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I'm your host, Elise Hugh. It happens to the best of us. The resolutions we set at the beginning of a new year become harder to accomplish, and maybe we've already given up on a few.

And yet, at the start of every year, many of us continue to turn our attention to goals or resolutions.

What is the deeper question that sits behind this yearly cycle of planning?

For journalist and psychologist Emily Svahaniahani Smith, it's what truly gives our

lives meaning and how we stay grounded in what matters most. In a conversation from January,

Emily joins TED curator Whitney Pennington Rogers to explore questions around how to cultivate

purpose, belonging, and a deeper sense of fulfillment as we continue into this year and beyond.

The New Year's resolution is a thing that many of us at least know about and maybe participate in

some way, thinking about how we want to resolve to do things for the year. How do you make the

distinction between chasing achievement and cultivating a meaningful life? So I think, so yeah,

the idea of resolutions, I, you know, I personally, I like the idea of resolutions if they're

done, you know, I think the right way, I guess you could say.

A lot of times, you know, we we do resolutions that are focused on these really discrete goals, like, you know, lose 10 pounds by, you know, such and such a date or things like this, you know,

and I think that if we, you know, especially tying it into meaning,

if we can think about what it is that we value that's underneath that resolution, like

health or connection, and then maybe framing the resolution in more broad terms that then,

you know, that specific discrete goal, I think it'll be, it'll make it more consistent

with living a meaningful life and less kind of frustrating,

well, let's say more kind of expansive to pursue.

If, you know, if one of your goals is to say,

be better at responding to your friends text messages.

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