I was on a flight recently when the traveler sitting next to me asked what I was doing. “I just gave a talk at a university,” I responded, which brought a follow-up and unexpected question: “Are you a good speaker?” I thought about that one for a bit. “Well, I’m not a great speaker,” I replied. “If I were great at it, the things I said would stick with my audience for the rest of their lives — so I am probably just a good speaker.”

And so it is with New Year’s resolutions. They just don’t seem to stick for us.

Research conducted by Strava, a social network for athletes, shows that January 12 is the day New Year’s resolutions die — amazingly, just twelve days in. But is that really so surprising? Be honest with yourself; have you ever set a resolution only to give up on it after just a few days, a mere week, a month, or midway through the year? Of course you have; we all have done just that. In fact, I’ve been the heavyweight champion of the world at just this. Almost every year I start off motivated as all hell — disciplined and strong, and stay that way for a period of time. Some years I last a month or two, but I always succumb to the same thing, habituation, and the daily living and grinding of life take over, and the motivation subtly but insidiously wanes — day by day, inch by sad inch. The resolution before long doesn’t seem so vivid, and soon it isn’t even a goal. It’s a distant memory.

Why? Because, among other things, you have been programmed for self doubt since the first time you vowed you would do something and did not — and the older you get, the more that programming has become hardwired. But it doesn’t have to be that way at all — because, keeping with the analogy, you can introduce a much stronger program. I know this because I’ve done it for the past year. I’ll be brief.

On January 1, 2019, I set a resolution, and as I write this, a year later, I can say not just as an anecdote but with empirical facts, I have reached and maintained that resolution for the entire year. The resolution was to get as physically fit and I was in high school when I was an athlete — and there was a reason for this resolution I will get to very soon. I started 2019 at 185 pounds, and toward the tail end I have been at a steady 170. But the resolution wasn’t about weight; I wanted to be as fit at 47 as I was at 17. So I ran. I ran at 4 am in the pitch black, I ran in the snow-covered trails of Frisco, Colorado in sub-zero weather at 10,000 feet altitude. I did sprints on the track until I made myself sick. And on Friday, September 13, 2019, at 47 years old I ran a timed mile at 5 minutes and 56 seconds. This was the first time I had run a sub-six minute mile since high school. I had hit my resolution 9 months and 13 days into the year.