Consider the laundry list of resolutions you have kept for yourself (if you believe in such things) over the last few years. How many of them have you actually accomplished? (I define New Year's resolution in the popular sense, of losing weight or of volunteering to helping others; not in the sense of setting life goals like signing up for your first credit card or getting married.)
The trick with New Year's resolutions is to either ignore the whole thing and resolve to do nothing particularly different, or to focus on at most one resolution.
If you are serious and choose only one thing in your lives that you'd like to make better, it'll surely happen that year. By December 31 of that year, the resolution should be an integral part of our lives, to a point where it is no longer considered out of the way or special, but rather routine. The next year after that, pick something else. Year over year, it'll add up. And then things can actually change. Then, things will actually stick.
Now that you have only one resolution, make sure it is reasonable. For example, if you resolve to do something with a numerical value to it, divide that number by 2. Aim for that instead. (This can be for wanting to go fishing with your buddies 5 times next year, or hoping to sell 4 of your paintings, or eating one apple everyday. Change it to going fishing 2-3 times, selling 2 paintings, or eating one apple every two days.)
I do not believe in making resolutions public (because frankly, others don't actually care, and if they do, they'll forget anyway). Nor do I believe in writing resolutions down (intended to hold yourself accountable to yourself). If you need to do either one of these tricks to get you to focus on your single resolution, I would argue that the resolution you made is either too much to handle, that you are not ready to deal with the self-induced "change", or that you are not serious about keeping your resolution. Reevaluate your resolution or reevaluate yourself. There ought to be no give and take. There ought to be no forgiveness if you break this simple promise to yourself.
If you are at worried about not keeping your resolution, either resolve not to make it in the first place, or take baby-steps. Remember not to change to be someone else; make your own, not borrow one from others. It doesn't work that way.
Things will happen regardless of whether you resolve to do them or not. The purpose of a "New Year's resolution" is not to cover all aspects of your life. You will get to whatever you need to deal with when the time comes (and you'll know when). New Year's resolutions ought to be, I think, just an excuse to focus on one particular aspect of your life. The coming of a new year shouldn't be the only time when you consider making changes to your life. If it is, that's just foolish.
Things will happen as they will. The best you can do is to plan for one simple goal at a time and stick to it. You just have to set aside enough of your "resolve" to follow through and to undertake whatever else comes your way the rest of the year, not just on January 1.
Farewell 2008. Hello 2009. I'll see you on the other side.
(Image from timessquarenyc.org.)