>"And better ones to consider instead."

“Let me suggest two direct happiness resolutions for 2021: forgiveness and gratitude. In this difficult period in our history, from the pandemic to the culture of political contempt, there is a lot of potential for bitterness in our lives. Open up social media and you will see nonstop Olympics-level grudge matches. Even worse, estrangement between family members is strikingly common; one study published in 2015—even before the polarizing political period following the 2016 U.S. presidential election—found that about 44 percent of people were estranged from at least one relative, nearly 17 percent from someone in their immediate family. One of the most frequent questions I get from readers is about how to deal with family conflict and estrangement. My answer is a New Year’s resolution to forgive. In experiments on forgiveness interventions—helping people forgive those who have harmed them—scholars have found clear evidence that forgiveness has direct happiness benefits. Forgiveness increases hope and self-esteem, while lowering anxiety and depression. This astounded me personally, but my wife found it blindingly obvious. “To refuse to forgive is to cling to something unpleasant,” she reminded me. “It is like hugging garbage.” I had to concede that it’s nice to let go of garbage. Easy to say, hard to do, of course. One project to teach and foster forgiveness comes from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, which produces forgiveness workbooks for people in countries traumatized by violence and injustice. The process they recommend, using the mnemonic device REACH, is useful for all of us: (R) Recall the hurt; (E) Empathize with the offender; (A) Altruistic gift of forgiveness; (C) Commit; and (H) Hold on to forgiveness. You can run your own experiment on forgiveness and happiness by making a list of five people to forgive in the new year, and then using the REACH technique to do so in both word and deed. Second, resolve to be more grateful. I know it’s hard sometimes to feel gratitude as we struggle through the pandemic. It will still be a while before life is not disrupted for most people, and some will be suffering the consequences of COVID-19 for a long time. But nearly everyone has something to be grateful for, and the happiness rewards of focusing on those things are enormous.”

This is one of the better “self help” articles I’ve read recently — Has a good mix of advice and practicality. “This stands to reason, of course: If meeting self-improvement goals were so easy, we wouldn’t need to make resolutions in the first place—we would just change. The reason so many people keep observing this New Year’s rite is because they believe that their lives will be better if they make a transformation requiring some sacrifice. The reason they so often fail is because the resolutions they choose don’t match their true goal of greater happiness.”