Now where did I put my list of New Year’s resolutions? 

Oh yeah, now I remember: I didn’t make a list this year. Come to think of it, I didn’t make one last year either. Hmm, when did this revolutionary trend begin?

Let’s face it. Opting out of the time-honored practice of annual New Year’s resolutions is a bit radical given the fact that listing everything we plan to do differently in the coming year is as American as apple pie, ice cream, eggnog, turkey, another slice of apple pie, gravy, mashed potatoes, Twinkies, fad diets, self-help seminars, Nordic Tracks, gym memberships, 6-pack abs, the nicotine patch and 30 day rehabs.

I’m pretty sure my previous commitment to annual lifestyle makeovers began to unravel during my last really big everything-must-go family yard sale. 

Maybe it had something to do with schlepping my barely used exercise equipment from its home in a dusty corner of the basement into the brilliant sunshine on our front lawn. 

I was huffing and puffing at a fairly alarming rate by the time I got it up the stairs and as I paused to catch my breath it dawned on me that the past half hour or so was probably the most vigorous work out I would ever experience with my, rather expensive, experiment in self-improvement. 

The fact that my wife, a lifelong fitness buff herself, had taken to referring to it as “your coatrack” should have been a tip off.

The seeds of rebellion planted that spring morning soon began to sprout and grow. I realized that, despite decades of resolutions, made with varying decrees of resolve, I had almost never, (scratch that) I had never actually succeeded in bringing about any of the desired lifestyle changes using this approach.

To be perfectly honest about it (and if you're not being honest about something like this you’re basically cheating at solitaire), instead of stimulating positive change, all those lists of well meaning resolutions sooner or later (mostly sooner) ended up as abandoned projects. 

Ultimately this left me feeling more like a failure than if I’d never made the darned list in the first place. 

By now I’m sure you’re thinking that I’m just some old sourpuss, devoid of optimism and hope and resigned to a life of bad attitudes and even worse personal habits. 

Ah, but you’re wrong! In fact, since I decided to forgo those unrealistic, setting-myself-up-for-defeat annual lists, my actual tally of genuine positive lifestyle improvements has continued to get longer. 

An excellent example of this improved, self-improvement record is that I’m currently more than halfway through my fourth consecutive year as a non-smoker. 

I’ve lost count of the number of times I firmly “resolved” to give up cigarettes on New Year’s day only to find myself guiltily torching a cheroot, like some schoolboy out behind the barn, a day, a month or a year later and feeling that much worse about myself for having failed yet again.

You may be wondering if the New Year’s resolutions didn’t work, what did? Simple, that age-old motivator of human progress, enlightened self-interest. I now realize that setting some arbitrary start date was doomed to failure for the same reason that enlightened self-interest is most likely to succeed, in a word, motivation! 

As long as I was trying to quit smoking for some abstract reason like the advent of a new year it wasn’t going to happen. Nor was I likely to be swayed by the comments of well-meaning doctor’s, nurses, friends and family members. I’d need to be prodded into action by personal experience if I was ever going to change. 

As I write this, The White House and The U.S. Congress are still arm wrestling at the edge of the “fiscal cliff.” I have no idea whether they have been or will be successful. If they do succeed, you can thank the cliff itself. Why? Because avoiding a catastrophic economic meltdown is a powerful motivator.

In the case of my cigarette habit, motivation arrived via $5 a pack pricing, a fiscal pothole hopefully deep enough to get me off tobacco road for good. 

These days I’m more likely to make a “gratitude list” than any resolutions. If you’re wondering how my exercise routine is going, check back with me on that next year.