What is the Meaning of Your New Year's?

The meaning of most holidays is clear: Valentine's Day celebrates romance; Thanksgiving, productivity and gratitude; Anzac and Veterans' Day, those who protect us; Christmas, good will toward others. The meaning of New Year's Day — the world's most celebrated holiday — is not so clear.

On this day, many people reflect on last year's achievements and failures while looking forward to the promise of a new year, of a new beginning. But this celebration and reflection is more than just an arbitrary mark on the calendar. New Year's has a deeper significance.

When the singing, fireworks, and champagne toasts of New Year's Day are over, many of us turn to more serious thoughts about life. We take stock and plan new courses of action to improve our lives. This is best exemplified by one of the holiday's most popular customs and the key to its meaning: making resolutions.

Each year, hundreds of millions of people around the world make New Year's resolutions. From Sydney to Los Angeles, London to Hong Kong, there is a striking similarity in the resolutions people make.

Consider two very common resolutions: the desire to be more attractive by losing weight and to be healthier by exercising more. People making these resolutions seek to become better versions of themselves physically.

New Year's Day is the most active-minded holiday because it is when people evaluate their lives, plan, and resolve to take action. One dramatic example of taking New Year's seriously is the old European saying:

"What one does on this day, one will do for the rest of the year."

What unites this custom and the more common practice of making resolutions is that on the first day of the year, people engage more deeply with their values.

Values aren't just physical; they're also psychological. Many New Year's resolutions reveal that people want to better themselves mentally and emotionally. Look at your own resolutions over the years. Haven't they included such vows as: be more patient with my children, improve my self-esteem, be more emotionally open with my spouse? Such resolutions express the moral ambition of a person wanting to improve their life and character.

What, then, is the philosophical meaning of New Year's resolutions?

Every resolution you make implies that you are in control of your life, that you are not a victim of circumstance, controlled by stars, or subject to luck, but rather an individual who can make choices to change your life. You can learn new skills, ask for that promotion, overcome your shyness, search for that life partner. Your life is in your hands.

But what is the purpose of making such goals and resolutions? Why bother?

Making New Year's resolutions (and doing so even after failing last year's) expresses your desire for happiness. On New Year's Day, many people recognize, often implicitly rather than explicitly, that happiness comes from the achievement of values. That's why you resolve to be healthier, more ambitious, more confident.

You seek to enjoy that sense of purpose, accomplishment, and pleasure that comes from achieving your values. Happiness is both the motor and purpose of life.

More than any other day, New Year's Day makes the attainment of happiness feel more real and possible. This is its meaning and why it holds such psychological importance for so many people around the world.

If people applied the value-achievement meaning of New Year's Day explicitly and consistently throughout the year, they would be happier.

So, every day, fill your champagne glass of life to the brim with values — and drink deeply to your life and the joy that it can and should be.

Happy New Year. Happy Life.

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