How to Be Happy: Lesson 5
I’m diverging from my “Pursuit of Happiness” through-line here to address an important happiness lesson for this time of year. The rule is simply this: If you want to be happy (this year), treat all impulses to make (or keep) new year’s resolutions (NYRs) the same way you would (should) treat a sudden inclination to spend all your monthly earnings on lottery tickets or be the founding member of a naturalist colony at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. A resolution, as you know intuitively if not dictionarily, is, in our cases, an informal expression of intent. Some typical NYRs are to lose weight, get in better shape physically, put your financial house in order, and refrain from buying and inhaling a package of every new Oreo flavor as soon as it comes out. (Okay, that last one is less typical and one I most assuredly did not make and fail to keep last year.)
Of course, there are those who argue in favor of NYRs, that is, that setting goals is not a bad thing. Trouble is, as a Psychology Today article notes, “less [should be fewer — sheesh!] than 10 percent of people who make NYRs actually achieve them…and more than 50 percent of people who make resolutions can’t even remember what those promises were when asked later in the year.” To be helpful (I guess), the PT author lists a series of conditions under which you should make NYRs and a series of conditions under which you shouldn’t make NYRs. The first list, summarized, amounts to “If you don’t succeed…,” well, you know how it goes. The second list, also summarized, could be restated as “If you already have your shite together…” and, alternatively, “If you’ll never get your shite together…” and you can guess the rest.
Buzzfeed recommends that, instead of NYRs, you make a “Rememberlutions Jar.” This is a Mason jar, size up to you, that you fill with notes on the memorable experiences and astounding accomplishments you accumulate over the coming twelve months. If you’re ambitious and skilled (I’m not), you might even knit a cozy for your jar. I can see myself creating an RJ and then on January 1, 2020, remembering to wonder what I did with it and if I find it, which would be an astounding accomplishment to put in the 2020 jar, immediately going into a funereal funk because there’ nothing in it — not because I didn’t have memorable experiences or accomplishments, although that would be a definite possibility, but because I had put it somewhere safe on January 1, 2019, and then completely lost track of the jar and the concept.
If you’re still bound and determined to make NYRs, Forbes suggests you take a scientific approach to it. The psychologist being interviewed instructs readers on how to fulfill NYRs, which he describes as “creating new, desired behaviors.” His solution is to “embed cues that signal or prompt a person to exhibit the new desired behavior.” He suggests, for example, that if you bite your nails while driving, “tape a question near the steering wheel that says, ‘Do you know what’s under your fingernails?’”
This seems like a pretty good approach to NYR completion. To put it to the test, I went to the cookie aisle at Publix and taped a large sign over the floor-to-ceiling rows of “Milk’s Favorite Cookie” (MFC) that asked, in bold red letters, “Do you know what’s in Oreo filling?” When I came back the next day to see if the technique would work, some dastardly person had removed the sign, and, when I got to checkout, somehow a package of Dark Chocolate Oreos was staring up at me accusingly from my shopping cart. Mission unaccomplished, and the usual shame and guilt associated with failing to achieve an NYR flooded over me. Not enough, however, to keep me from sampling said cookies as soon as I was in my car.
This experience reinforces my happiness lesson stated above: avoid making NYRs at all costs. If you need a repetitive action to help you achieve this goal, which is an LTR (lifetime resolution) I might add, try this. Every New Year’s Eve, when the clock ticks toward midnight and the urge to make an NYR or ten tempts you with visions of a much-better self, imagine you are immediately disrobed and instantly transported here to stand naked among your fellow naturalist colonists.
See? Works, right? I know you’re feeling less stressed and happier already. No, no. No need to thank me. Really.
Image: Adelie penguins in Antarctica. Jason Auch — originally posted to Flickr as IMG_0760, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9703652.
(Published originally on RatBlurt™, January 11, 2019.)
