I teach a course on happiness at Yale: this is how to make the most of your resolutions

Forget tough love. Adopting a positive mindset and being kind to yourself is a more effective way to make a change

To say that 2020 wasn't the best year is an understatement. For many of us, it felt like a giant global dumpster fire. Not surprisingly, the stresses of living through a pandemic have had a terrible impact on our collective mental health, with rates of depression and anxiety skyrocketing. Many of us feel we can't say goodbye to last year fast enough.

And that means we're entering 2021 with high expectations. With the promise of a vaccine and the potential for a return to normality, the start of this year has given us something we've been missing for a long time: hope. Starting over after the year we've just had feels more exciting than usual. It's a brand new chapter in our lives, in which lots of positive changes are possible.