The turn of the year is a cultural ritual, a collective pause where we reflect, reset, and, most importantly, hope . Some people embrace this ritual with colour-coded planners and vision boards. Others roll their eyes and mutter something accurate but incomplete like, “Nothing really changes on January 1st” . Psychological research suggests that hope is not about believing things will change, but about how the mind prepares for change. Hope is often dismissed as naive optimis

The Need for Belonging and Social Inclusion I watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas  (2000) for the first time, long after it had settled into popular culture as a familiar seasonal story. At its surface, it is a seasonal fable about generosity and redemption. Psychologically, however, it is a story about belonging under threat , and about what happens to a person when inclusion feels permanently out of reach. The Grinch is not simply “anti-Christmas”; he is an outlier navig

The Christmas holiday is already here, and festive seasons always remind me of something important: gratitude tends to surface when life slows down just enough for us to notice what we usually rush past. Gratitude is often described as an attentional and cognitive orientation: the ability to notice what is supportive, meaningful, or sustaining in our lives, even in the presence of stress and uncertainty. But it is not about ignoring difficulty or forcing positivity. In fact,