Are you someone whose New Year's resolutions are focused on being happier, healthier, or more successful? Or are you someone whose resolutions focus on being more loving and giving to others?
Interestingly, studies are showing that if you want the former, you really ought to concentrate on the latter. That is, if you want to be happier, healthier and more successful in the new year, just try being more loving and giving to others.
Recent studies have shown that being kind and generous to others will increase your level of happiness. It also has a powerful, positive impact on your mental and physical well-being, improving your self-esteem, keeping you healthier and enabling you to live longer. Recent studies even show that being more giving is the secret to getting ahead.
It's a win-win situation. Caring more about others has now been shown to be really good for you, too.
And there's another reason to be more loving and giving toward others, in the coming year and in the future: the more you care about others, the more they'll care about you, and the more caring they'll be, in general.
When you're loving and giving, the people on the receiving end of your kindness and generosity are touched by your warmth and it often moves them and inspires them to be more loving and giving to those around them, as well.
Imagine how great it would be, if you were more caring toward the people in your life and these people were more caring to the people in their lives, and this love, kindness and generosity kept spreading, not just through the holiday season but on and on and on.
The world is a scary place these days. We're inundated with images of anger, hatred and violence. Things are happening that could easily make us feel alienated from one another, rather than connected.
We could easily choose to close our hearts to other people, rather than feeling a sense of oneness with them. Or, we could choose the win-win approach, and make our New Year's resolutions about being more loving toward others.
If each one of us decides to be more caring, more generous, kinder and more compassionate, and each person who receives this love and kindness then passes it on, soon there will be more love than hatred, more generosity than selfishness, more tolerance and understanding than ignorance and greed.
Why not give it a try? If nothing else, resolving to be a more loving person will make you happier, healthier and more successful in the coming year. But more than that, I believe that it will do so much toward healing our fragile, wounded world.
Sign up here for my free monthly wellness newsletter. January is about going after authenticity, integrity and honesty.
ALSO ON HUFFPOST: