The new year often brings a wave of excitement—and also pressure, to start fresh or set new goals. But this new chapter can leave us feeling overwhelmed or disheartened when life doesn’t go as planned. When we set external markers for success, it is all too easy to experience missteps and setbacks and all-or-nothing thinking. From where we stand on January 1, we make a list of the things we feel we should achieve over the coming twelve months, usually making a plan with zero space for unforeseen circumstances and our own human nature.
Instead of focusing solely on external goals, why not prioritize a mindset reset? Shifting your focus to mental well-being can create a solid foundation for lasting change. The better you care for yourself, the higher your standard of care will become. When you have been kind to yourself all day, it’s pretty difficult to make an unkind choice for yourself in the evening. The more we build the habit of being gracious with ourselves, the more we are able to feel secure in our deservedness of that kindness.
Why a Healthy Mindset Matters
Your mindset influences how you perceive challenges, setbacks, and successes. A healthier mindset fosters resilience, self-compassion, and clarity, helping you navigate life’s ups and downs more effectively. As the year begins, nurturing a positive mental outlook can make your goals feel more attainable and your journey more rewarding. Mental well-being isn’t just about avoiding stress; it’s about building the inner strength to thrive. You may encounter some feelings of guilt when you prioritize your own mindset, but putting yourself first is the only way to be the best version of yourself you can be. And when you are your best self, everyone around you benefits as well.
3 Ways to Start the New Year with a Healthier Mindset
- Reflect and Release:
Take time to reflect on the past year’s experiences—both the highs and the lows. Journaling can be a powerful tool for this. Acknowledge any mistakes or regrets, then consciously release them. Rather than carrying past burdens, focus on what you’ve learned. This process of reflection helps you enter the new year with emotional clarity and space for growth.
Releasing negative thoughts and experiences can be tricky, and feel daunting. The things that matter the most to us leave an impact on us; if you suffered a big loss last year, or made a mistake you deeply regret, you may take some time unpacking. The goal is to ease your mental burden as much as possible. Not all things will be released in a simple manner, but you can begin the process and work your way through. Don’t give yourself a deadline, but rather, determine a routine and commit to being consistent with it.
For example, when you sit down to reflect, and you consider your small wins and losses, you have a starting point. What did you learn from your smaller mistakes? And what did you learn from your wins? Too often, we only take lessons from our losses, but our successes can also inform what we are enjoying, what we want to focus on, and what our next goal(s) could be. When you release a small loss, you accept that it happened and that there is no changing it. You take whatever lesson you can from it and move forward more aware of how to approach a similar situation next time. When you release a small win, you remind yourself to keep moving forward and keep growing. It is when we decide we’ve done all we can do that we stagnate, and stagnation leads to depression and frustration.
Your tougher losses may not be processed and released before the end of January, but it is best to aim for progress in that area. Whether you have vented a lot of emotion, come to some realizations, or gained more acceptance, you will have done good work toward moving forward. Some things simply take time. What matters is that you revisit it, that you confront it, and let yourself experience whatever the pain is around what happened. Breaking it down into smaller pieces can help you release bits at a time.
As an anxiety counselor in Woodland Hills, I know that reflection can turn into rumination if we are not careful. In anxiety therapy, we learn how to accept the past and adopt productive behaviors based on what we have learned about ourselves. Through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), you can learn how to recognize that you are ruminating and why, identify the thoughts that aren’t helping you (or are actively harming you), center your thoughts in reality/the present through mindfulness, and adopt positive behaviors that support your intentions. The more you practice this process, the easier it will come to you, the more confidence you build, and the more empowered you will feel. This helps you to take the reins back from your anxiety.
- Set Intentions, Not Resolutions:
It is great to have goals for yourself; having something you are working toward helps you stay oriented and pointed in the right direction. However, most of the time, when we want to make changes, we get locked into certain targets and outcomes. This is why the majority of “New Year’s Resolutions” are abandoned by the end of January.
Resolutions often focus on rigid outcomes, which can lead to frustration. Instead, set intentions that align with your values. For example, “Instead of resolving to lose 20 pounds, I intend to treat my body with kindness and care.”
Intentions are flexible and focus on the journey rather than the destination, encouraging a healthier relationship with yourself. They leave room for you to adjust your expectations as you go; you may be surprised to learn that it is never about the actual number on the scale once you start caring for yourself with compassion.
You might think, “But I really want to lose 20 pounds.” The thing to remember is that when you embark upon a journey of self-care, it changes and informs you. The 20 pounds you’re thinking of could be a feeling, it could be a certain item of clothing fitting, it could be a certain look in the mirror, it could be a health outcome. You might be surprised to change your body shape to one you prefer and then find that you’ve gained weight or stayed the same. You might discover that you can increase your energy, stamina, and strength without losing a single pound, thereby feeling better in your body.
When you intend to nourish yourself, hydrate, rest, and move your body, you experience these positive changes every day. The goal you set, the one at the end of your journey, was arbitrary. The number didn’t matter. The best way to set a goal is to imagine the kind of journey you want to go on and determine which behaviors you wish to address. Some people can make every behavior change in the world and not change their weight, but see all kinds of other positive outcomes. Some people can make behavior changes that get them to their goal, but the number on the scale wasn’t worth the energy, happiness, body neutrality, and confidence they had to give up to get there.
An intention leaves room for you to stay connected with your needs in real-time. If you set a goal to journal every day, but then something happens to cause you to miss a day, then what? Many people get locked into all-or-nothing thinking that causes them to experience one setback and call the whole project a failure. If you intend, instead, to journal and reflect more often, then there is no reason for you to put so much pressure on yourself to keep up a daily habit or cause despair if you miss a day. You may wonder how you will stay inspired to keep up the habit if you don’t make it a daily goal, but that is where the intentions come in. Why are you hoping to take more time to reflect? What can you get out of journaling more often? How does taking time to consider and record your day impact the way you see the world, the things you notice, and your priorities? If you set a goal or intention without any real reason for wanting to do it, it’s not likely to be easy to stick to.
- Practice Gratitude Daily:
So much of the pressure we put on ourselves comes from a place of feeling that we aren’t measuring up in some way. Starting a daily gratitude practice shifts your focus from what you lack to what you already have. Being in a deprivation mindset doesn’t foster the confidence and self-acceptance needed to put your best foot forward.
Gratitude helps you to experience a sense of abundance, wherein you cannot help but notice all the things that are going your way. Each day, write down three things you’re grateful for, no matter how small. This simple habit can rewire your brain to notice positive moments, reducing anxiety and fostering a more optimistic outlook. Most of the time, all we need is the belief that we can do something, or that we are resilient enough to fail without it derailing our happiness and sense of self.
The idea of adding a daily obligation to your life may feel like fodder for stress about missing a day (see above), but you can apply your practice of intention to taking this action. Some days, you might not come up with three amazing things. Other days, you’ll realize you forgot to do the day before, and quickly think up three things. That’s okay.
Once you get over the pressure of adding a daily habit and begin to employ your gratitude practice, you will see that it is a key component in addressing anxiety. When you take stock every day of what you are grateful for, you begin to see the positive things in your life accumulate. This can help you to reassure yourself about concerns about the past and the future. In our Woodland Hills anxiety therapy sessions, patients often report back to us that noticing the positive things in their lives creates more optimism overall, decreasing stress and worry.
The habit of gratitude can also help you come to terms with pain from your past. There are some incidents in life that are inexplicable, and nothing can ever make it “okay” that they happened. But over time, when you are able to find gratitude for the occurrences of your life, some of the smaller pains seem to be okay in the grand scheme of things. And the deeper wounds, the more unmitigated losses, those don’t go away, but they become surrounded by dozens of small blessings and mercies, like stones gathering around a rock. The more stones you add, the less percentage of the total space the rock is taking up. It might always still be there, but it can be balanced by what surrounds it.
In order to establish your gratitude practice, consider what medium will be best for you. You may wish to invest in a nice journal, whether it’s blank or whether it was manufactured specifically for gratitude journaling. You may wish to keep your journal online or write your gratitude on little note cards to fill a jar each year. You might have a physical book to write in, as well as a note in your phone so that you can jot down what you’re grateful for when you think of it, to transcribe later, without having to carry a journal around with you. Think of making it straightforward and enjoyable. Set an alarm for a time of the evening to spend writing your gratitude journal when you know you’ll be able to so that you don’t forget.
Those who see us for anxiety therapy in Woodland Hills report that they spend the end of the year feeling like something has to give. Even when they make it through to January without having had any major drama over the holiday season, they feel that the pressure of the new year is a wave waiting to take them out. Addressing this feeling through conscientious action is something we do when they attend their in-person or online anxiety therapy in the new year, and you can do it, too. Make sure to set aside time to bid farewell to the previous year. Forgive yourself for what you can, and also make sure to congratulate yourself! Approach your goals from a place of enjoying the journey and seeking feelings and overall achievement, rather than chasing specific metrics. Be grateful for what you can when you can so that you don’t lose sight of all you already have and what you’ve already achieved. Be excited to put yourself at the top of your priority list through self-care and positive behavior changes, and remember that you can’t control the world around you, you can only control how you respond to what happens. You deserve peace of mind!
Anxiety Therapy at Embracing You Therapy
Do you find yourself overwhelmed with worry or frequently feeling stressed? Is maintaining a work-life balance, managing life transitions, or setting healthy boundaries a challenge for you?
Through Anxiety Therapy in Woodland Hills, CA, you can learn CBT and mindfulness techniques to help you regulate your emotions and develop healthier thought patterns and behaviors that support your well-being.
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