If you're like me, you probably make some of the same New Year's resolutions every year: Exercise more. Practice my violin more often. Put more money into savings.

I have to make the same resolutions because I don't meet these goals each year.

If you want to meet your 2012 goals, this WSJ article suggests asking your loved ones to suggest New Year's resolutions for you:

Most of us could use help achieving our goals. Who better to tell us how to improve ourselves than someone who knows us well—perhaps better than we know ourselves—and even may be all too happy to offer up some tough love? And if we promise to check in regularly with this person to discuss our progress, we'll probably do a much better job of keeping our resolutions.

"We all have blind spots, but the people we are intimate with can see through them," says David Palmiter, a couples therapist and professor of psychology at Marywood University, in Scranton, Pa. A loved one can encourage us to meet our goals and hold us accountable when we slip, he says.

I think this could work, but you have to be careful when you're telling a family member ways they could improve. Don't just criticize them. Make it a conversation, like Palmiter suggests, and ask them to give you ways to improve as well. Also, don't be offended if they don't take your suggestions.

For more tips on keeping your New Year's resolutions, read my series appearing in the paper every day this week. Here's the stories for Monday and today.