Help and Support everybody around the world

Be honest: How is your progress so far on those New Year’s resolutions you lined up just a few weeks ago? As January wears on and the cold, dreary weather continues for many of us, sticking with your resolutions can quickly start to seem more challenging than you’d expected–and sometimes completely impossible.

If you’ve made and broken countless resolutions in the past and are already struggling this year, don’t give up hope just yet. It simply might be time to take a different approach to your resolutions. Understanding a little bit more about how the brain reacts to rewards and motivations could make the difference between forming a new habit for life and giving into temptation or laziness after a few weeks.

It’s that time of year when many of us get motivated to make ourselves better—healthier, wealthier, wiser, or just different—in the new year. Roughly six in 10 of us make New Year’s resolutions, according to a 2016 Harris poll.

But following through on those goals isn’t easy. Roughly half of those who are earnestly vowing to make improvements in 2018 are likely dusting off the same list they had last year. So if you want to actually accomplish those goals—or at least make a dent in them—by this time next year, use these five approaches.