Office Hours with Arthur Brooks - 3 Ways to Set Smarter New Year’s Resolutions

Starting point is 00:00:00 A lot of people make New Year's resolution. How many people actually do New Year's resolutions? About half of Americans. Between a third and a half of Americans. About 22% of them have failed within one week. About 50% have failed within three months. And 81% have failed within two years. That is to say that most people fail quickly.

Starting point is 00:00:19 And for the big overwhelming majority, the habit they're trying to create or not permanent. What do most New Year's resolutions have in common that actually leads to their likelihood of being unsuccessful. The answer is they tend to be negative. What we really want is how to make better resolutions that are more likely to succeed. And I've got the data to tell you exactly how to get this done. There are three steps. Hey friends, welcome to office hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. Happy New Year, almost. Maybe you're watching this before the new year. Maybe you're watching this after the new year. This is the New Year's episode. New Year, New Year, New Year, More Happiness. is I want to tell you today about New Year's resolutions, why they fail, how they can succeed,

Starting point is 00:01:08 and what are the New Year's resolutions that if they succeed will bring you the most happiness. So my goal today is to give you better resolutions and the protocols that will lead you to more resolution success. Let's see what we do here and let's see if you can actually have a better year in 2026 because you are trying to improve yourself. Now, how do I know you want to improve yourself? you're watching or listening to office hours. This is a show about how you can actually become a happier person and bring more happiness into the world. That's inherently a productive thing to do. Thank you for being part of this audience and for bringing this show to other people. My mission is to lift you up and bring you together with the people that you love, this time of year and

Starting point is 00:01:48 all times of year. And have you become a teacher of this so you can lift other people up in bonds of happiness and love using the science and ideas that I propagate in this show? The idea is to do it in language that you can actually understand and most importantly language that you can share because it doesn't mean anything unless you actually take this out to the world as well we need a generation of happiness teachers this should be our vocation is to lift other people up in bonds of happiness and love if you like something that you see here and you want to feedback on it you've got criticism if you've got ideas questions anything please do write to me at office hours at arthur brooks dot com that is printed above or below me right now and don't forget to leave a review on

Starting point is 00:02:30 Spotify or Apple or whatever your platform is of choice. Oh, right. Let's get started on what we're trying to do here today. A lot of people make New Year's resolutions. I always used to be kind of against it. Like, it's so dumb. Like, why isn't any particular day? It's so arbitrary.

Starting point is 00:02:46 Why January 1st? And the truth that is that this is an ancient right. New Year's Day actually goes back to the ancient Romans. January is named for Janus, the two-headed God. And in January, they would make a resolution to the God, the two-face God, that they would be better in the coming year. And the belief is that that would give them, you know, better luck. Whether it did or not, it sort of depends on whether or not they were good at the resolutions per se. It's sort of superstitious in its way, but it doesn't have to be.

Starting point is 00:03:14 My point being, however, that this is a venerable tradition. This is just some sort of goofy self-improvement manifesting type of thing. this goes way back to the idea that there's certain points on the calendar. January 1st, your birthday, your 30th birthday, whatever happens to be, where you can mark that as the beginning of a moment of forward progress that you can chart in your life. And there's the reason that people do that is because it tends to kind of work. There's a lot about that. People will often say that I started doing something really positive in my life.

Starting point is 00:03:48 And it wasn't just an arbitrary Thursday in March. that wasn't related to anything on the calendar. It generally speaking had to do with something that was momentous, something that had had meaning to them. You find, for example, that on the nines and on the zeros on birthdays, there's a lot of research on this. People do all sorts of weird things. They're more likely to run half marathons when they, like at 59 and at 60.

Starting point is 00:04:13 They're also, unfortunately, more likely to engage in extramarital affairs because they're sort of like, my life, you know, they're taking stock on all these types of things. we're going to keep this on the positive side, on the resolutions that you make to be an actual better person, and we're going to talk about the New Year's resolutions in particular. But again, everything I say here could be your birthday resolution, can be your whatever resolution. This is how you can be better at wanting to make a positive change in your life. Now, what do most New Year's resolutions have in common that actually leads to their likelihood of being unsuccessful?

