New Year S Resolutions

The party's over.It's time to lose those few extra holiday pounds, cut back on the parties and curb that excessive behavior that overtakes many of us between Thanksgiving and New Year's.As we settle down for the rest of the winter, it's time to look ahead.Most people make some New Year's resolutions for themselves,and most are forgotten by the end of January.But sportswriters are lucky.We can make resolutions for others. (It's safe to say that those, too, will be discarded pretty quickly.

It's not too late to make New Year's resolutions that stick. By now, I expect that millions of Americans will have broken their New Year's resolutions, including the ever-popular but vague "saving more money" and "getting my finances in order." So why not start fresh and make new and specific resolutions you actually keep? Here are some ideas: Dig up your most recent checking account statement and see how much you forked over to the bank on monthly service charges, automated teller machine fees and any other charges, such as for insufficient funds (that is, bouncing checks)

Each year I probably waste a lot of readers' time by writing about New Year's resolutions. I mean, who really wants to know what another person plans to do differently, better or not at all in the coming year?I find that most people forget their own resolutions in about two or three weeks. OK, a month at the most. Your friends, to whom in a moment of bravado or weakness you reveal your resolutions, usually forget what it was you told them in a couple of hours. If they're over 45, maybe even 10 minutes.

Gardeners get a fresh start every year. Glossy catalogs full of new plants, ideas and inspiration fill the mailbox in January, and before you know it, you're making lists, plans and decisions. The New Year is upon us, but it's really never too late to make New Year's resolutions, and gardening resolutions are the kind you won't regret. A gardener's resolutions don't have to involve giving anything up. When you resolve to make your garden more beautiful, the changes don't have to be expensive or difficult or involve plants with names you can't pronounce.

People who make financial New Year's resolutions often keep them, according to a new survey released by the Lutheran Brotherhood in Minneapolis.Though only 16 percent of Americans made financial resolutions last year, 73 percent of them followed through, the survey found. Yankelovich Partners surveyed 1,004 Americans in November.An recent informal survey of shoppers at The Mall in Columbia found that many set financial goals, but not necessarily at the start of the year. Folks also said they usually accomplish their goals, particularly when there are incentives.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Want to know what labors of self-improvement other folks are embarking on? A web site, www.aristotle.net/newyears/newyears.htm, has been compiling a list of people's New Year's Resolutions. You are entitled to any of these -- or to make your own.To finally take the time, endure the ordeal, and learn to country/Western dance. If I do nothing else, this is what I desire, as well as to spend time in a lovely lady's arms. Thames.I am going to leave work earlier so that I can spend more quality time with my wife.

SINCE we are well into the new year, it's probably safe to say that you have broken all or most of your New Year's resolutions. This happened, of course, because all your resolutions involved things you didn't really want to do or stop doing.Stop smoking, exercise more, stop eating like a pig . . . all these resolutions require tremendous willpower and, let's face it, if you had that kind of willpower, you wouldn't be the wheezing, lazy, slob you are today.It is much better, in my wheezing, lazy, slob opinion, to make resolutions based on what you already want or don't want to do. These resolutions have a much higher chance of success and are a great way to bolster your self-esteem as you chain smoke Marlboros while lying on the couch stuffing your face with pork rinds.

THE meaning of most holidays is clear: Valentine's Day celebrates romance; July Fourth, independence; Thanksgiving, productivity; Christmas, good will toward men.The meaning of New Year's Day -- the world's most celebrated holiday -- is not so clear. On this day, many people remember last year's achievements and failures and look forward to the promise of a new year, of a new beginning.But this celebration and reflection is a result of more than an accident of the calendar. New Year's has a deeper significance.

Gardeners get a fresh start every year. Glossy catalogs full of new plants, ideas and inspiration fill the mailbox in January, and before you know it, you're making lists, plans and decisions. The New Year is upon us, but it's really never too late to make New Year's resolutions, and gardening resolutions are the kind you won't regret. A gardener's resolutions don't have to involve giving anything up. When you resolve to make your garden more beautiful, the changes don't have to be expensive or difficult or involve plants with names you can't pronounce.

