Every year as New Year’s Eve approaches, people start inevitably looking at their own lives, searching for ways to better themselves in the coming year.

This materializes for most people as a New Year’s resolution and in my life I have made plenty.

We all know the popular ones. 2011 will be the year to lost weight, kick cigarettes for good or pledge to make more time for family.

With this in mind, I made no New Year’s resolution. And before you think I am harboring delusional thoughts that I am perfect, let me explain.

I don’t like resolutions for the simple fact that it suggests this is the one and only time of year that a person can change. There is a sense of implied urgency that suggests if we don’t hold true to these promises to ourselves, we will be hopelessly bound to our undesirable habits for another year.

But this is not the case. You can lose weight in July, or quit smoking in April. Our habits and problems do not come in one-year subscriptions like the newspaper.

If the tradition of the New Year’s resolution, however, is too far instilled to avoid, realize this: if you jump off the bandwagon, you can always dust yourself off and hop back on whenever you choose.

On our website our new poll is about New Year’s resolutions and already some of our pollsters have admitted to breaking their resolutions.

Hopefully, these people will come to decide that a Jan. 10 resolution can be just as life-altering as a Jan. 1.