Use your birthday as a yearly check-in. Not “am I rich yet,” but “am I kinder than last year?”

Yearly reviews measure whatever is easy to count, and kindness is not, so it quietly falls off the list. It is also the measure other people actually experience. Asking whether you are kinder than last year puts the question on ground you control, which income and luck never are.

Use your birthday, or any fixed date, and answer honestly for five minutes. Think of one person who would say you were easier to be around this year, and one who would not. Pick a single change for the next twelve months, small enough that it survives a bad week.