Browsing the archives for the new year tag.
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Why Happiness Is Key

States of mind

As we wrap up 2010 and look toward all the new things that will come around in 2011, I’d like to offer a goal for the coming year: happiness.

Pursuing happiness might seem frivolous, or selfish, or distracting, but there’s a good argument for it being the single most important thing to seek in life. Happiness is more important than beauty, because what use is it to be beautiful but miserable? For the same reasons happiness can be seen as more important than wealth, success, recognition, and pleasure. To put it another way, it doesn’t much matter what we have or which of our wishes are fulfilled if our possessions and fulfilled wishes don’t make us happy … since in that case what good are these things?

Even health is arguably less important than happiness, since living a long, miserable life appears to be less rewarding than living a short, happy life.

To take a pot shot at my own argument, though, it’s true that sometimes our possessions, abilities, and advantages can be used for other people’s benefit. For instance, money can be used to buy food, clothing, a home, and better education for children. This same argument can be widened to the question of helping others in general, and to compassion: surely it’s not good to be happy if happiness makes others miserable or prevents us from helping others?

However, I would point out that in most cases happiness makes us more able to reach out, improves our influence on others’ moods (see “How Other People’s Happiness Affects Our Own“), and provides a means to improve our willpower (see “Willpower as Caring About Lasting Happiness“). It’s also true that doing good works for others is one of the most powerful ways to make ourselves happy, as shown in numerous studies. For example, in one study it was found that people were better able to increase their happiness by spending money on someone else than by spending the same amount of money on themselves.

So compassion and helping others may or may not be more important than happiness, but since they tend to go hand in hand with happiness, it’s not particularly important to choose between helping and happiness.

With all of that in mind, why not make happiness your number one priority in 2011? I don’t necessarily mean pleasure or fun (see “The difference between pleasure and happiness“), but true happiness: satisfaction and joy with your actions and choices and life.

Or to put it another way: have a very, very happy New Year!

Luc

photo by Dawn Ashley

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Why New Year’s Is Such a Good Time to Make a Resolution

Strategies and goals

In an article last week (“Should You Make a New Year’s Resolution?“) I talked about New Year’s Resolutions and how to tell whether or not it’s worth it for you to make one. In this post I’d like to touch on a related subject, which is the value of New Year’s as a time to commit to a goal–that is, to make a resolution.

I’ll say first that the New Year certainly isn’t the only good time to commit to a goal. Almost any time, even when things are at their worst, can be a good time to change things for the better (see “Why the Worst Time to Change Things Can Be the Best Time to Change Things“).

Even so, the New Year offers some special advantages:

  • With the winter holidays over, for many of us the New Year is a great chance to incorporate something different into our normal routine without having to worry about the interruptions of vacations, holidays, or most other unusual circumstances. While it’s essential to find ways to continue to pursue our goals even when we’re pulled out of our routine, it’s easiest to get a habit rolling when things are at their most normal
  • There’s an emotional advantage to getting a new start, and even though on some level a new year is just a change in numbers, it does a real feeling of something new beginning that we can harness to our advantage.
  • Maintaining a winning streak can give extra durability to habits we’re trying to build (see “Harnessing a Winning Streak“), and January 1st is a convenient and effective date on which to start a new winning streak.
  • In a very real sense, it’s never a bad time to improve our lives. Even without its special advantages, January 1 is still a good date to start something positive.

I would offer a few cautions about starting a new goal, though:

  • Don’t start something new that will disrupt a good habit you’re already working on or that will sap too much time or attention from other priorities.
  • As tempting as it may sometimes be to try to remake our entire lives, choose only one goal to work on energetically at a time: choosing two or more almost always results in overstretching our time and attention, leading to failure. And be sure to choose the one thing that’s really most important to you.
  • Choose a set of behaviors (something you can control) and not an outcome (something you can’t control). For example, you might resolve to eat healthily and exercise (two ways to pursue a single fitness goal), not to get skinny; resolve to adopt good task management practices, not to “be more organized”; or resolve to work on your business idea, not to “get rich.”
  • Prepare first. It’s often hard to give proper support to a spur-of-the-moment resolution. By planning in advance you can make schedules, enlist help, read books, join groups, or do whatever else you need to give yourself the best chance of success.
  • Don’t give yourself a “bad habit bachelor party”: that is, don’t behave badly as a last gasp, as this will make it harder and more jarring to behave well. Making good choices is a reward to yourself, not a punishment, something that it will make you happy to embrace, not avoid.

This series will continue next time with a suggestion of a good way to review an entire life and take stock of what one goal is most worth pursuing for a particular person.

Photo by legalnonresident

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Should You Make a New Year’s Resolution?

Strategies and goals

New Year’s resolutions have a long history, reportedly stretching back to the ancient Romans in their worship of the double-faced god Janus and even a couple of millenia earlier to the ancient Babylonians. This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a good idea for you or me, though. If you’re already working hard on one goal, for instance, adding another goal can drain enough of your time and attention that both goals fail, the old and the new.

In an experiment tracking 3,000 people in 2007, only 12% actually succeeded with their goals. If you want to be part of that 12%–and you’re already way ahead of the game by reading articles like this–don’t proceed unless you know that the resolution and the timing are right.

New Year’s can be an ideal time to start work on a new goal. As we’re getting into the time of year when planning for a New Year’s resolution makes the most sense, I’d like to talk about why New Year’s resolutions can work, what gets in the way, and how to tell whether or not to make one in the first place.

To resolve or not?
Resolutions can be harmful if we go about them in a bad way or drain effort from a goal already being pursued. When considering making one:

  • Only focus on one large goal at a time. I know it’s hard to put aside some things we really want to accomplish while focusing on one particular goal, but changing habits (which is what we need to do to achieve goals) requires not only a good approach but also plenty of time and attention–too much for it to be possible for most of us to transform in two or more ways at once.
  • Only proceed if you know what you want and what to do to get it. Having unclear goals or lacking a plan will usually result in failure, which is disheartening and not very constructive. If you know what you want but not how to get it, do some research. You can start on this site, The Willpower Engine, where you can find hundreds of free articles on changing habits and pursuing goals, or by talking to or reading about someone who has done what you want to achieve, or by finding a good group to join.

I’ll continue with this series on New Year’s resolutions in upcoming articles by looking at  the special advantages of making a resolution at the New Year, some cautions, and a way to inventory your goals and dreams so as to go forward in the best possible way.

You might also be interested in some related posts:

Photo by Ravages

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