The Middle with Jeremy HobsonOn this episode of The Middle we're asking you: what's your New Year's resolution? We're joined by 10% Happier author Dan Harris and CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Mo Rocca. The Middle's house DJ Tolliver joins as well, plus callers from around the country. #2025 #newyear #resolution #holidays #happier #mobituaries
The Middle is supported by Journalism Funding Partners, a nonprofit organization striving to increase the sustainability of local journalism by building connections between donors and news organizations. More information on how you can support the Middle at Listen tooth Middle dot com. Welcome to the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson along with our house DJ Tolliver Tolliver, Happy New Year, Happy New Year, and we want to welcome all of our listeners who are now listening to the Middle at the gym because they just decided that that's what they're going to do in twenty twenty five.
They're better than me ive th in sweats the last few days watching the Walk in Dad, So for that's to them, Well.
We want to hear this hour how you want to make things better for yourself this year. It turns out the most common resolutions people make are either about money or weight, both of which have a tendency to fluctuate. But it turns out that a recent statistic survey of Americans resolutions for twenty twenty five found that the most common one, Tolliver, is no resolution at all for people, so they didn't want to do anything different this year. Everything was perfect last year. So did you make a resolution?
I did.
I want to learn Spanish this year and I would also learn like to learn how to drive.
That is true, it's little known facts about topic. He does not do driving right. Okay, So if you want to call us and let you let us know what you plan to do to improve yourself this year. What is the number?
It's eight four four for Middle that's eight four four four six four three three five three. Or you can write to us and listen to the Middle dot com.
We'll get to your calls in a moment. But first, last week we talked about phone addiction and what can be done about it. Here are some of the voicemails we got after the show.
Hi, my name is Colin Murphy from Cleveland, Ohio, and I'm interested in understanding if people who become parents become more addicted to their phone versus people that do not have kids or have kids that have moved out.
My name's Michelle calling from Colorado. I am really concerned about phone's impact on our youth. Recently, my son was home. All of his high school friends get together for a big party with the parents. The parents noticed in the I had room where the kids were. Everything was quiet and they were all on their phones.
This is Bruce calling from Los Angeles. I'm an old fart and about four years or so ago, I got my first cell phone. About a year or so after I had that phone, it stopped working, and I'm like everyone.
I used it constantly staring at it like a nitwit.
And there was a.
Period after that phone ceased to work that I had no phone whatsoever. And just to tell you how I felt in that period, I felt free.
There you go.
Shout out to all the old farts.
Thanks to everyone who called in. You can hear that entire show on our podcast in partnership with iHeart Podcasts on the iHeart Apple wherever you listen to podcasts. So now to our topic this hour, what is your New Year's resolution? Let's meet our panel. CBS Sunday Morning correspondent and host of the Obituaries podcast, Mo Roca is with us. Mo Welcome to the middle.
Thanks for having me. Jeremy, I'm glad to be here.
It's great to have you. And Dan Harris, author of the book Ten Percent Happier, host of the ten Percent Happier podcast, is with us as well, and welcome to you.
Thanks for having me.
So, Dan, let me start with you, because for people who don't know, you have a story about making a big life change. You were an ABC newsman. You had a panic attack on air. This was back in two thousand and four, and that led you into the ten percent Happier world and meditation.
Yeah.
Yeah, you left out the most embarrassing part, which was that the panic attack was fueled by cocaine.
So it was a.
Pretty bad moment in front of five point one to nine million people. I found that out from the research department, and yeah, it ultimately led me to therapy, and then that led me to meditation. There was no one big resolution, per se, but it was kind of a messy, muddling through process that ultimately really did lead me to something good. Bottom line for anybody who's worried about making resolutions, change is possible.
Well, and what did I think is the yeah, go ahead, row.
I what hour were you broadcasting that five million people are watching?
Well, this is twenty years ago, so the ratings on the networks were much higher than they are now. But it was seven o'clock in the morning.
That's amazing that five million people were watching it seven in the morning on a weekday.
Okay, we you know we average fifty million every quarter hour on this program, So that's it's great, it's audio. It's different, Dan, What do you think is the value though, given all of that of a person making a New Year's resolution and deciding I want to do something different.
You know, I was never one for resolutions. It always struck me as just like another day on the calendar. But there's a bunch of data, primarily generated through this woman, Katie Milkman, about something called the fresh Start effect. The TLDR is that temporal landmarks, landmarks based in time, like a new year, a birthday, even the start of a new week, do give the human mind more energy for this iabolically difficult task of habit formation. So I do think New Year's is a good time to make a resolution. That's the good news. The bad news is that most of us fail by the end of the month. And then there's one more piece of good news, which is there are strategies based in evidence that can help you be one of the few people who don't fail.
