While they’re easy and somewhat enjoyable to make, you’ll probably soon come across an article about how New Year’s resolutions don’t endure. One such article claims nearly two out of three are abandoned in a month and 10 out of 11 don’t last a year.

I don’t doubt these figures for a second, for I don’t doubt the sentiment first expressed by poet Francis Quarles nearly 400 years ago. That the road to resolution lies past doubt.

Whether it be a figurative city or a furtive state of mind, being in doubt can do in what all New Year’s resolutions are really about. Change.

So what can improve your odds of continuing the new actions essential in any desired change whether they’re part of a New Year’s resolution or not? That’s a tricky one because the most important component to it, motivation, can be a chameleon.

I do know what keeps mine from changing color, though: keeping my thoughts right. Which is also the first step in a simple yet true Buddhist refrain: right thoughts, right mind, right actions.

But nurturing the first so that the second and the third occur isn’t an easy ask. It goes against our naturally pessimistic tendencies, a genetic holdover from the caveman days when all optimism did was decrease life expectancy.

If you somehow get past our inherent pessimism, what comes next is an especially ironic twist: Keeping your thoughts “right” increases knowledge — which thereby increases doubt.

That’s why Buddhist monks spend a fair part of their day in medication. And why you should read both A Guide to the Good Life (Oxford, 2009) by William B. Irvine and Gift Shop of Gratitude (G & D Media, 2024) by Peter Lovenheim.

They’ll keep your mind right, assuage your doubts.

Irvine’s book, an easy-to-follow exploration of how embracing the Stoic philosophy produces its title, explains that in order to achieve the Good Life, we need “to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking things for granted.”

Lovenheim’s book is a short read on one enriching way to do that. To journal your gratitudes, to “put a new spin on the gifts and people and places ... that have brought [you] happiness and joy.”

Now we all have a lot to be grateful for, but we all encounter a lot every day that keeps us from reflecting upon that fact. Which is why ending some days by reading one of the 20 short chapters in Gift Shop of Gratitude (whether you do the suggested journaling or not) makes sense.

Consider the whimsy and wisdom within the three-and-a-half-page chapter about one typical gift-shop souvenir: t-shirts. In it, you learn more than the trivial fact that nine in 10 Americans refuse to throw away these casual tops solely for sentimental reasons.

You learn that this hesitancy is an attempt to hang on to what the ratty, old, and now probably too small t-shirt represents. “Memories of valued events, activities, or experiences.”

Similarly, in the two-and-a-half page chapter about another potential keepsake, bookmarks, Lovenheim shares a humorous saying on one, “I FELL ASLEEP HERE,” before turning serious. He reminds you any forms of writing and especially great books can “impart insights and wisdom,” so you should metaphorically bookmark them, as well as journal about them, to express gratitude for what they do: “inform, entertain, comfort and inspire.”

While reading about bookmarks didn’t inspire me to journal about the insights and wisdoms found in the other book already mentioned, it did lead to me to read it once again.

I find myself often rereading A Guide to the Good Life because if I’m ever questioning the things I’m doing, the life I’m leading, or the values inherent in both, Irvine’s matter-of-fact explanation of Stoicism keeps my thoughts, mind, and actions right.

What I sometimes do wrong, though — as I am sure you sometimes do— is attempt to control things I cannot control. Irvine warns all this does is make you “thwarted, miserable, and upset.”

So he stresses first and foremost what the Stoic philosopher Epictetus does in his celebrated handbook. To stop trying to control what you cannot control.

But this does not mean, however, you should not strive to win something like a tennis match, Irvine explains, only that this desire occupies a gray area (my term) where you have partial but not total control. And to lead a Good Life, it’s important to understand the distinction.

It’s also important, Irvine notes, to engage in negative visualization, the periodic contemplation of the many ills that could possibly incur. For “he who has perceived their coming beforehand,” he explains by citing Seneca, “robs [them] of their power.”

A theft that is invaluable to keeping your mind right.

And keeping your mind right is crucial if you are really serious about sticking to any change or New Year’s resolution.