Health & Wellness

For most of my adult life, the new year has signaled a time for accounting. Taking stock of the previous months' work. Planning for the new dozen. Keeping record of accomplishments.

Every first or second day of January, I'd set dozens of goals — for work tasks, household projects, personal development, couples goals — with the mindset that even if I accomplished a fraction of the list, I would still be ahead. I even penned articles about how to achieve goals, and sometimes I followed my own advice.

Over the last couple years, when the weight of the world has tipped toward sustained trauma, I've found myself at a loss though. What is the point of working so hard (and writing about it) in the midst of devastation and grief and political turmoil and personal loss?

At the start of 2025, I didn't have an answer to any of that, but for my sanity, I jumped on an old-ish social media trend that centered small joys. I located a glass jar and committed to capturing things that made me happy throughout the year. The premise of the joy jar: Instead of dwelling on the darkness — which our brains do extraordinarily well by nature — to practice seeing happiness. To intentionally remember and record experiences that sparked joy and gratitude.

I've written about the power of communicating gratitude and still appreciate the research that shows gratitude helps improve sleep, resilience, relationships, and wellbeing. But until last year, I'd never cultivated a sustained gratitude practice.

If you'd asked me at any point during 2025, I would have told you0000 it was a distinctly unhappy year. From the political climate to the budget crisis at my work to the extraordinary grief of caring for a parent at the end of life to planned surgery and unplanned depression, to the systematic curbing of freedoms in the U.S., to the violence wrought on vulnerable communities… Not much happy.

And yet, on New Year's Day, when I pulled more than 200 papers out of the joy jar, I was astounded to find so many glimmers of gratitude from throughout the year. Some joys were major — celebrating a career award and a promotion, visiting Paris for the first time, learning that a loved one's major surgery was successful. Most were the mundane happenings of daily life, with the gratitude filter on — noting rain storms and sushi dates and incredible cheeseburgers and birthdays and air conditioner repairs and pumpkin arches and garden flowers and getting to meet new little loves and appreciate their chonky baby cheeks.

It was an absolute delight to revist the joys of 2025 and realize in hindsight that there were so many. I'm grateful to myself for trying out a social media trend (maybe for the first time) and actually sticking with it. My 2026 joy jar is already filling up and I can't wait to see what this year holds.