Okay, well, we want to hear about those. But Moroka, you and I have known each other for a very long time, but you've actually, over the course of that time in your career even longer than that, have reinvented yourself several times. You were on the Daily Show back in the day, You've been on CBS Sunday Morning for many years. You did a show called My Grandmother's Ravioli, and you, of course have the very successful obituaries podcast and book. What makes you when you do want to start these new ventures?
Oh geez, what makes you want to start new ventures? Well, I know that the only way I can start a new venture is if I have a lot of quiet. It helps if I become kind of sad. It helps if something comes to an end and then I just sort of if I can possibly shut stuff out and just sort of be with myself. Sometimes that's when that when my better idea is an instinct, or at least more successful ones kind of emerge.
Yeah, the sadness in order to move to the next thing.
Well, you know, it's it's maybe sadness isn't quite the word. It's more like a wistfulness kind of quiet. When you can really hear yourself think, when you can really you know, instead of hearing what other people think you should be doing hearing sort of that voice inside of yourself, you know, and and you know that's that's sort of when I've been the most successful. But it's more like a wistfulness kind of Yeah. Yeah, so maybe my resolution is to become really sad to see your idea.
It seems like the quiet is the more important ingredient than the wistfulness. You could be quiet and happy and still get a great idea, I imagine.
Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think the the quiet is the main thing so that you yeah, yeah, you know. There was this play a few years on Broadway at dolls House Part two, a really cool sort of sequel to Ibsen's a Dollhouse, and the Nora character said that she had to when she comes back, she said she had to go away. At first she heard other voices, and then a few months later she still heard a couple of voices, and then it just took it took a couple of years before she could just hear herself, And that really struck me.
Again. Our number is eight four four four middle that is eight four four four six four three three five three. Let's go to Isabelle, who's in Atlanta, Georgia. Isabelle, Welcome to the middle. What is your New Year's resolution?
Hi?
Thank you.
My New Year's resolution this year is to just volunteer more for local organizations within my community. Specifically, I've been really feeling called to volunteer for public radio, especially local radio stations that just like always need it and supporting like free and honest journalism in that way.
What made you decide that that was going to be a resolution. Not the public radio part specifically, although thank you, but what about the just volunteering more, giving more of yourself to others.
Honestly, when the hurricane hit in western North Carolina really badly, and just seeing so many communities destroyed, but also seeing so many people like really making positive impacts and saving each other's lives, and I really enjoyed going up there on vacation. So I went up there to volunteer a lot, and it just felt really good, and I was like, why am I not doing this all the time?
Yeah? Well great. Thank you so much, Isabelle, and happy New Year to you, Dan Harris. I imagine we're going to hear more of that this hour, of people deciding that they want to do more for other people to volunteer in that kind of thing.
It would be amazing if that's what we heard, because that is like the resolution par excellence. There are so many reasons to do this. One if and I'm not sure our caller is dealing with this, but if you're dealing with loneliness, volunteering is the prescription. Doctor Vivik Murphy, the outgoing Surgeon General who's written a book about loneliness, says it it is the first thing he would recommend from many people who are dealing with loneliness because it does connect you to other people and it reminds you of your own decency. But beyond that, there's all of this data around compassion and what it does for your physiology, your psychology, your behavior.
In the world.
So you know, we live in this individualistic era where everything about the culture right now is militating against what is good for the human animal connection.
Cooperation, collaboration, etc.
Etc.
But we're all about, you know, curating our Instagram page. And I don't think there's any coincidence to the fact that we're at a level of anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction, and loneliness that has never been seen before in recorded human history, and so volunteering is a great way to deal with it. One other thing to say, there's an expression in meditation circles, which is action absorbs anxiety. If you're anxious, which many people are about the political situation, getting involved. And it doesn't even have to be getting involved in politics. It can be public radio, it can be just being more useful to people in your environment. That is a way to relax your nervous system.
Tolliver, I know some people are writing in at Listen to the Middle dot com. Yeah they are so.
Trent and Nashville says on Tuesday night, I celebrated ten years since I quit smoking cold turkey on New Year's Even twenty fourteen. Best resolution ever and it stuck. Mary in Kansas City, Missouri says, this year, my resolution is to be more patient with myself at eighty one, with mobility difficulties, I can no longer move as swiftly as when I was younger. So more kindness in patience with myself, More.
Patients with yourself. MO, what do you think about that?
Well, I think that's certainly a good thing, right because of your or if you're you know, stingy with yourself you're gonna be stingy with other people. The thing that I think is, you know, complaining, even when it's funny in your when you're being funny, complaining or the people around you bitching about something, you know, even if that's you know, is marginally funny, it is poison. It's bad, I think, right, And so that's kind of something I'm resolving is to be around less of that, more.
