New Year’s Resolutions to Help Others Can Make You Happier

Already planning to drop those pounds you put on in quarantine next year? Perhaps your New Year’s resolution is to get back out and travel more. Whatever the plan is, a researcher says you’re better off throwing your 2021 goals out now because few ever get accomplished. To change things up, and make yourself happier, the expert on motivation and well-being claims resolutions to help others will be better for you personally in the long run.

Richard Ryan, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Rochester, says, “We found that when people are focused on giving to others they experience deeper satisfactions than when their goals are more self-oriented. For example, experiments show that doing something benevolent for others, even when you will never meet the beneficiary, increases your positive mood and energy.”