More than half of Americans, reportedly, make New Year’s resolutions. And 88 percent of those resolutions end in failure, according to a study by British psychologist Richard Wiseman. There is a reason for this fail rate, and once we understand it, we’ll be able to keep our resolutions long enough to make them stick. The bottom line is that our brains cannot handle New Year’s resolutions when we rely too much on willpower. The human brain is divided up into sections—each one handling different aspects of brain function. The prefrontal cortex (the part located at the front, behind your forehead) is assigned the tasks of staying focused, handling short-term memory, solving abstract tasks, and using willpower. Here’s the problem: Part of your brain cannot handle all of those things at the same time. It requires a huge amount of focus and willpower to change a learned behavior overnight, which is …