It's not too late to make New Year's resolutions that stick. By now, I expect that millions of Americans will have broken their New Year's resolutions, including the ever-popular but vague "saving more money" and "getting my finances in order." So why not start fresh and make new and specific resolutions you actually keep? Here are some ideas: Dig up your most recent checking account statement and see how much you forked over to the bank on monthly service charges, automated teller machine fees and any other charges, such as for insufficient funds (that is, bouncing checks)

PHILADELPHIA -- Despite our best intentions, we break New Year's resolutions as fast as we make them. After studying this phenomenon for 30 years, I can tell you exactly why. For the vast majority of resolution-makers, there is simply no mental space to get that good behavior implanted. The answer is to free up space in your mind by removing the bad pattern that controls you before you can have room to implant the good pattern. This is the psychological version of "out with the bad air, in with the good."

Last week, I asked for your New Year's resolutions. Most of the resolutions I received were much more selfless than mine: I've resolved to slow down - again - to avoid a repeat of the speeding ticket I received in February. Jeff Gardner also acknowledged having an ulterior motive: high gas prices, which have changed the way he drives. "I have slowed down and stayed within 5 mph of the speed limit," he said. "I guess I should resolve to be more patient while I am driving. Try not to let the ill-advised moves of others bother me. And to give myself more time to get where I am going."

ATLANTA -- I'm making only one New Year's resolution this year: I will make no New Year's resolutions. I have finally resolved that New Year's resolutions only frustrate me since I never keep them. Oh, I've tried. Take the resolution about being more organized -- one that I've been making every other year for three decades. I've bought calendars; I've read books on time management; I have several early versions of personal data assistants in a drawer somewhere. (The instruction books were so intimidating I never learned to program them.

THE LAST word on whether white lines are crossable goes to the man whose words started it all a month ago: Martin Kirchhausen. "Your `clarification' of the solid white line problem in [last week's column] was nothing more than legal mumbo-jumbo," he wrote in an e-mail. According to Mr. Kirchhausen, I should have provided "a simple statement" that conflicting sections of Maryland's laws and regulations created this confusion over whether drivers should never cross solid white lines or merely be "discouraged" from doing so. He also said I should have advised readers "to follow the rules of common sense and common courtesy to not cross a solid white line."

The philosopher and psychologist William James once said: "We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves." Millions of people prove him right every year when they sit down and make their list of New Year's resolutions, then come up miserably short of fulfilling any of them. Why is it so hard to change? Because we're basically programmed -- by our brains, our bodies and the environment in which we live -- to do things the way we did them yesterday. And the day before that.

LOS ANGELES - We all do it. We make great big ambitious New Year's resolutions: we are going to lose weight, stop smoking, start working out, stay on top of our finances and do all sorts of things that are completely out of character. Then, around Jan. 3, it all goes to hell and we are right back to being the same lazy bums we have always been. It's as if we are trying to trick ourselves into being someone else. Maybe we think our bodies and our brains will be so confused by the calendar change that they won't notice when we become wildly self-assured and productive overnight, despite a lifetime of relentless mediocrity.

LOS ANGELES - We all do it. We make great big ambitious New Year's resolutions: we are going to lose weight, stop smoking, start working out, stay on top of our finances and do all sorts of things that are completely out of character. Then, around Jan. 3, it all goes to hell and we are right back to being the same lazy bums we have always been. It's as if we are trying to trick ourselves into being someone else. Maybe we think our bodies and our brains will be so confused by the calendar change that they won't notice when we become wildly self-assured and productive overnight, despite a lifetime of relentless mediocrity.

THE meaning of most holidays is clear: Valentine's Day celebrates romance; July Fourth, independence; Thanksgiving, productivity; Christmas, good will toward men.The meaning of New Year's Day -- the world's most celebrated holiday -- is not so clear. On this day, many people remember last year's achievements and failures and look forward to the promise of a new year, of a new beginning.But this celebration and reflection is a result of more than an accident of the calendar. New Year's has a deeper significance.

SINCE we are well into the new year, it's probably safe to say that you have broken all or most of your New Year's resolutions. This happened, of course, because all your resolutions involved things you didn't really want to do or stop doing.Stop smoking, exercise more, stop eating like a pig . . . all these resolutions require tremendous willpower and, let's face it, if you had that kind of willpower, you wouldn't be the wheezing, lazy, slob you are today.It is much better, in my wheezing, lazy, slob opinion, to make resolutions based on what you already want or don't want to do. These resolutions have a much higher chance of success and are a great way to bolster your self-esteem as you chain smoke Marlboros while lying on the couch stuffing your face with pork rinds.