In some ways, the final test for any religion is: "Does it help me be a happier, better person today?" I believe that the New Church has a lot to offer here.
Your life can change in dramatic ways, but there is no quick-fix. Spiritual growth takes effort and attention on our part. There are definite steps we can follow to overcome any fault or shortcoming in our lives.
Let's look at one specific teaching and how it might apply to our lives. I call it "exposing the lie." Think back on the times you have felt something negative. Maybe it was anger, pride, or fear. How did you gat rid of that feeling? Sometimes it may have been easy. At other times it may have seemed impossible, especially if it was something insidious like fear or guilt which tend to gnaw at us.
The New Church offers a tool that might help you. Here's the principle behind it: Feelings are vulnerable all alone, so they use ideas as their armor.
This armor is very useful for your good feelings. For instance, you surround the feeling of love you have for someone by reasons why you love them, and by commitments you make to them. These true reasons and commitments protect that love and keep it strong.
Negative feelings, on the other hand, use lies as armor to protect themselves and to justify their existence. For example, let's say you are feeling unnecessary guilt about something. You know intellectually that you shouldn't feel guilty, but you can't shake it. Even though you aren't aware of them, there are probably lies gathered around that guilt to support it. The armor of those lies keeps your guilt safe from true ideas. One might be the lie that you are responsible for someone else's happiness; or the lie that when you displease someone you have automatically done wrong or the lie that you " should have known better" even though you didn't have enough information. If you can expose the lie - discover which unconscious belief you have accepted - you are a long way down the road toward getting rid of unhealthy guilt. All that will be left will be appropriate guilt. The next time that the unhealthy guilt comes back, you can say, "That feeling is a lie; I do not have to feel guilt." Try it.
That is just one example of the tools the New Church offers for a better, happier life. You can see from the example that you will still need to exert effort and pay attention to grow spiritually. But you will know what you are faying to fight. Instead of fighting blind, you can fight with your eyes open.