The Best New Year's Ever

One very simple resolution this New Year's eve could ring in the best year of your life. Here's how to have the happiest and most grateful year ahead!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Gratitude Diaries, a production of My Heart Radio.
Hi I'm Janice Kaplan. Thanks for joining me from more
practical ideas on how to be happier. Today's tip on
this New Year's Eve, make a resolution to start living
more gratefully. It could give you the best year of

(00:26):
your life. I never used to be a big fan
of New Year's Eve. It seemed to me like a
lot of fuss about not very much. No matter how
I celebrated, it always seemed to me like everyone in
the world was having a better time than I was.
Then a few years ago, everything changed. I was at
a New Year's Eve party, holding the requisite glass of

(00:48):
champagne and trying hard to look happy. The truth was
that my high heels were too high, my spanks were
too tight, and I couldn't wait to get home shortly
before midnight. But he turned on the TV to watch
the ball drop in Times Square, I saw people wearing
funny hats and dancing in the streets. I'd had a
perfectly nice year, but nothing that made me want to

(01:12):
dance in the streets. So I started to think about
what could happen in the coming year to change that.
I thought of all the obvious things, Well, I could
win the lottery, or maybe I could move to Hawaii.
But I also knew that nothing is quite as wonderful
once we get it as it seems ahead of time,
and we're all really good at complaining about what does occur.

(01:36):
So if I won the lottery, I might be complaining
next New Year's Eve that my taxes were too high,
and if I moved to Hawaii, I'd probably get a sunburn.
That's when it occurred to me that how I felt
about the coming year would have less to do with
the actual events of the year than with my own
attitude toward them. And I decided right then to challenge

(01:59):
myself to spend a year living more gratefully and see
what happened. One of the things that happened is that
I wrote my best selling book, The Gratitude Diaries, I
became known as a keynote speaker on gratitude, and eventually
I started this podcast. But in some ways those are
just asides, because the most important result was that simply

(02:21):
by changing my attitude, I ended up having the happiest
year of my life. No particularly big events happened that year.
I did not win the lottery or moved to Hawaii.
But I was able to give myself the gift of
thinking differently. I learned how to reframe situations so I
could see any event more positively. I came to appreciate

(02:44):
my husband, my children, and my work in a much
deeper and more resonant way than I ever had before.
I think that most of us are basically optimistic. We
get excited about New Year's because it feels like a
fresh start, a clean sheet of pay paper, a chance
to make things better. We do make resolutions, and you've

(03:05):
no doubt seen the many statistics about how we don't
keep those resolutions. One survey found that eight percent of
Americans break their resolutions by the second week in February.
But if your resolution is to be more grateful, it's
a process and you never have to break that. You're
simply telling yourself that you're going to be more aware

(03:27):
every day of trying to bring a positive attitude. You
might remember the old Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi,
where she sings don't it always seem to go that
you don't know what you've got till it's gone. It
was meant as an environmental anthem, and it still stands
as that with the opening line about paving paradise and

(03:47):
putting up a parking lot, but it has also taken
on an even bigger meaning, and hundreds of musicians, from
Bob Dylan to Counting Crows have recorded the song because
in any musical style, it has hit a chord. It
happens too often that you don't know what you've got
till it's gone. You have something wonderful right in front

(04:07):
of you, and you don't realize it until the flowers
are wilted, the lover has left, or the moment has passed.
This New Year's Eve, you can make a very simple
resolution that you won't wait to appreciate things until they're gone.
You'll appreciate what you have right now. None of us
know exactly what the coming year will bring, and the

(04:29):
one thing you can be sure is that most of
the pundits predicting right now will get it wrong. But
you can make the year right by accepting whatever events
do come your way and trying to put them in perspective,
to be grateful and to appreciate them just a little more.
I now love New Year's Eve, and I do get

(04:49):
excited about it. I don't put on a funny hat
or dance in the streets, and honestly, I'm not sure
that I'm even going to stay awake until midnight. But
I use New Year's as are my do to myself
that I'm in complete control of the coming year. My mood, spirit,
and attitude will determine whether it's a great year, far

(05:09):
more than any events that happen. So on this New
Year's make the usual resolutions to eat better, exercise more,
and maybe learn to play the piano, But then make
the most important resolution of all to be grateful, more
grateful for whatever you can do, and forgiving of yourself

(05:30):
for whatever you don't, that you'll take time every day
to appreciate the good and to spend more time seeing
the sunshine rather than the clouds. Thanks so much for
joining me this year. I hope you have a wonderful
New Year's and I will see you next week. Will
start one together with more ideas on how to add

(05:51):
gratitude to your life and make every day a little brighter.
Have a very very happy New Year. The Gratitude Diaries
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from I Heart radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.