Starting point is 00:04:46 The answer is they tend to be negative. even if they're counts as positive, they tend to be fundamentally negative, which is to say that they are an avoidance goal. There's two kinds of goals in life. There's approach goals and avoidance goals. And that's just how people in my business, as professional social scientists, they have to put, you know, words that don't sound intuitive on something because that's how we get tenure friends. Approach goals means, obviously, you're going towards something, and that's positive. Avoidance goals are that you're going away from something. That's negative.

Starting point is 00:05:16 A lot of New Year's resolutions, even if you couch it in positive language, they're fundamentally negative. They're avoidance goals. For example, you say, I want to eat better. And what you're trying to do is to avoid bad health and usually it's to lose weight. You know, why do you want to eat fewer sweets is what it comes down to? Because you want to avoid having a bad blood test with your lipid profiles, you know, your large particle LDL, whatever. Or you just want to lose weight. That's really an avoidance goal.

Starting point is 00:05:46 people talk about, you know, wanting to be more focused in their work. They want to procrastinate less because it's actually bad for their work and they feel bad about themselves. I was like, I'm going to, I want to save more money. Actually, what you want to do is spend less. You're trying to improve, get rid of these bad habits. So these negative goals that people actually have. I want to stop doing a thing I don't like. I want to break a bad habit.

Starting point is 00:06:07 That's what most of these things have in common. And these avoidance goals, they tend to be hard. And I'll talk to you in a minute why avoidance goals, they tend to be especially hard for us. But let's get into the data about the fact that they're not that successful. There's a terrific psychologist at University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, Norcross, who has been done, he's sort of the world's leading expert on New Year's resolutions. I mean, we all pick off this sort of part of the universe.

Starting point is 00:06:33 His stuff is so great on this. And there's a really interesting article I'll put in the show notes in the journal of clinical psychology. It goes back a few years, about 20 years old now, but it's called success predictors, change processes, and self-reported outcomes. of New Year's resolvers and non-resolvers. And this is sort of the canonical source of data.

Starting point is 00:06:50 But all the data that come together, and here's basically what it comes down to, a little over 20% of people have failed in their New Year's resolutions by the end of one week. Oh, one data point before that. How many people actually do New Year's resolutions? About half of Americans, between a third and a half of Americans actually have New New Year's resolutions. About 22% of them have failed within one week. About 50% have failed within three months.

Starting point is 00:07:14 and 81% have failed within two years. That is to say that most people fail quickly, and for most people, for the big overwhelming majority, four and five, the habits they're trying to create are not permanent, or the habits they're trying to break. The breaking of the habit is not permanent, which is sort of grim. I mean, that's one of the reasons that gym's,

Starting point is 00:07:34 membership goes through the roof like bonkers at the beginning of the year. And that's one of the reasons that your gym will take way more memberships than it could possibly do. deal with. And that's the reason that you probably don't like going to the gym the the first week of January. If you're a gym rat like me, one of the main reasons I first put a gym in my house in the first place, even when I didn't have the space or the money to do so, was because January was so horrible. I mean, I couldn't get a good workout in. And I like to work out every single day. And you go to the gym and it's crazy. People don't know how to use

Starting point is 00:08:06 the equipment and every machine is in use. But don't worry. Wait around. You know, by February 1st, things are really great and by, you know, March, it's back to its old self. Your gym actually has sold way more memberships than it can possibly accommodate, knowing that most people are not going to be using their gym memberships. They're just, you know, it's the triumph of hope and these avoidance goals of, you know, trying to not, you know, be so unhealthy all the time, trying not to feel lazy or whatever it happens to be that they're trying to do to change themselves in this fundamentally negative way. So why do they fail? And this really gets back to this, there's this literature, great psych literature on avoidance versus approach goals. But there's two big reasons

Starting point is 00:08:44 that these avoidance goals, negative goals, why negative goals work less well than positive goals. Number one is that negative motivation, well, it's negative. And when you're focusing all the time on something that's that's basically unpleasant, you know, when you're thinking all the time, like, you know, I want to go to the gym more and I want to stop eating junk food because I don't like the way that I look. You're going to be kind of going this, you know, room. on the negative in your life again and again and again and again and again. And what we find is that this negativity, it's really good for getting you to get up off the couch, but it's really bad over the even medium term for keeping you motivated. You don't stay motivated by negative stuff.