More, more uplifting people, you know, Tolliver, we were talking about this. Resolutions tend to fall under a few pretty reliable categories. We just heard about one smoking right there. Things that have been around for a while.
Yeah, I listen to this report about people's resolutions, courtesy of KU TV in Salt Lake City, Utah, from the nineteen seventies.
I'm gonna lose.
Ten pounds, oh, twenty pounds, twenty pounds.
Who's way, stop eating chocolates.
We'll just just raise better crop spots and better crop of beaks.
That's all, Pattie.
What's your New Year's resolution to quit smoking? Stop smoking?
I'm gonna stop beating me. Pay all my bills, Pay all my bills.
That's the one.
And by the way, if you are a listener to this and you love the middle, and you want to pay some of our bills, you could do that in at tax deductible way. Listen to the Middle dot com. Look at that transition. Okay, we'll be right back with more of the middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson. If you're just tuning, In the Middle is a national call in show. We're focused on elevating voices from the middle geographically, politically, and philosophically, or maybe you just want to meet in the middle. This hour, we are taking a break from the news and asking you, although it is sort of the news, what is your New Year's resolution? Tolliver, what is the number for people to call in?
It's eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four four six four three three five three. You can also write to say listen to the Middle dot com or on social media.
I'm joined by author and podcaster Dan Harris and CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Mo Raka. And before we go back to the phones, Mo, you have a new book out, Rock to Genarians, which centers on people who celebrate some of the biggest events and triumphs of their lives. Late in their lives, people like Rita Moreno Colonel Sanders, who knew What can we take from people like that as we think about making a change in the new year.
Well, gosh, I think a couple of things. I mean, I thought getting into this that the less time you have on the other side, the more anxious you become. And at least the people profiled in this book actually as they got older, became less fretful and became more present minded. They certainly weren't fixated in the past. They were going to accomplish a lot, but they were able to just act in the most dramatic ways. And you know, I like old people are my jam I had that cooking show where I went around the country cooking with grandmothers and grandfathers. You know, I like projects like that because for kind of selfish reasons, is I get to learn from these people. And you know, it's a generality. But the older you get, the less you care about what other people think of you, and and you're you know, more unbettered and year to act and so and you know there's another thing as well. I find this with a lot of lawyers, people who say, oh my god, if I can just get to a certain point, then I'll do that thing I always wanted to do right. And I'm not sure what it is that keeps them from doing it. I don't think it's selfishness. I don't think it's greed. I think it's fear. But you know, one of the people profile, there are a lot of architects who really do fantastic work into their seventies, eighties, even nineties. Right.
Actually, I'll just say two of the most amazing people I've ever interviewed are architects in their nineties. One was Frank Gary and one was this guy Belchrishna Dooshi who won the Pritzker Prize in India. And by the way, not only was he incredible architecture, he knew how to use zoom really well from India, so it sounded great when he was on the show.
It's amazing how they get better and better. But there was this woman, Pakistan's first professional woman architect, Yasumine Laurie, and she was a starkitect and you know, and it was really talk with people, and you know, you have to be exacting, after all, when you're an architect. But for years she said she wanted to help you know, the poor of Pakistan. And finally the two thousand and five earthquake in Kashmir, which killed over eighty thousand people. That was the event that she finally made the break. And now she's been lauded of the world over for building sustainable housing. And so she just did it. It took a dramatic event for her to do something she'd been contemplating for a long time. But you know, what's the worst that can happen?
Dan Harris, how do you think age figures into the idea of personal improvement?
Well, I was thinking as I was listening to Mode describe his book, which sounds excellent. There's there are these graphs that chart average levels of self reported happiness over the course of a lifetime, and the graph kind of poetically looks like a smile. So the in the early years are very happy, and then it dips precipitously in our twenties, thirties, forty fifties, and then it starts to pop back up slowly in our fifties, and we get much happier in our old age. My guess is that the reason why there's happiness increased happiness on the extremes youth and.
Old age is.
That we are more awake and aware in the moment, that we're less burdened by planning and rumination. And so I absolutely I mean as somebody who's getting older like the rest of us, it's so cool the year that you can do incredible things as a rock to Genarian.
Let's go back to the phones and Frank, who's in Chicago. Frank, welcome to the middle. Go ahead with your new Year's resolution.
Thanks for taking my call. First, I have to say that I've already broken my new Year's resolution. I was at a function yesterday and I was cleaning up after the function and one of my associates did not like the way I was cleaning up. He got a little loud about it. I said, look, you unemployed, fool you because he's on a fun.
