If one of your resolutions is to start a regular exercise program, make this the year that your good intentions last. To help you, we asked Peter C. Siegel, a sports and peak-performance hypnotherapist who has worked with professional athletes, such as hockey players Alexei Yashin and Tie Domi and tennis player Anastasia Myskina, and winning teams, such as the New Jersey Devils. Siegel shows them how to use visualization techniques and positive self-talk to improve their confidence, overcome negative conditioning and perform at their best. Here are Siegel's tips on how to get motivated. Use them consistently and they'll help you stay active -- and fit.

1. Cultivate a winning attitude by focusing on the times you've been successful.
A lot of people don't think they can change. These people often believe that the inner voice that says "I can't" or "I'm not good enough" isn't being negative but is simply realistic. It isn't. It's you projecting your habit of being negative. A negative person will look at others who are successful and happy and say, "They're just lucky." They're not just lucky. They've worked diligently for a long time to get where they are. They had a certain mentality that drove them to do what they did. You, too, can call up that drive and you can change.

One way is to focus on times when you've been really successful at something. Recall the specific thoughts, feelings and images you had surrounding that success. Then use those sensory factors to drive yourself toward other successes. What was your inner dialogue or self-talk? What did you see? If you had a great run, picture the route and other factors that made up your visual field.

Draw on any success in your life and remember those feelings of satisfaction, pride and self-worth. For instance, if you were a successful tutor to a child, draw on that experience and use it to drive yourself to success in other areas of your life. Think about how good it felt to succeed and use that feeling as a catalyst to stimulate the behaviour that brought you that success.

We do it all the time with both negative and positive feelings. When people see or hear something that reminds them of an event in the past that was detrimental, they feel the same uneasiness they felt then. We can do the same with positive experiences.

2. Replace unrealistic images with achievable goals.
If you're looking at an ad featuring a young, hard-bodied fitness model smiling and enjoying her workout and you're thinking, I'm going to do that and it will quickly be the same for me, banish that notion. You have to be realistic about what it takes to get in shape. Working out is, well, work. And you have to do it over many months, not weeks.

Say you establish a goal of losing 15 pounds. First visualize how you would look from the front and back having lost those 15 pounds. How would you feel? What dress size would you have gone down to? You would also hear your friends commenting positively. You're not just fantasizing; you're creating a focus for your energy - a realistic goal. Create a detailed sensory impression so your mind has a strong image to conjure up as a powerful impulse to do something.

It's not that you couldn't do it; you just never had a strategy, encouragement or guidance to lead you to your goals.

3. Determine and choose the workout that is best for you.
First decide what your goals are: do you want to lose weight or tone and build muscle? Then choose a workout that lets you achieve that goal. If you want to become stronger and trimmer, you should combine a cardiovascular routine, such as jogging, cycling or swimming, with targeted weight training. If it's uncomfortable, don't do it. Find something that appeals to you - there are lots of options out there.