How to prepare for a mentally healthy new year

A new year can bring with it a sense of optimism and enthusiasm about twelve fresh months and the opportunities that may bring. A time of great promise and motivation, a new year can also bring both internal and external pressure. Our desire to get things right, to set resolutions and accomplish personal goals or break a habit may become a source of comparison or shift the focus from progress that we’ve made. There is a certain appeal in setting new year’s resolutions; a clean slate and a fresh start, but what may feel comforting in theory can become prescriptive and restrictive over time.   

It’s OK to make change in an affirming and self-compassionate way.

Here are some ways you can balance a willingness to change habits and make progress in a new year.

Choosing the framework that inspires

The concept of a new year’s resolutions is said to date back to 4000BC where the Ancient Babylonians offered bounty, prayers and promises of good behaviour in return for plentiful harvests and fruitful fishing trips. They span Eastern and Western tradition and give us the opportunity to identify the areas of improvement we seek in a new year.

However, the restrictive nature of our approach to resolutions doesn’t suit everyone. Too often have resolutions become a source of negativity if the expectation wasn’t met.

According to the popular book, Atomic Habits by James Clear[1], changing habits includes making micro-changes to your environment and supporting you to achieve change over a longer period of time. It is not promise of a future finish line as delivered by a modern-day resolution. There are no big transformations awaits at the start or end of a calendar year. Rather, focus on creating an environment that supports you to make better choices.

Recognising that change doesn’t happen overnight and providing yourself a positive replacement for the habit, creates a far less restrictive and potentially punishing self-narrative. It gives you the ability to ground yourself in the change and notice not only the absence or melancholy, but the hope for the future, too. 

Choose to put mental health first

Many New Year’s resolutions focus on setting goals to improve areas such as physical health, financial performance, or relationships. But what if you centred your experience on putting your mental health first?

If you put your mental health first, would you take up the sport you’ve always wanted to try? Would you ask for your needs in relationships differently? Would you be kinder to yourself by setting fewer and perhaps more realistic goals?

Using your mental health as a litmus test for the decisions in your life can help qualify the right options for you. As well as guiding you to opt for choices that boost, rather than reduce, your self-esteem.

When we make the choice to allow good mental health to define our experience, we:

• Take the time to reflect on situations, people and environments and assess their influence on our overall health and happiness
• Choose exercise and activities that promote a sense of achievement and well-being over gamification and pressure
• Seek and make time for relationships, friendships and social experiences that fulfill and support us
• Make time for hobbies, sports, activities and events that make us feel good and promote community connectivity
• Help create a sense of well-being that keeps us in the present instead of ruminations of the past and/or anxiety for the future
• Find it easier to reach out for help when and if we need it.

Put intrinsic goals at the centre

When we talk about goals and plans, we’re often caught up in the excitement. Ideas that swirl around extrinsic goals such as visibility and prestige, an increase in fortune, and the external proof we are moving forward can entice us.

Yet, we often forget to look at the foundations of our core mental health and our being for guidance. Intrinsic goals inspire us to connect and pursue a life that nourishes and nurtures us through good times and bad. They naturally lend themselves to self-care and compassion. All while teaching us to grow in ourselves, our relationships, career and community.

• How can you create, foster, and strengthen the relationships that surround you
• What excites you about the new year and engages your curiosity?
• How would you like to encourage yourself to grow personally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and/or professionally?
• What does self-nurturing and self-guidance look like to you?

By choosing what matters most, we can inspire change from the inside out.

Rinse and repeat

Humans are imperfect and a desire and willingness to change, doesn’t mean that we’ll always be successful, or that change will come easily. Moment by moment, decision by decision, we change the course of our lives. How we think, when and if we act, what we do when we do act, it all adds up. By choosing to make a change, you are also making a commitment to growing, thinking and muddling your way forward.

That’s why it’s important to recognise that repetition and responsiveness are part of the package.

The more you practise the guitar, the easier the notes come. And the more you realise that some days, you will play better than others and that’s OK, too, the more the journey of learning becomes positive, with less resistance.

Our culture can tend to focus on the product of a great idea or hard work without necessarily seeing the effort, resilience and difficult moments it took to get there. Personal success and achievement don’t happen in a vacuum or without consistent effort. At times, personal achievement is unseen and discrete, yet holds great transformative power. Changing our mindset, allowing more self-compassion, and building good habits on a small scale is an achievable first step.

Remember, as Miles Davis famously said, “It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note. It’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.”

References and Sources

1. Clear J. Atomic habits: An easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones. Penguin; 2018 Oct 16.

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