Even So, you broke your resolution because your resolution was to was to not get angry with people. Question.
Yes, it just to curbed the anger a little bit and try to stay in my own mind.
So can I asked? Can I ask? Did you strike him?
Basically? I saw this person today and he said to me, watch your head, and uh, I said, what are you going to do?
Hit me?
Uh.
But anyway, long story short, I had anger issues and hang out to try to stay in my own lane as much as I possibly can, and not to worry about my associates even if they are Lord.
Hey, that's it's a good resolution.
Look.
I always think being nice is the right way to go. Frank, thank you very much for that.
Dick, Can I jump in on that chair please?
Yeah.
I was just gonna say, first of all, two things just having I recently did a pretty deep dive into the science of behavior change, and so two things to say based on the last caller, and then hopefully these are useful for everybody. One is, if you're going to make a resolution, it's helpful for it to be specific and achievable, so be nicer, get fit read more. These are insufficiently specific, so go to the gym three times a week, read a book a week, take an anger management class. Those are much more sort of affirmative, specific and achievable. And then the second thing, which hopefully is of comfort to the caller, which which is, if you expect perfection, that is likely to derail you because it is unlikely to be something that you achieve, and so you need to have flexibility built into your resolution. So you need to be able to miss a day of exercise or backslide in your anger management and have the resiliency to get back on the wagon.
You know, I was with a friend yesterday who had a very specific resolution. He said he wanted to make bigger entrances into the room. Yeah.
I love that. That is really great. You know, this is going to be controversial, but apparently scientologists are like really good, like when they go on talk shows and like entering in a really really confident way. It's something they learn. I'm not endorsing that in any way, but I heard that from a book or of a talk show that I will not name. That like the scientologists, they are just like there is no awkwardness.
Well didn't Yeah, didn't Tom Cruise get get up and like jump on the couch. There you go.
That's a point. Yeah, I would say in that case that there was no awkwardness.
Okay, before we get sued by the Church of Scientology, let's go to Valerie in Charleston, South Carolina. Valerie, Welcome to the middle. Go ahead, Hi, how are you doing great? Go ahead? What's your New Year's resolution?
Uh? So, I had a really a really wild year last year where I worked way too much to very little vacation and didn't journal very much. So my Mayor's resolution, it's a journal every two day. Every two days, write down my thoughts, even if it's two sentences.
And Moe.
I have been practiced just seeing medication for twelve years, and as you know, it's a practice because we get the monkeys in our mind and they drive a snut. But then there are all these weird things that happen that are wonderful. So practicing meditation, writing in my journal, and then making a real plan which I've always made every year, which is planning on a planting guide. Now things have changed in Charleston because flooding, climate change and all that. So where we used to be able to plan astertions on March twelfth, we now have to go back to the traditional Valentine Day value value.
But you've got three there, So we're talking journaling, gardening, and meditation. Let me take that to our guests while we've got them here, Either one of you to jump in on those thoughts from Valerie.
Well, first of all, on the journaling, that's textbook specificity and achievability. Two days a week or every two days. That is how the scientists who study human behavior chain which would recommend you do it. I would also add that journaling is an evidence based practice. There's a lot of evidence that if you can get your stuff out of your head and onto the page, it becomes much more manageable. I'm, also, obviously, having written a few books on the subject, a big fan of meditation. I would just add that if that's going to be a resolution, you might want to be a little bit more specific.
I often tell people.
To go for one minute daily ish as a good way to start, because that sets the bar really low. And then if you miss a day, it's not that big of a deal.
If you just take a walk and you does that count as a meditation if you're thinking on your walk, if you take a twenty minute.
Walk, okay.
So people ask me this all the time because essentially, and this may not be true for you, Jeremy, but often the subtext is I don't want to actually do the thing, so it can I call the same already doing. And so the truth is anything can be meditation as long as you're paying attention in a specific way, and it's not a complicated esoteric thing.
So washing the dishes, for example, if you're washing.
The dishes with no music and no you're not listening to a podcast. You're just feeling the temperature of the water, the motion of your hands, the itch on your face that you can't scratch because your hands are wet. You're just feeling the raw data of your physical sensations. And then every time you get distracted by thoughts, which will happen a million times, not a problem. Every time you get distracted, you start again, and again and again.
That is meditation.
If you take a walk and you're not affirmatively, you know, thinking about what's for lunch or planning a homicide or anything like that. You're just taking a walk and feeling your legs move, the air on your face. And then every time you start getting distracted, you you start again. That's meditation. So anything can be meditation. You just have to do it in the right way.
