On New Year’s Day more than a few of us annually resolve to change our lives—or at least our more self-indulgent habits. On the hunch that all good things flow from physical and mental well-being, Scientific American Body offers this list of recommended resolutions based on the advice of health professionals and the scientific literature. Whatever your goals, it will help you understand why hardly anything you could choose to do would have a bigger impact on your quality of life.

Perhaps the best New Year’s resolution is coming up with a strategy to sensibly tackle each of the five listed below. “New Year’s resolutions are notoriously unsuccessful because people have a superficial commitment to them,” notes health psychologist Frederick Gibbons of Iowa State University. “Whatever behavior you want to change requires a specific plan for going about it.”

This article was originally published with the title New Year's Resolutions You Owe Yourself.

1 Comments

1. 1. Andrus 11:26 AM 12/23/08

   The weird thing about human nature is that while with each one of these five resolutions there are obvious benefits to sticking to them, so many of us fail to do so.
   
   Financial incentives have proven to increase motivation, and so we started http://www.pledgehammer.com . It helps you make (and hopefully keep) your resolutions by making them public and providing you a financial incentive. And it also helps charities raise more donations.

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