Remember that time you made a New Year's Resolution and it only lasted a few days? Me too. I think we've all been there. But the question is, why are New Year's resolutions so prone to failure?

Psychologists say that we see the New Year as a clean slate to achieve our goals, calling this phenomenon the "fresh start effect." So, we know why we make resolutions. But why can't we make them stick? As human beings, we're afraid of failure. So, when we inevitably do fail, we quit.

I believe that when we start at the beginning of the year, we expect ourselves to be perfect at achieving our goals for the whole year. Instead, we should allow each day to be a clean slate. You know what they say, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again!

If your goal is to avoid sugar and you give in to that enticing chocolate chip cookie, don't scratch the whole goal, just count it as an occasional treat and try again tomorrow! If your goal is to go to the gym every day and one day you'd prefer to just stay in bed, give yourself a rest day and start fresh the next day.

Setting goals is an important part of self-improvement, so making a resolution is great, but putting it as a New Year's resolution can often put too much pressure on us and leave us more likely to quit when we aren't as perfect as we hoped to be. No one is perfect, even the most disciplined, goal-oriented people have their off days.

I have goals I'd like to accomplish in 2016, but I may not start on January 1. When I was in elementary school, our assistant principal always said on the announcements each morning, "Make it a great day, or not. The choice is yours." So, that is my advice to all of you. Take your goals one day at a time and don't scrap the whole thing after one bad day, or even one bad week.

Happy goal-setting!