Okay, I just want to jump in the vow. I have a real issue with your journaling resolution. I think every two days sounds complicated. I would lose track. But I think you should do is You should do it every night right before you go to bed. But really just do like one or two sentences, because if you try to do more then the whole thing will fall apart. But I really, I really think I'm just really skeptical of this every two day thing because there's seven days in a week, so the days are going to keep shifting. It sounds complicated to me.
Let's go to Ellie, who's in Plano, Texas.
Ellie, welcome, I've lived in Plano. Oh sorry, go.
On, hello, good start.
I'm so excited. I am on. I love this show.
Thank you so much, thank you.
So what I am letting go of it? Or what my resolution is? Let seeing go?
So?
What does that mean? My expectations? My expectations are friends that aren't there when I know that I can't rely on them, don't expect to rely on them? Okay, my expectation?
What people?
Okay, how people think of me because of the way I speak? Okay, how what does that mean? That means I'm a person of color. And sometimes when I move down here from the Midwest, when I'd meet other people of color, they would get this look on their face and say, well, you don't really sound black, you sound white. So then I would go into this whole thing about either change the subject or feel bad or feel like, oh, I had a privilege upbringing. Who cares I speak the way I speak, That's who I am. Another thing is just yes, so.
But what you're saying there is you're you're just not going to care about that anymore when people I'm.
Not going to care about that anymore. I have let go of what people think, and that's such a big deal of what people think that we should be, how we should look, how we should speak, how we should talk, how we should act, and normally it doesn't bother me, but for some reason that used to really bother me.
Let's go to Plano. Former Plano resident of Morocco.
Yeah, Elle, let me just say, I think what you need to do is you need to resolve to move out a Plano. The thing is, I lived in Plano is so homogeneous, and it's like all those pointy glasshouses as MC mansions with their great rooms. You are not going to everyone if there's such group thinking Plano. I live on West fifteenth Street. Is the Alberson still there?
West fifteenth Street? Really?
Wow?
Yeah?
Seventy five, Michael, I know that little area. Yeah, yeah, no, But the thing is I'm not getting it from the right people. I'm getting it from people of color that say I don't know.
What I mean. Yeah, Ellie, thank you very much for that call.
And uh, let me say one other thing to Eli.
Though.
When I lived in Plano, I was so I wanted, you know, I thought it would be normal to take walks because there are some sidewalks there. And when I would walk during the summer, granted it was really hot, people would look out their windows like like pull the curtain aside and look at me like I was like an axe murder or something. It was just so strange, Like, I hope you don't take a walk in Plano. That's all I'm saying.
Ellie.
There's one city in America that Morocca is not going to get the key to.
Wow. Yeah, I know. Let's let's get to Megan in Cincinnati, Ohio. Meghan, welcome to the middle Go ahead, Hi.
How are you guys? So my New Year's resolution is to try to stop doom scrolling on all of my social media. I get into a cycle of it, and so I know I don't do good with doing less of something, but focusing on doing more of other things. And so I have written out all of the hobbies that I want to focus on this year, or different things that I want to do that I just never get the chance to. And I'm planning on taping it to the wall right next to where I end up scrolling a lot, so that I have a little reminder that there's a way out or something else to focus on.
Yeah, that's such a great one, Megan. And we just did a show on phone addiction, and one of the things that Kevin rush is a New York Times reporter, has on his phone, it says so that every time he picks it up, it says something like why now, what else, so that he can really question it. But that's a great one, Megan, And I'll go to Dan Harris your thought. I mean, this is something everybody should be doing as a New Year's resolution.
Yeah.
I'm a fan of Kevin Russ And I believe he got that from a woman named Catherine Price who wrote a book called How to Break Up with Your Phone, and she would she encourages people to have either on your home screen or something or like a sticky note that you taped to the phone, which is what do I need right now? Like, why am I doing this? Am I doing it because I'm bored or lonely or tired. The other bits of tech hygiene that she recommends is putting the phone away in a hard to reach, out of the way place, definitely not next to your bed, turn it off. There should be times during the day where you just don't have access to it anymore.
There are also.
Apps you can get that can turn off your access to the phone. This is really hard because when you you know, when you interface with your phone, the phone itself and the apps on it, it is you versus the most powerful supercomputers designed by the most beautiful and almost.
They want you to stay right there. Yes, speaking of technology, hang on, Dan, because I've got to just go to Tolliver here, because it's been twenty five years Tolliver since technology freaked everybody out on New Year's because of Y two K, which was supposed to cause chaos and anything connected to the Internet.
Yeah, and of course nothing happened. But back on the Old Late Show, David Letterman had the recently departed James Earl Jones do a top ten list of the potential effects of Y two K and the.
