year, you're finding that it's harder to keep up with those resolutions. Eventually — and it's guaranteed to happen — you're going to break the resolution.

So now what? If you're like most of the world, you'll call it quits and say, "Oh well, I'll try again next year." Once you've broken the resolution once, you're far more likely to break it again. It's basic psychology!

Who cares? Of course you're going to break your New Year's resolutions! The reason you've resolved to do these things is because they're difficult. If they weren't, you'd have already done them. They are on your "to do" list for the New Year because they are a challenge that you feel you need to tackle for your health and happiness' sake.

So you've broken the resolution — it doesn't matter! That doesn't mean you should give up on your resolutions. If anything, it's proof that you're making the right decision. Anything that's worth doing will be difficult. It's time to accept the fact that you're human and make mistakes and determine to try again. It may even be time to adjust your approach to the way you're carrying out your goals.

Think of it like driving to work. You leave your home to go to the office using the same route you take every day. But you run into construction work on the highway. You're forced to stubbornly sit through traffic or find another way to reach your destination.

Your fitness journey is much the same. If your goal is to lose weight, you may find that one way doesn’t work. Instead of giving up on that goal, try a different approach. Keep trying different approaches until you find the one that does work. Keep striving and pushing to be better, to try harder. In the end, that's what the New Year's Resolution was all about.

Don't be discouraged when you inevitably break that resolution. Use it as a challenge to evaluate what made you break the resolution in the first place. Once you pinpoint the problem areas, it's easier to correct your course and find a more effective way to reach your goals!

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