Want a New Year resolution? Try this one.
“… resolve to cut everyone a massive amount of slack, including yourself. That’s the overarching conclusion of social psychology: we’re all staggeringly imperfect organisms, prone to making bad decisions when stress, busyness or poverty robs us of “cognitive bandwidth”. We habitually excuse our own bad behaviour as the result of special circumstances, while blaming others’ misdemeanours on deep-down nastiness. Or we torment ourselves with how much more accomplished everyone else is, when really it’s just that we lack access to their inner monologues of self-doubt. So: ease up.”
Recommended by Oliver Burkeman in his latest edition of “This column will change your life”.