Number one effect of why two.
K despite assurances from high ranking officials that it could not happen. If you're doing decades of conventional scientific wisdom flying in the face of smug predictions by so called experts, craft macaroni and cheese will become even cheesier.
Ugh James Earl Jones died just a few months ago at the age of ninety three. An amazing What an amazing guy. We'll be right back with more of the Middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy. Send this hour. We're asking you what is your New Year's resolution. You can call us at eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four four six four three three five three. You can also reach out to us at Listen to the Middle dot com. And the Middle is available as a podcast in partnership with iHeart Podcasts on the iHeart Apple wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm joined this hour by CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Morocca and author and podcaster Dan Harris and some more great calls. Let's get to them. Amy is in Dallas, Texas. Amy, Welcome to the Middle. What is your New Year's resolution?
Oh my god, I'm so excited. My nearest resolution is to study more and to have better time management.
To study more.
You're in school, yes, I'm in high school right now.
You're in high school right now, and so do you don't feel like you're studying enough?
No?
I feel like I always current at the last moment, but I don't study long term.
So how are you going to accomplish this this goal? Amy?
I'm going to keep a physical calendar and just make a schedule every time to make sure I study enough.
Do you feel and it's just I love having high schoolers on, but do you feel like you are overscheduled as a teenager right now, that you're having to do too much to kind of get into the right college and all that stuff after you get out of high school?
Definitely? Yeah, I feel very overwhelmed because all my classes are advanced and extracurriculars, and sometimes it's just really overwhelming.
And what about having fun? You decided you want to do more studying, but what are you able to have enough fun on the side.
I try to have some time for myself, and I think that's import why I don't study enough, because last year I really prioritize myself great.
Well, Amy, Studying is overrated.
No, don't say that, Amy. Thank you very much, very good idea great New Year's resolution. I appreciate you calling in, Dan Harris. I mean, I do love it when people under eighteen call into the show. But that's so interesting to hear a student say that she wants to study more.
You know.
On the one hand, I hear myself, I hear in my head, I hear the voice saying, well, it's not a very specific resolution. And I remember a moment after my senior year in high school, after a decidedly mediocre high school career, where I just decided, I remember exactly where I was. I was driving my father's Hondo Accord up the street in Newton, Massachusetts, where I lived, and I decided, you know what, I'm going to kick ass in college.
And I did it.
Yeah, And so.
There's something at that age where if you decide, like, no, this is who I am now, it can be very powerful.
Yeah. I was also a well, I was a decent high school student, but I had to take classes like physics and geometry that just were not my jam in high school. And then once I got into college, I was able to be a much better student in terms of the grades. Because I didn't have to take classes like that could focus on the things that were interesting to me. Let's go to Claudia in Roanoke, Virginia. Claudia, welcome to the middle. What's your new Year's resolution?
Hi? My new year's resolution is to laugh more this year. And I just was reflecting. I have a serious job, family responsibilities. Sometimes, you know, you spend the night doing the to do list, and I realized there wasn't laughing as much. When you're in your twenties or even a teenager, you can laugh incredibly, And I thought, wait a minute. So it's in a way, it's a way to experience joy more, but to be conscious of it. And I know it's not specific, but I do think it is in a sense to make some time to just relac to the point where you will laugh with yourself or with other people.
Yeah, that's a great one, Claudie. I appreciate it. And Morocca, you have spent a lot of your career making people laugh. So what do you think about that?
Well, I mean, certainly, if you're making somebody laugh, I mean, boy, that is a thrill. I mean, that is a shot of adrenaline. But there's a lot to be said. I mean for it. I mean, you know, look, I'm a new father of a five month old and there's a lot of laughter in our house, and I can see how she's absorbing it, and she's I don't you know, I don't think it's entirely coincidental that she's smiling a lot because she's around a lot of laughter, so it has a great effect.
Yeah, Dan, what is the connection between laughter and happiness?
Are they?
I mean, what do you think? Because you've got your ten percent happier, But how much does laughter get involved in that?
You know, I haven't seen the data on this, but I just have to imagine there's a high correlation. And as I was thinking about her resolution, you know, I I was reflecting on the fact that my own resolution is hypocritically non specific as well and very much related to hers. My resolution is to enjoy my life more. I have a very smart colleague who every once in a while will just say to me, have fun. And I realized that there's something about my default mode, which is planning and kind of trudging semi militaristically through my to do list, and I'm not enjoying the day to day as much as I could.
And I'm fifty three.
The pregame is definitely over, and so I want to enjoy whatever time I have left. And so for me, that really rhymes in a pretty powerful way with the resolution to laugh more. And I don't want to overdo the tyranny of specificity.
