Set goals that involve giving to others to be happier in 2021

New York, Dec 22 : Toss out your usual list of New Year’s resolutions and set goals that involve giving to others to be happier in 2021, suggest experts.
Their study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that happiness increases as your focus of concern and care gets wider.
“We found that when people are focused on giving to others they experience deeper satisfaction than when their goals are more self-oriented,” said Richard Ryan, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Rochester in the US.
“For example, experiments show that doing something benevolent for others, even when you will never meet the beneficiary, increases your positive mood and energy,” said Ryan.
Together with Edward Deci, also a University of Rochester Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Ryan is the co-founder of the self-determination theory (SDT), a broad framework for the study of human motivation and personality.
Developed by the duo over nearly 40 years, the theory has become one of the most widely accepted frameworks of human motivation in contemporary behavioural science.