Unless procrastination is one of your serious problems, by now you’ve probably examined your life and determined to make it better with New Year’s resolutions.

Maybe you’ve resolved to eat more intelligently, exercise regularly, and/or be more patient with people who annoy you. Perhaps you’ve committed to being more direct, less cynical, more kind, less manipulative, or more punctual.

Making resolutions is the easy part. Keeping them – that’s another thing entirely. For many of us, our resolve weakens with the passage of time as old patterns and bad habits creep back into our lives. Sooner or later, most of us will fall off our diet or exercise regimen, lose our temper, be rude or late, or otherwise violate our resolutions.

The key to staying the course is to expect and accept occasional backsliding and not allow these moments of compromise or weakness to be used as an excuse to abandon our commitments entirely.

Sometimes there are good reasons. Sometimes we simply rationalized or succumbed to self-indulgent cravings. Either way, we’re more likely to improve our lives if we think in terms of getting better rather than being perfect.

Remember, it’s still quite an achievement just to improve our batting average in avoiding unhealthy and negative behaviors.

The most important resolution of all is to keep our resolve to slog through the tough times with determination. The idea is to be better -- smarter, stronger, and kinder.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.