Starting point is 00:09:24 This is one of the reasons that you find that you can negatively motivate your children very quickly, but you can't sustain it. You can negatively motivate your spouse, but over the long run, it doesn't work at all. Well, the same thing is true for you because you're the most important manager yourself. You are the most important relationship that you're trying to lead. And so, therefore, avoidance goals are not good for you either. They just, they're not motivating is the way that that works. You'll say, yeah, they got me to the gym. Totally. I don't want to look so crummy. I don't want to feel so crummy. But a week later, you're like, I don't want to be thinking about the negative things in my life all the time. That's exhausting. It's not fun. And so you don't. And you

Starting point is 00:10:04 rebel against the negativity. You're rebelling against your own negativity. And that's while you've fallen away from these goals. That's the first reason. The second reason that avoidance goals are not great is because the thing that you're running away from is actually something you like. There's an immediate gratification that's involved. And you can stay away from your immediate gratification through willpower for a while, but you usually can't rely on your willpower for very long. There's a whole lot of these really interesting studies on the futility of willpower that I love. I mean, people who will, you know, they'll put their hand in ice cold.

Starting point is 00:10:39 water and the longer they hold it there through their willpower, the worse they are at being able to resist eating some sweets like a cookie. So you'll go into the experiment and the experiment will ask you, do you want to eat this cookie? And you'll be like, no, I'm going to diet. And besides, it's 10 o'clock in the morning, I'm not going to eat this great big chocolate chip cookie. And you say, great. And you won't, by the way, even though the cookie is sitting right in front of you. But if you dip your hand in this water and hold it in there through sheer willpower, your willpower willpower will wear out like a muscle. And after a couple of minutes, you pull your hand at and you'll eat the cookie.

Starting point is 00:11:12 Because willpower is willpower. You can't keep it in place that long. What you really need to change is your habits. You can't be relying on your willpower. And your willpower is really a lot about what people are doing with their avoidance goals and the New Year's resolutions. And there's an immediate gratification of things that will overpower willpower in the long run, is what we find. So those two things are working together.

Starting point is 00:11:34 And these are the big reasons that these negative goals lead to failure in relatively short order. So we want to figure out how to get past that. And we will, because I'm going to show you the three things to do, to have better goals and more success along the way. Now, there's another force, by the way, besides just negativity and gratification that actually sabotages your goals. And that's forces outside you. And there's really interesting studies from the early 2000s, when people using data from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, that's when people used to smoke a lot more.

Starting point is 00:12:11 I smoked until 1991, until March 25th, 1991, at 7 a.m. in the morning and 30 seconds. Not that I'm counting, and not that I miss cigarettes every single day or that they were kind of part of the meaning of my life. And I remember, you know, during those years, that there was a weird thing on television in advertising, advertising from cigarette industries picked up in January and February.

Starting point is 00:12:37 And the reason is, according to a pretty interesting study from 2000, called cigarette advertising to counter New Year's resolutions in the Journal of Health Communication, that I'll put in the show notes, that they were actually ramping up their advertising according to these researchers. This is not my assertion. This is according to these researchers to counteract a common year's resolution and not smoking anymore, which is pretty interesting. Maybe that's the reason that I quit smoking in March instead of January and February. But there's also sabotage besides that that we actually see at a more personal level. It's not limited to tobacco companies.

