The great news is that ‘doing good’ helps create meaningful and satisfying lives. The “high” created by good deeds can make you happier and even live longer. It can certainly help beat the winter blues – resolutions expert and leading psychologist Professor John Norcross, at the University of Scranton, Pennsylvania, has said that “setting and reaching a meaningful New Year’s resolution results in increased self-confidence and improved health.”
Living the Good Life
Behaviour aimed at our well-being can be divided into two kinds. One the one hand there is ‘hedonistic’ behaviour aimed at pleasure and gratification. On the other hand there is ‘eudaimonic’ behaviour, named for Aristotle’s theory of what makes a Good Life. Research (PDF) has shown that eudaimonic behaviours, which are more purposive and often involve doing good for others, actually lead to greater well-being for ourselves than short-term hedonistic behaviours. Meaningful relationships with friends are better than short-term relationships that don’t go anywhere, for example. And helping other people is more likely to make you happy – both at the time and in subsequent days – than indulging in short-term pleasures.
Helping others and helping yourself
Being happy about yourself and developing a positive attitude through helping others can therefore have a profound influence on your resolutions. There’s nothing wrong with self-improvement or with making resolutions aimed at developing new habits for yourself. But making social resolutions, aimed at improving the lives of others, is not only altruistic and likely to help other people, it can also improve your own chances of feeling better about yourself and changing your own life. As happiness guru, Professor Richard Layard, from the London School of Economics said about Resolution Revolution “There is compelling evidence that people who do more for others also feel better themselves”. Dr David Hamilton, a pharmacologist goes even further, his findings show that when we are kind to others our bodies release the hormone oxytocin which reduces blood pressure and slows down the ageing process helping us stay healthy for longer.
Read some examples of social resolutions.
