A New Year’s Resolution You Can Keep

Is there something you’d like to accomplish this year? According to one study, you’re 10 times more likely to accomplish it if you make it a New Year’s resolution. And yet, resolutions have an abysmal track record.

John Tierney, co-author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (with psychologist Roy Baumeister), predicts that by the end of January, a third of resolutions will already be broken. By July, more than half will be abandoned. In the end, some research indicates, only about eight percent of people who make New Year’s resolutions succeed in keeping them.

Much has been written about how to hold yourself to that New Year’s declaration of change. But what if the problem is less about motivation than the kind of resolutions we’re making?

Most resolutions are aspirational: Exercise more, drink less, spend less time online. They rely on willpower to carry us through the year. When willpower falters, the resolution collapses.

But there is another kind of resolution—one that doesn’t require self-reinvention yet has the potential to transform. It’s also one you can realistically keep.

And it’s deceptively easy: Spend one year keeping a journal of both gratitude and kindness.

Source: ©Pamela Paresky 2026

Why Gratitude and Kindness Belong Together

Years ago, I created a guided journal called A Year of Kindness. The premise was simple. Each day, make a brief journal entry about what you’re grateful for and at least one thing you did for someone else. You don’t need the actual journal to do this, just a notebook or a device and a few minutes a day. What matters most is the consistent practice.

The idea behind creating the journal was straightforward: Gratitude shifts attention, kindness pulls us out of self-preoccupation and builds connection. Kindness helps us recognize what we can give. Gratitude helps us notice what we’ve received. Together, they reinforce a sense of agency and awe, two necessary ingredients in the pursuit of happiness.

When I created the journal, research had already outlined the benefits of gratitude journaling. And a small number of studies were beginning to investigate journaling about kindness. More recently, however, research has begun to offer empirical support for combining the two.

In one study examining the effects of practicing both gratitude and kindness together, participants who engaged in the combined practice showed significant increases in self-esteem and gratitude along with decreases in perceived stress. Gratitude, self-esteem, and low stress are associated with greater happiness. While causality is not clear, taken together, the results suggest that practicing gratitude and kindness in tandem may help increase happiness.

That finding aligns with a growing body of work suggesting that happiness is not something we achieve by focusing on ourselves but something that emerges when we direct our attention outward.

“If you just do a gratitude journal, you end up passive,” says organizational psychologist Adam Grant. “People end up more motivated after they do contribution journals—where you think about what you did for others.” Part of that motivation, he explains, comes from “feeling capable of making a difference.” His conclusion: “I’ve just become a fan of doing both.”

A Simple Practice for the Year Ahead

So what does this resolution actually look like in practice?

Whether or not you use a paper journal, each morning, write down at least one thing you’re grateful for. Gratitude is not about ignoring your suffering or pretending everything is fine when it isn't. It’s about training attention—learning to notice what others do for you, what makes life meaningful, and what is good about your life even when things are difficult.

Each evening, write about at least one kind thing you did for someone else. This doesn’t have to be grand. It might be as small as slowing down so that another driver can get in front of you, holding an elevator door, or offering a kind word to a stranger. Often, people say that at first they can’t think of anything kind they did. But after several days of practice, you will begin to notice just how often you choose to do things for others—and you’ll start to look for opportunities to do so.

To be an effective practice, it has to be consistent. Don't worry if you forget at first to write each day. Just put the journal or notebook in a place you'll see it every morning and night, or create a repeating reminder in your phone. If doing both at night works better than morning and night, do that. Find what works for you.

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From time to time you can also include expressing gratitude outwardly: sending a note of appreciation to a friend, an old teacher, a colleague, someone who meant a lot to you in the past or someone who is meaningful to you now. Writing about gratitude changes how you feel, but expressing it not only strengthens relationships, it can also be extremely meaningful to the recipient.

One final piece matters too: Allow your emotions. Being kind to others does not require always feeling cheerful or untroubled. Accept that you have feelings—whatever they are.

Remember that emotions are fleeting. We tend to say, “I am angry” or “I am sad,” as though the feeling is who we are. But feelings are experiences, not essences. When you recognize that you have feelings, your feelings no longer have you. Freeing yourself from temporary feelings allows you to be more sustainably happy.

Happiness is not something we find by chasing it directly. Again and again, research and experience point to the same conclusion: Happiness is a byproduct of a meaningful life, a life oriented toward others.

Make gratitude and kindness your New Year’s resolution. Then, a year from now, measure your success not by willpower but by how you acted—and how a year of kindness transformed your year.