Starting point is 00:13:11 There's really interesting stuff. I'm going to find an article and put this in the show notes that your spouse might be sabotaging your self-improvement efforts. And this is a really common thing where a spouse is trying to break a bad habit that the other spouse engages in. And the spouse that's not breaking the habit sabotages, the improvement spouse, because it makes the person who's still engaged in the bad habit feel crummy is the way that that works. So, for example, if you know, you and your spouse are couch potatoes and you want to start going to the gym and your spouse doesn't want to and you're going to the gym, they're going to say, come on, just stay home. You know, you're tired. Just one day.

Starting point is 00:13:50 This is super, super common. This is a super common kind of joint metacognition between couples that we see. Or, you know, parents will do it to their kids. friends will do it to each other. You know, if you stop drinking, when I didn't drink, I had friends who was like, really, you're kidding me? Come on, one. You know, I had people wanted me to smoke, too, after I quit smoking.

Starting point is 00:14:11 I said, are you kidding me? I smoke one. I'm going to smoke for the rest of my life. And yet I had friends who, you know, wanted me to do that. So sabotage is actually really, really common with weight loss and something because your self-improvement efforts make other people feel lousy about themselves, actually. So one little moral side when you're trying to do something, don't morally lord it over other people. Number one, because you might fail in your resolution and feel stupid.

Starting point is 00:14:38 But number two, because that's actually not helpful to anybody else. Okay, so that's why your resolutions are failing. They usually have failed. You're probably frustrated. And now we know the reason. These are the three big reasons that they actually fail. What we really want is how to make better resolutions that are more likely to succeed. And I've got the data to tell you exactly how to get this done.

Starting point is 00:14:58 there are three steps. These are the three resolution protocols, my friends, how to have the best positive resolutions that are most likely to succeed and help you meet your goals. Number one, make your resolutions positive, not negative. Number two is actually have tiny goals that are progressive as opposed to huge goals

Starting point is 00:15:17 that are sudden. And number three is, if you're going to have negative goals, make them the right negative goals. So I'll show you exactly the characteristics of the right negative goals. Okay. So step one, make your goals positive. Instead of eat less junk to lose weight, talk about eating better.

Starting point is 00:15:36 Actually, figure out what eating in a more nutritious and delicious and healthy way actually looks like. And the way to do that, actually, is instead of saying, I'm not going to eat this, I'm not going to eat this, and put all this stuff on forbidden lists, that's the short way to, you know, to develop if you're successful in eating disorder. And, you know, so maybe it's even better if you're not. successful at lots of data on that so the people who want very restrictive diets if they're successful something like 25 to 30 percent of those people go on to develop eating disorders why because they want progress in this way and they develop a really unhealthy relationship toward food which is not this not this not this the better way to do it is to crowd out bad habits by doing something better and more wonderful so one of the things that I recommend to a lot of people if they want to eat better

Starting point is 00:16:23 is they take a course in nutrition and they take classes and how to how to cook. A lot of people has done how to cook and that's a fun thing. You'll actually meet good people that you actually like and you belong to a community that's dedicated to this. You'll make new friends. You'll associate friendship with actually eating better. And you can see that that's an approach goal, not an avoidance goal. So eating better, that's one way to do it.

Starting point is 00:16:44 Exercising more to see that you can actually feel good. And what I recommend is exercise goals that are not so you hate your body less, but doing things so you like the effect more. And that really comes from starting with exercise. And I had an exercise episode. We'll put that in the show notes so you can go back and watch that. So you feel better. You feel better about yourself and your body actually feels better. And the right kind of exercise will actually do that. So I recommend, for example, starting with four belts of exercise a week for the first six weeks and doing the same kind of zone two cardio just to get into the point where you're actually, your body feels better. It's like, I like this. It's not that I, I,

Starting point is 00:17:22 I hate myself less is that I like how I feel more. You get the point on that. And then actually you can get more exotic about that as you go on, which is an important thing to do. Or you're doing something that's team-oriented. You're actually doing a sport. Or you're doing something that actually makes you feel tougher and makes you feel stronger. But it really should be for you.

