Is this the easiest New Year tip to be happier?
The science of a resolution you can make every year, every day, every minute to help you live longer and be healthier & happier. Hope it's helpful.
My life in media/culture; whatever you want to call it, has been a long one. It is, in fact, almost 40 years since my byline first appeared in a newspaper. I was 16. The story was St Matthews Fair in The Cornish Times. A ‘how many things can you get in a matchbox’ competition was the highlight of that feature.
A subject matter which now, four decades later, seems infinitely more interesting than all of this week’s predictable ‘New Year New Me’ headlines.
Personally, I can’t believe we’re still trapped in the Groundhog Day of celebrating New Year with resolutions like this in print: why haven’t we reinvented this transition? Neurologically rituals are of course important. They help us mark the passing of time and make us feel we belong in certain period with a certain group and belonging is such a good thing for humans, so I see why we recognise the ending of one stage and the fresh new start of another but why do it in such an old fashion way (again and again)?
I also understand that from a psychological point of view we must acknowledge these changes as the seasons move on. But I just can’t read one more “I will/I won’t” resolutions pieces, I’ve seen too many. I’m so full to the brim with resolutions that none of them feel revelatory at this point.
It’s even worse on social media, where ‘content creators’ have wound themselves up like whirling dervishes in a bid to beat the algorithm of New Year. All of it looks and sounds exhausting. And what if the less likeable/good among us, serial killers perhaps, are also taking heed of all those Instagram inspo quotes I wonder: “Surround yourself with friends who would mention your name in a room full of opportunities for 2023” doesn’t sounds so proactive then.
I am aware I sound like a grumpy festive grouch but at the start of 2023 I have reached the tipping point with New Year features. But before you switch off wondering ‘who yanked her chain” as my teenagers say when I rage about why no one else ever replaces the old loo roll with a new one I did have some possibly useful thoughts about transitions, about change, about the ‘what’s next’ness’ off it all, about seeking moments of joy.
There are many reasons we find comfort in those boring New Year New You headlines but perhaps one of them is because we are fearful of the grey areas of life, particularly now under this weird cult of super positivity where everything must be sun lit and with purpose. Perhaps we are frightened of the space between one place and the next, the journey from an ending to a new beginning when uncertainty is a possibility?
Throw us a few New Year resolutions as lifebelts during the wobbly sea of a year end transition and we can cling on to them without really thinking about who and how we really are. We can easily grasp at a few future goals (it’s what we’ve been fed for years), but perhaps we can’t just simply be and see what happens next (if anything).
Whenever I write for UK print media now many editors still want to start the process with a black and white headline: I must be on one side or the other, they rarely want pieces posing an in-between opinion, or simply exploring an issue, asking a question rather than coming to a specific conclusion. They know people (readers) don’t like grey areas. Most editors think in ‘resolutions”: 10 ways to, 5 things for, 6 secrets of: you know the kind of thing, so we’re trapped in a cycle of avoiding the messy, grey areas, that place of just being and seeing what happens next.
But often life is grey, it’s more complex than right or wrong, one side or the other. We’re more complex than that, the life stresses, or challenges we face are more nuanced. We’re complicated creatures, there is no one size fits all for any of this because we are all such different individuals (which is why resolutions features aren’t really useful over the long term!).
It’s a shame we can’t read more about the grey areas of life. Maybe I am not looking in the right places (and I’d love to be enlightened on where to find this kind of piece if so) and obviously as much as I loathed all the resolutions being fired at me like unwelcome pellets of positivity this week I did start to feel left out. After all I hadn’t made any (such is the tricky nature of an attention seeking midlife woman like me). So while I was happily sat in the grey area wondering generally what to aim for in 2023 I came across a new book which is out this month which may resonate with you if resolutions don’t.
It’s called “The Good Life: lessons from the world’s longest study on happiness” by Professor Robert Waldinger and Marc Shutlz. It reports on the 75-year study of 724 men (yes of course men, always men!) and their subsequent families. The men are from all different backgrounds and it is a respected controlled study.
The conclusion of this Harvard Happiness Study is that it is the quality of our closest connections which is key to our physical and mental wellbeing. Nurturing close contacts with people who will support you will keep you well and help you live longer. Good relationships trump everything. The data showed that the happiest and healthiest men at 80 were the men who had the best close relationships in their 50s. And it showed that loneliness is more dangerous than smoking or bad genes, it is the killer to end all killers according to the study. Love, the scientists concluded, is what keeps you happy and healthy.
This perhaps rather reframes the thinking around resolutions. Maybe being loved and loving well is the simplest goal to aim for? You can aim for it every day or every new year, I mean it is now scientifically proven to cover all your bases (this respected and rare study is a global one off). Love works in the grey areas between one thing and the next and it works for those who want more concrete plans too, those seek rules. It’s all you need so cultivate it, find it, nurture it, give it to yourself. Work out what it means to you, it doesn’t have to be harmonious love either according to the researchers it just has to be a love where you know someone has got your back. It’s harder than it sounds to find that love in a life partner of course, but you can find close, loving connections everywhere if you put your mind to it, if you seek it.
The report also showed that after retiring those men who actively sought out new communities, new people to replace work colleagues did rather better than those who did not.
There is a brilliant 12 minute 2015 TED talk about this study given by Robert Waldinger which you may like too and it ends with a good New year thought I think around a Mark Twain quote:
“There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.”
Other people who may help you get comfortable with the grey areas of life, have a google to find the parts of their work that resonates with you:
Mo Gawdat’s podcast Slo Mo
Dr Tara Swart on Instagram author of The Source
Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail podcast
Katie Brindle’s Instagram account
Dr Pooja Lakshmin’s writing in the New York Times
New York Times wellness section
Donna Lancaster’s books and work.
4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman - Time Management for Mortals. A great antidote to perfectionism and trying to do everything. Worth a read over a resolution!
I don't do resolutions and certainly don't look at anyone else's, but I focus on a theme(s) I want to explore. Last year was 'education' and i took math classes at college to facilitate a work promotion as well as laying the foundation for possibly another career path. Doing this on top of full time work and family was grueling but also fun and rewarding, reframing decades of false beliefs (not being good at maths). Because I ended up not moving my body much during that year and cooking the same recipes on repeat, my theme for this year is nurturing my body. Doing yoga and walks, and baking stuff that might make you cringe just a bit Lorraine (beetroot brownies) 😉