This year I am going to stop smoking. I am going to lose weight. I am going to cut back on drinking. I am going to stop working such ridiculous hours.

What are that chances of these resolutions succeeding? Well, it all depends on how motivated we are. So what motivates us? Nothing really. However, sometimes we feel instrinsically motivated. That is, nobody actually motivates us but certain people and certain situations create an environment that makes us feel motivated from within.

What are some of the features of this intrinsic motivation? The first thing we need is choice. If we are told that to lose weight we must walk every day for an hour and we either hate walking, or when we walk it stirs up a sore knee, then that is pretty useless advice. On the other hand, if we are given a range of choices for being more physically active, some of which capture our imagination and don't hurt the knee in the process, then we may just tune in.

But, knowing that say a 20 minute work out on a fit-ball is great and doesn't hurt the knee, we still are not motivated until we know how to go about it. Thus a second requirement for self motivation is to develop a strategy, eg. learning a few routines to do on the fit-ball. But even this won't be very motivating if we aren't very good at it or if it feels a bit silly.

The next requirement for self motivation is competence, ie. we must get to the point where we gain some skill and confidence in what we are doing. This may require both coaching and practice. Slowly our competence will grow and we may get to the point of personal satisfaction and enjoyment in doing such activity.

The next thing we need is to be optimally challenged so we can build our skill further and begin to gain autonomy or mastery over our own destiny.

Finally, for us to sustain these new found skills we need rewards. Not controlling rewards such as "if you stop smoking I will buy you a Ferrari", but rather encouragement from family members, friends or our doctor that makes us feel good about achievements, eg. "since you stopped working 70 hours a week you don't seem grumpy any more Dad" or "the doc said my blood pressure is down without taking tablets".

So when making New Year's resolutions think of choice, strategies, gaining competence, being challenged, gaining mastery and finally receiving rewards that really do mean something. Good luck and thank you to Professor Edward Deci (Faculty of Clinical and Social Psychology, University of Rochester and author of "Why we do what we do; the dynamics of autonomy") for giving me the inspiration and instrinsic motivation to write this article.