If 2024 was a tough year for you, try to focus on gratitude and hope in 2025, happiness expert says

Was 2024 a great year?

If your answer is no, you're not alone, says Jennifer Moss, a regular CBC contributor on the topic of happiness. Moss, who is from Kitchener, is a speaker, author, workplace well-being expert and a UN Global Happiness Council member.

In an interview on CBC K-W's The Morning Edition with guest host Josette Lafleur, Moss offered advice for how people can focus on positive moments when reflecting back on a relatively tough year and prepare themselves for 2025.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The audio of the interview is at the bottom of this article.

Josette Lafleur: Why is it so hard to remember the good moments in what can understandably be a tough year for some?

Jennifer Moss: It's just part of who we are as human beings. We're wired to focus more on negative experiences than positive ones. It's this phenomena. It's described in psychological sciences as negativity bias.

The reason for that is because when we were on the savannas and there were saber-tooth tigers, we didn't have a lot of time to be looking at the flowers and appreciating all the good stuff. We had to be prepared for threats. That still exists.

So we have a stronger predisposition to noticing the negativity. And when there's a lot of threats ... it just makes us focus even more on the negative.

Lafleur: With all that negative negativity surrounding us, why is it important for us to work toward remembering the positives?

Moss: We have to kind of rewire our brain toward thinking more positively and there's lots of benefits to that. People that have higher levels of positive feelings or they tend to be more optimistic, they're more grateful, they're more pro-social, they tend to live longer, they tend to have better health, they have a stronger community relationship, there's psychological safety, there's all these huge benefits.

If we can practice the positive psychology that helps us to be flourishing. It's like psychological fitness. If you wanted to run a 5K, you don't just get off the couch and run a 5K. You have to work at it.

And that's the same thing with our positivity bias. If we want to push back on our negativity bias, we have to work that muscle out by practicing it.

Lafleur: For some people, maybe it was just one thing in their life that was bad throughout the entire year. Let's say work just didn't go the way that they were hoping. How do we get perspective in moments like that?

Moss: We tend to hyper focus and identify with the things that went wrong. Again, this is part of our negativity bias.

It's kind of like if you had a hundred people tell you how nice you looked in your dress. And then you have the one person that tells you that they thought there was a wrinkle on it or there's a stain on it, whatever. We tend to hyper focus on that piece. And that's part of the negativity bias.

We have to develop what researchers are calling this self-complexity mindset, which means that we identify not just with being professional in our professional world, but we identify as being a parent as well as identify with being good at whatever hobby we like.

The more that we can start to break out those identities, those personas, then it's more likely that we won't fixate on one when it goes wrong.

Lafleur: What are some things that people can do daily or maybe even weekly to help remember those positive moments?

JM: It's really important to acknowledge that we are this way. If we don't label it, we can't fix it, right? So if we have a strong negativity bias. How do we fix that?

There's really good actionable tips. We can write down three things that went well each day, even if they're unrelated to work. For example, we're trying to get out of that one place that we're fixating that we're doing a terrible job. Let's focus on things that are unrelated and write down what makes us feel better. This is research by Martin Seligman and he is the godfather of really all positive psychology.

There's another thing, too, that we can do. Look at the 10-10-10 rule. How will this issue, how will this feeling of some problem that I had at work here in my life affect me in 10 days, in 10 months, in 10 years? It can really give you the perspective to say these are things that I'm really upset about in this moment, but it's not going to be something that I'm going to care about next week.

Lafleur: What should people keep in mind as we head into January?

Moss: There's two psychological traits that I always suggest developing: gratitude and hope.

I'm going to start with hope first because right now we are in a state of hopelessness. There's a lot of cynicism. We're not seeing the future. And there's so much hyperbolic kind of statements that are being made by lots of people that were supposed to trust. And that's scaring us.

Hope is actually built by making goals, small goals. Sometimes it's just even making your bed in the morning and patting yourself on the back because it's not easy to create those habits. Just do something really early in the morning or whenever you get up and just accomplish a small goal and then you'll start to feel like you can do more.

It develops cognitive hope, which we really need to fight this cynicism that we have in the world and setting goals that are those one month goals, those one year goals and five year goals and work toward them every day.

And then when it comes to gratitude, I strongly suggest if you can at least once a day, say or write three things that you're grateful for that day. If you practice that for even just 21 days of of just focusing on three things, there is this half life of gratitude that's incredible. You can still feel the benefits of that six months later, even if you weren't practicing it.

So these are very simple tips that we can add into our day that stack those habits of positive psychology in our lives that will help us to flourish.

Lafleur: What were some of your best moments this year?

Moss: It was a hard year, I think, for all of us. We went through a lot. You know what? We all have really hard years, but there's always wonderful things that come out of it.

I finished my book and then I updated another book. So essentially wrote two books this year, which was a big accomplishment professionally.

And I also saw my children really flourish after a few hard years of dealing with the stress of COVID and the outcomes of that from a mental health standpoint. And they just really I saw them really grow this year and it was beautiful. And there's just lots of special moments that you have with your family that you don't want to forget.

The simple moments of just shared joy and love and cooking together and all those things that actually, when you think about, they're way more meaningful than some of the other stuff that is happening in our lives right now.

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