Starting point is 00:17:40 If you're actually doing something with your exercise so that you feel like you're displeasing other people less or it's really about it extrinsically about other people, that's a negative motivation. That's an avoidance motivation. This should be something that's actually better for you. Getting started working as opposed to stop procrastinating. You know, I'm going to make these goals so I dive into something. I'm going to put my to do-to-list together the night before each day,

Starting point is 00:18:07 and I'm going to lay my work out. And I'm actually going to start with some really, really generative leisure. What is that? Starting with chilling out? No, no, no, no. It's a future episode coming out on how to do leisure really, really well. Having that on your to-do list, making sure that the work that you, that requires most creativity and generativity.

Starting point is 00:18:23 That's highest up on your list. And making these goals positive as opposed to negative, beating yourself up over procrastination and trying to do it through sheer willpower. Saving money is a really important example of this as opposed to wasting money and going into debt. Saving money, having positive saving goals, as opposed to having negative non-consumption goals is a really important thing to do. Seeing money actually going into your account as opposed to simply thinking about how you can not be such a spendthrift. That's an important way that you can actually turn negative into positive.

Starting point is 00:18:55 So make positive goals. That's a first part of the protocol. And almost everything that you do can be given that kind of, that twist upside down. I will talk about negative goals in the second because negative goals can be really awesome, but you've got to do them in a particular way. That's protocol number one. Protocol number two is tiny goals. Now, there's a great book that some of you may have read.

Starting point is 00:19:16 I'll put it in the show notes. It's called Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg out at Stanford, which is a little known university in Palo Alto, California. And BJ Fogg talks about the fact that like micro goals are the best way. Micro habits are the best way to turn into these real goals. And so your resolution at the macro level, at the meta level might be to be doing something like, get in shape, but that's not the goal that you should be focused on at all. You can actually break it up into daily, weekly, monthly,

Starting point is 00:19:49 monthly versions of your New Year's resolution to start with, you know, five pushups a day, 20 minutes of walking, 10 minutes of walking, depending on where you're actually starting out, a micro habit, these tiny habits, and breaking up your New Year's resolutions into tiny resolutions as well, that's the way to do it because that is so, I mean, the neurocognitively, much sounder approach to actually changing the patterns that you're building up in the nucleus accumbens of your brain. That's the way to do it, is working with these tiny habits as opposed to going to these resolutions like, save the world. Yeah, no, no, not, not, no, no, no, no, no, no, say something nice to somebody on the subway today, whatever it

Starting point is 00:20:28 happens to be. And those tiny habits will stand you in good stead. That means, for example, I'm going to eat better. Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to figure out how to have a really healthy breakfast. And you want to know what the healthy breakfast is that I like, go back to my morning protocols, and you'll see that that's a cup of a half to two cups of non-fat, unflavored Greek yogurt with weight protein powder berries and walnuts and to start your day that way. And you start it, you'll like it by the way. It's completely delicious. And that's the one good goal. I'm going to eat perfectly every day for the entire 2026. That's insanity. That's a willpower goal that you're not. And then it's going to be broken almost immediately for all the reasons I've talked about

Starting point is 00:21:09 before. This is the way to actually get that done. One good meal. And the best one is actually breakfast. I'm going to start saving money. I'm going to start saving 10 bucks a week. I'm going to start saving 10 bucks a week. And then I'm going to go to 20 bucks a week. And then I'm going to go to $40 a week. Before you know it, you're going to be saving a billion dollars a week. Okay, you get my point. Micro goals are the way to actually do this. Micro resolutions is protocol number two. Protocol number three, if you're going to have negative goals, here's the right way to have negative goals. The right way to have negative goals is to actually stop doing things you hate. Now, it might seem completely counterintuitive. Like, why would I stop doing something?

Starting point is 00:21:47 something if I hate it, I would already not be doing it. Well, that's completely wrong. That's actually wrong. There's a bunch of stuff that you shouldn't be doing that you hate and that you're doing. And there's a lot of psychology about why you're doing that. You might be doing it because you become really path dependent because it's something that you haven't questioned. Maybe for years and years and years, maybe it's something that you feel pressured in doing. But you need to set up, and I would strongly recommend this. Your life's going to improve so much. If you have resolutions to stop doing things that you shouldn't be doing that you actually hate. This is going to take a little bit more imagination.

Starting point is 00:22:21 I'm going to give you three examples of three things that you're probably doing and that you probably don't like and they're lowering your happiness that you should stop doing today. And these are small things, but these are going to have a really tangible effect. These are great resolutions. Number one, believe it or not, stop looking in the mirror before you leave the house in the morning. Seriously, stop looking in the mirror. So let me give you an example.

Starting point is 00:22:42 I had somebody who worked on my back when I lived in Boston. If you see me shifting my chair sometimes, it's because I have pain in L4, L5, and L5 in S1. I've got a great spine doctor in Virginia, where I live now. But when I was in Massachusetts, I had a guy who worked on my back every week. And he did physical therapy. He was fantastic.

Starting point is 00:23:02 He was nice and he was skilled and he was just a great guy. And I asked him, how did you get into this and how did you get so good at this? And he said, I had a major life transformation. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, I used to be a fitness influencer. What's that? I mean, I kind of know what that is. I mean, that's you, you know, today that would mean that you take your shirt off

Starting point is 00:23:21 and show your abs on Instagram. Don't worry. I'm not going to do that. And nobody needs that. And you're selling supplements and exercise programs and all that. And he was doing that for a long time. And I said, was it fun? He said, no, I hated it.

Starting point is 00:23:33 I was super miserable. I was completely miserable. I never ate what I wanted for 10 years. And, you know, I was always worried about how I looked. And it was just misery. I was so unhappy. And I had to stop, but I didn't know how to stop. And I said, so what did you do?

Starting point is 00:23:47 And he said, I finally got fed up. And I, you know, I got rid of my social media and I resolved that I was going to become a different person. But the first thing that I did was I took every mirror out of my apartment. All of them. All of the mirror is gone. Bathroom, bedroom, bedroom, closet, all of it. Oh, no more mirrors. I said, really?

Starting point is 00:24:06 He said, yeah. And then he said, I, I showered in the dark for a year. So I couldn't see my own. abs. And he said, I was cured. And then I went to physical therapy school and I studied acupuncture and I'm in this new way of life and my life is just so much better. Just so much better. Okay. Now, that's a insane goal for you, maybe, although maybe not. But here's the microversion of this. That's the positive negative that I'm talking about here. The first thing that we do, first thing in the morning is look in the mirror and go, I mean, if you're like me, like I got a face for

Starting point is 00:24:39 radio friends. It's like, ah, yeah, bald. I mean, there's something about you that you don't like and you're reminded of it and you're probably beating yourself up about it. Here's this tiny goal that you can actually engage in. Don't look in the mirror just in the morning. I mean, look, if you've got hair, well, I'm hopelessly jealous of you, but you know it's more or less okay. It's not like on backwards. It's just, it's fine. and go out in the morning, try this for a week, go out in the morning without looking in the mirror. You will psychologically be in a different place than you were before because you're actually starting to break a little habit that you didn't like that was actually probably lowering

Starting point is 00:25:24 your happiness and that you don't have to do. You will find that you don't have to do it. Now, there's other kinds of mirrors. These are, they're metaphorical mirrors in your life as well. Your social media notifications are a form of mirror. Don't look at any social media notifications before noon. So it's a mourning protocol is not doing that. Really, really important thing. And your life is going to be better. And you're not going to know why. Here's why.

Starting point is 00:25:47 Because you have started to break a negative habit that you didn't like and you don't have to do. That's number one. So that's mirrors. That's the first idea. Second idea. Stop reading politics in the first half of the day. Stop. Stop.

