Yesterday, most of us were eating black-eyed peas, greens and cornbread — and making resolutions for the New Year.

Today is the day that most of us begin keeping them, or trying to. The keeping is much harder than the making, as most of us have discovered over the years with one broken resolution after another.

Resolutions run the gamut from the health-related, such as quitting smoking, losing weight and getting more exercise, to the uncommon, such as telling jokes that actually make people laugh, learning to sky dive, building your own boat and so on. Some, of course, are aimed at being a better person such as spending more time with your family, really listening when others talk, telling your spouse how much he or she means to you.

The primary reason that people make these resolutions is that they perceive they have shortcomings that need correcting.

However, so many of us have become so ingrained in what we do that we have a hard time making the perceived corrections.

Next year many of us will make the same resolutions for the New Year as we made this year.

Good intentions are not enough to help us keep our resolve to improve ourselves or to improve our relationships with others.

However, those intentions are important or we wouldn’t express them as resolutions, so perhaps in some small ways we do improve in the areas intended. That “small ways” actually involves a piece of advice that many experts give on this matter, which is to resolve to do the small things that are more likely to be done and expand out from there.

Whatever your resolution was, though, good luck for if we all keep our resolutions this is likely to be a leaner, more fit, healthier and friendlier nation and world.