The beginning of a new year offers us a special time and a unique opportunity to reflect upon the meaning of our lives. In connection with this, it is a time when many people make “resolutions” describing the changes they intend to make in their lives, with, of course, the best intentions of fulfilling them.
It is also a time when many people question whether they have the innate capacity and are adequately prepared to cope with the various and often formidable challenges that lie before them in the new year and beyond. To be sure, ringing in the “New Year” brings with it a wide mix of emotions: some exhilarating and hopeful, others debilitating and discouraging, all stressful in their own way.
Against the backdrop of many events over the past year, there are warning signs on the horizon that warrant serious concern across society at large as well as in the American and global economies. Even people who are fortunate enough today to be gainfully employed and live in places that could be described as safe and secure are not necessarily “happy” in the face of so much change taking place, coupled with the uncertainty of what may lie ahead. And this sentiment applies not only to their personal lives but also to their work lives.
Yet not all is gloom and doom by any means. At least this is the case if we commit to exercising, in an authentic way, the ultimate human freedom to choose our attitude and view our circumstances, whatever they may be, through the lens of what the world-renowned psychiatrist, existential philosopher, and Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl called a “true optimist.”
Dr. Frankl understood well the totality of life, the joys and the challenges, as well as the need to answer life’s call responsibly rather than remain a victim of circumstances, no matter how desperate they may appear or be. In Frankl’s case, had he not adopted the philosophical foundation of his coping beliefs, a coping maxim, upon his arrival at the Nazi death camps, he might not have been able to sustain his truly optimistic and passionate view about the chances of surviving his horrific ordeal.1
Life doesn’t just happen to us—we are responsible for our own lives. And ultimately, it is up to us to build our capacity to cope, unleash our human potential, and find, as well as engage with, the deeper meaning in our lives.
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.2
To be sure, our attitude plays an important part in the pursuit of happiness and helps to determine how well we can confront, i.e., respond to, life’s challenges, especially those that are formidable or unavoidable. Put differently, our choice of attitude helps to frame our inherent and intuitive capacity to be resilient to the ebb and flow of life, no matter what “season” or time of year.
It is important to realize that a person’s fixation on the pursuit of happiness at any time may actually backfire. Dr. Frankl referred to this phenomenon as paradoxical intention.3 And while it may appear to be counterintuitive, Frankl observed the following about the human quest for both happiness and success:
Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.4
Happiness Essential Reads
The new year offers us opportunities to let happiness happen by not caring about it. True happiness, as Dr. Frankl wisely espoused, comes from relating and being directed to something greater than or someone other than yourself—a timeless, meaning-centric principle also known as “self-transcendence.” In other words, 2026 can be the start of better times if we let happiness ensue (in a self-transcendent way) rather than trying to pursue it.
So, as you begin the new year, stop searching for happiness and start searching for meaning instead.