Starting point is 00:26:01 I mean, I got the data, man. I got the data. So according to the Pew Research Center, which is this gold standard data on American life. There's just two or three sources of data that will survey Americans every year. One of them is Pew. Great organization. 65% of Americans today say that they're exhausted always or often about politics.

Starting point is 00:26:21 Do you want to start your day by feeling exhausted? You will, probably, almost 7 and 10 likelihood. You will if you start by looking at politics. And guess what? I have news. Friends, you don't have to. You don't have to. The world won't stop and you won't be a worse citizen.

Starting point is 00:26:37 if you don't look at political news on social media or in the newspaper for the first half of the day. So don't do it. And your life is actually going to start to change because it's not something that you like. I have a crystal ball. You don't like it. It's true. By the way, what percent say they feel excited about politics? Four percent.

Starting point is 00:26:55 So one in 25 of you don't take this advice, the rest of you. And you don't have to do it. You absolutely don't have to. So that's the second thing to stop doing. And once you stop, you're going to be out of the habit. By the way, the reason that you're, you do that is because you've been productized by the media and political establishment, have told you that you need to look at it to be properly informed as a citizen.

Starting point is 00:27:14 And that's actually built up these dopamine pathways in your brain, in the outrage industrial complex and the reactivity that you've got. And there's the neurobiology is actually feeding into the technology. And you're the product when you're doing this. Rage against the machine, friends. Join me in rebelling and breaking that habit, that negative habit that actually brings you down. As a matter of fact, here's the third one. Don't look at your device at all for the first hour.

Starting point is 00:27:41 That's one of my morning protocols, if you'll remember, is don't look at your device for the first hour because it captures your brain. And again, I'm not going to ask you to not look at your advice for the whole day, but don't look at your device for the first hour of the day. And it will actually set your psychology, which is, of course, involved in your neurobiology to have a happier, more productive day. That's what Ryan Holiday talks about. It's really interesting because most of the research today, it talks about, devices in the last hour of the day, not the first hour of the day. So this is a new area that researchers have just started to look at. So this is not something that has all this empirical backing yet, not because it's not supported, but because there's nobody's actually done the

Starting point is 00:28:19 experiments on this. Do the experiment on yourself, and I promise you you're going to like it. Ryan Holliday, my friend who's been on the show and who talks about stoicism, he's a contemporary philosopher in the stoic tradition. It's phenomenal. He doesn't look at his device for the first hour of the day and he believes this really rewired his brain. I believe the same. I believe the thing is true. Make it part of your protocols. Remember, one third of people say that their device is more of a leash than a source of freedom. That's once again, those, those are Pew data. One third. Now, that's important to keep in mind because, you know, my device sets me free for all sorts of things. If it's more of a leash than a source of freedom, that's a big problem.

Starting point is 00:28:58 You can make it more of a source of freedom for your life than a leash for you if you take that first hour and break that first habit that you don't even like. All right. One more quick idea before we finish out this episode. This is one big thing that I bet you can have as a positive 2026 protocol. This is something I'm going to do a whole show on, but I just want to wet your appetite on this. The one thing that you can actually do today that will remarkably, it's a remarkably easy thing to do if you do it right, as a matter of fact, that will improve your 2026 is forgive somebody this year. One of the things that you're hanging on to, and again, this falls into the category of not doing something, this stop doing something that's a habit, but that you hate.

Starting point is 00:29:51 There's some resentment in your life that you can probably set down. And forgiveness is funny because I've done a lot of research on forgiveness. Forgiveness is not forgetting. I'm not asking you to, you know, take some sort of sodium pentafal and forget or to, you know, take, you know, to roofy yourself. That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about taking some sort of resentment and just like, you know, stop by the side of the road and open up the car door and set it by the side of the road and then peel out like gravel behind the wheels of your life and just take off, man. You actually can do that. That's probably the habit that is the most common negative habit that brings people down.