Here are you a virgo?
I am leo.
Okay, I'm a virgo and that people can tell that immediately because I'm also obsessed with planning an organization maybe two month. So let's go to Christine in Madison, Wisconsin. Christine, Welcome to the middle. What is your New Year's resolution?
Hey, thanks for having me. I'm just so excited to share an idea that I actually adapted from when I saw on TikTok where my wife and I on Winter Solstice, which I think was the twenty first, we wrote down nine New Year's resolutions on piece of the paper, folded them up to put them in a hat, and then every night we took one out and burned it just like in a candle and not knowing what it was. And then on New Year's Eve we opened up the one that was remaining, with the idea of being that the one that's remaining is the one that will maybe facilitate the life that we the year that we're envisioning through all of those resolutions. So mine was go out to Puerto Rico. I want to do a family trip to four and my wife was go to the gym three days.
Wow, Well they have champs in Puerto Rico.
But you.
You were burning resolutions by candlelight.
Yes, it was a very very magical week.
It sounds kind of it's upset people by saying this sounds kind of wicked, is it?
It kind of was.
I guess definitely the chanting didn't.
All right, Well, Christy, thank you and enjoy Puerto Rico and and tell your wife to enjoy the gym three days a week. And we'll see where if that lasts. Because a lot of people make that resolution, which is why I've been staying away from the gym the last few days, because they're they're all going to be there. Let's go.
Twitter is going to be all over.
Let me wicks Plano. That's actually a good title. If you want to lose weight, you know you have to do get in visil line. I got in visil line and I immediately lost all the weight. I'm starving all the time, and it's like those zepic that makes your teeth straight. It's like crazy, and I don't and I think the reason they there's might maybe some liability reason or so that they don't advertise it, but they really should. It's crazy and frankly, I did not need to lose weight. I mean, like but but I mean, you just can't graze or snack anymore.
The visil line Okay, no, no, no, Nolia is Lacia's in Saint Louis. Welcome to the middle. What's your new Year's resolution?
To make sure that people pronounce my name is correctly. It's Licia, it's Ray, thank you. In talking to the producer, I said that I'm turning fifty nine on the seventeenth, and I've been straggling the pay bills and making sure that the things that are supposed to be an order or an order. I've got to change my mindset and I want to have new experiences and I am inspired to get a passport this year so I can travel out of the country next year.
I totally I want to go.
Crazy, but don't that's a really long trip.
Wait, wait, where do you want to go with your passport Croatia.
Okay, okay, no said I want to go crazy, but that's a long trip.
Oh God, all right, well, yes, Lisia, thank you very much for that. You know, Dan Harris, it's interesting she brings up panger bills money. That's something we haven't heard yet, but it actually is. One of the top things that people resolve to do differently is make more money and stuff like that.
Yeah.
There there are two related resolutions that are really popular at this time of the year. One is to sort of get your financial house in order, and the other is to get your work life balance in order. And these are two huge and not uncomplicated things to do.
Morocca, you have profiled so many people. I wonder if there's any if you were to make a New Year's resolution to be more like one of the people that you have met in your life, who would it be.
Oh, I think it would be to be more well Angie Dickinson, because Angie Dickinson just knows herself so well, and she's so she's just so cool and she's so at peace. I really liked her. I really loved profiling Bobby or I thought he was just like obviously an extraordinary athlete. Yeah, who else would who would I want to be? Like, Yeah, I think there's lessons to draw from those people. You know, Albert Brooks. I was really struck by Albert Brooks the way, the methodical way with which he approached his professional and personal life. So he got married late, started a family late, and he said, you know, I wanted to do these films. He ended up writing and directing six films. He said, I wanted to do them, and then I wanted to start up family, and it seems so planned out, almost unrealistically so, but of course it worked out for him. I mean, you know, there are limits how much you can stretch this. I think he at one point said he didn't want to have to use the ramp at his high at his daughter's high school graduation, which is kind of funny, but yeah, I sort of admired that kind of deliberateness. He also said something to me that I loved. I'll never forget when he was a stand up early in his career. He was so innovative as a stand up, but he would oftentimes go on very middle brow variety shows, Network variety shows, and he would do these acts, and no one in the studio audience would laugh. And I marveled at that, and I thought, how did you not speed up? Which is what nervous comics do. I said, how did you not just bail on it? And he said he said, well, he said, I would think, So what if they don't laugh, I'll just go sell shoes. And I just thought that was so great.
Yeah, let's go to Matt in Salt Lake City. Matt, welcome to the middle. What's your new Year's resolution?