Starting point is 00:30:29 And there's somebody in your life probably because most people actually have this. I mean, look, 44% of people today are estranged from at least one relative, 17% from somebody in their immediate family. When I talk to people in the research that I look at, and this follows common sense as well, almost everybody's carrying this heaviness right now. Set it down. And again, you don't have to forget. You don't have to be naive. It just means that you don't have to carry the resentment for anybody else. I was talking about this with Esther the other day because there's a couple of things that I want to say.

Starting point is 00:31:03 down this year and and she said this esther said this because she's smart to refuse to forgive is like holding on to garbage is like hugging garbage right are you hugging a bag of garbage right now you don't have to actually i give you permission january first actually no this second to actually stop hugging that nasty stinky bag of garbage and i don't have to show you the research all the research clearly shows that your self-esteem will improve, your hope will improve. Who knows, maybe make a list of five people to forgive this year, or at least one big thing that you actually want to set down your own resentment. This is a technique that can truly change your life. Hope that helps. Let's do a couple of quick questions, and then we'll stop for the year.

Starting point is 00:31:52 A slightly shorter episode. Number one, this is from Jennifer Knight. She asked this on YouTube, how can we keep our personal peace and not be seen as uncaring or privileged? The way to keep personal peace without actually ignoring other people around you is to have a practice of transcendence. And I've talked about this in the past, much, much more so coming in all the episodes upcoming on the practice of finding meaning in your life. Transcendence means to rise above yourself, to stand in awe of something else. And we all need these practices. I talked a minute ago about Ryan Holiday and Stoicism. It's a great way to do it.

Starting point is 00:32:28 You know, standing in awe of the greatest composers who's ever, ever lived to bring more philosophy and spirituality into your life, to start a vassan of meditation practice. For me, as those of you who follow me know, I go to Mass every day. I'm a Catholic. That's a practice of transcendence that it doesn't mean I'm uncaring.

Starting point is 00:32:45 On the contrary, I dig in more in my caring for other people's lives, but it actually allows me to do so in a spirit of peace. that's how you need to do it, is you don't need to be separated from others. Here's the paradox. You need to be separated from you more. You need to get a break from you more, such that you can dig in more with others, more transcendence. Here's an anonymous question by email. I'm, you know, a good old anonymous is writing in pretty frequently these days.

Starting point is 00:33:14 How does one in pursuit of being happy in a relationship face the daunting challenge of letting go of offenses? Oh, yeah, I just talked about that, didn't I? One more quick thing on the idea of letting go of garbage. It's one thing for me to say it, but it's actually kind of a harder thing to do. So here's one last bit on that protocol for Anonymous and for me and for all of us. Visualize doing that first. Imagine yourself not actually caring so much about something. Not forgetting.

Starting point is 00:33:42 Just not spending time and mental energy thinking about a source of grievance, a source of resentment, actually letting go of that. Imagine yourself saying, yeah, whatevs, whatever's. Somebody did me dirt. They did wrong to me. It's okay. All right. I'm not going to forget it. You know, I'm not going to go back to that,

Starting point is 00:33:59 but I'm not going to have that actually to find who I am to me. Visualize that first. That's maybe the first step in actually taking, taking the plunge into letting go of the garbage in the first place. That's all we got today. Thank you for watching this. Happy New Year to you. I want you to know that I'm so grateful to you for watching office hours in 2025 and

Starting point is 00:34:21 and 2026, we've got tons of cool stuff coming up in 2026, some special guests, some expansions to what we're all about. Our audience is growing every week, and I'm grateful to you for that. My love and my family's love to you and your family, I'm thinking about you and your resolutions. I'll be praying for you. Please do the same for me. Let's make 2026 a beautiful, beautiful year not just for us, but especially for the people around us by lifting them up and bringing them together. and bonds of happiness and love using the science and ideas that we're talking about here and all the ideas that actually come into our heads and into our lives. Please like and subscribe to the show.

Starting point is 00:35:01 Make sure that you keep giving me comments. Now and all the way through 2026, let's be a community together of love and happiness. See you next week.

Office Hours with Arthur Brooks - 3 Ways to Set Smarter New Year’s Resolutions

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