Hey, thanks for taking my call. Shout out to Newton, mass By the way, I grew up there too. My new Year's resolution is just to stop letting little things in life bother me so much. Whether it's you know, getting cut off in traffic or something like that, or somebody not walking fast enough on the sidewalk. You know, these are stupid little things and they really shouldn't bother anybody. And that's my new year's resolution, not to let those things bother me so much.
Yeah, Dan, what's your strategy for that? Matt?
You know, honestly, I don't really have a strategy. It's something I've been kind of working on throughout my life, but I've never really nailed it right, and so hopefully this year I can just relax and not let the little you know, don't sweat the small stuff, you know, Do you.
Have a strategy for that? Dan to tell.
Matt, Well, there are two things that come to mind.
One is there's a lot of research around how you talk to yourself. Some of this has been done by Ethan Cross who's at the University of Michigan. That if you talk to yourself in those moments of annoyance the way you would talk to your kid or a good friend or somebody you're mentoring, instead of the way we normally talk to ourselves, which is first we just reflexibly moved to the annoyance and then second we move to the self flagellation about the aforementioned annoyance. You can actually be like and actually, let me just say it helps to use your own name. They call it distant self talk. It creates a sort of it gives more weight to the advice you're giving to yourself, so you can say, Matt, yeah, I know that was annoying, but you don't have to take the bait on it, or something along the alo.
Along those lines. It can be very helpful.
And the other thing is, you know, and this will be obvious coming from me, meditation has been shown to really help with impulse control.
All right, that was a great one, and let's go to Dana in Chicago. Dana, do you have a New Year's resolution?
I actually don't do a New Year's resolution. What I do is I pick a word of the year every year and that word is a word that then I focus on for the coming year, something that it can teach me, something that I need to learn about.
So what's the word.
This year? Last year I picked the word joy, and I heard you guys talking earlier about laughter and adding more joy. This year, I decided the word I need to focus on is self trust phyphonated.
And why is that?
Well?
For me, I was realizing that there were a lot of things I was not I was not going for I was not achieving, I was not taking risks to do things, and I was trying to figure out why. And I realized I didn't necessarily trust myself in going for those things or achieving those things, and I needed to learn a little bit more about how to have self trust. So I decided that should be my word.
For this year.
That's great. That's a great word. And good luck with trusting yourself. Don't doubt yourself, Dana. You should be trusting yourself. So thank you for calling in. You know we are wrapping up the hour. By the way, do we have any comments online coming out?
I wanted to say this, and so Lee and Denver says, I disagree about the specificity of resolutions. Trying to avoid cursing or avoid complaining is vague but effective even if you managed to avoid swearing, even once you've succeeded.
That's interesting. I was actually watching some old videos of like New Year's Resolutions news stories, and a lot of people said I don't want to swear anymore, which I feel like I'm surprised to hear that in twenty twenty five, given just where we are in the world right now, I guess you can't. They are. Both of our guests have come close. They've used swear words, they've have gotten in them in trouble before, but maybe not anymore. Morockap. Before we wrap up this hour, I have to tell our audience that years ago, I was your tenant when I first moved to New York and was making a paltry public radio salary. You allowed me to rent a sublet or a place that you had held on to, and it was a six floor walk up and I think you told me, if you go downstairs and it's raining and you forgot your umbrella, you're just going to buy a new one because you're not going to go back.
Right, because it was Yeah, it was really good for your glues. Yeah, it was a six floor walk up up right. Yeah, Yes, you were good tenant. You were good tenant. I both yeah, I'll say that, you know, and I thought that was a good slum lord.
You are.
I want to thank both of my guests in fantastic CBS Sunday Morning correspondent and host of the mo Obituaries podcast and my former landlord in his real estate empire, Mo Roca. Thank you so much, and happy new Year to you.
Thanks Jeremy, this is a lot of fun.
And Dan Harris, author of ten Percent Happier, host of the ten Percent Happier podcast, and now has told me that I can't just walk to meditated do the thing. Dan, Thank you very much, Happy New Year to.
You, and I have a new resolution be a better slum lord.
All right. The Middle is brought to you by Longnok Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media in Urbana, Illinois, and produced by Harrison Patino, Danny Alexander, Sam Burmisdas, and John Barth. Our intern is an Akadesslar. Our technical director is Jason Kroft. Our theme music was composed by Andrew Haig. Thanks to our satellite radio listeners, our podcast audience, and the more than four hundred and twenty public radio stations that are making it possible for people across the country to listen to The Middle. By the Way, next week, we're going to go back into more serious mode. We're gonna be talking about the future of Ukraine. What should happen now as President elect Trump takes office again, What should happen with Ukraine. That's next week. I'm Jeremy Hobson and I'll talk to you then.
