New Year, Same You: A Guide to Setting Therapeutic Intentions for the New Year
Rachel Damin, MHC
As 2022 comes to a close, many of us are taking time to reflect on the past year and look forward to what’s to come in 2023. In thinking about the new year ahead, it can be tempting to ask yourself questions such as, ‘how will I be different this year?’ and ‘what do I want to change?’ These questions historically open the door to creating New Year’s Resolutions: specific and measured goals to improve upon in the new year.
While resolutions can be helpful in motivating you to achieve new goals, they can sometimes feel discouraging if you don’t complete them perfectly. Because resolutions only account for the end result, if you make a resolution to go running every day in 2023, the resolution falls through if you miss a few days. Instead of planning to run every day, you could set an intention to live a more active lifestyle or to be more mindful and present in your body. This places more of an emphasis on the value itself, as opposed to just the end result of how you are achieving it.
Setting an Intention means taking stock of what you already value in life and about yourself and finding ways to incorporate these more into your daily life. This abandons the idea that you are hoping to change yourself in the new year and instead acknowledges that who you are in the present is enough and that you want to live in accordance with what you value.
Steps to Setting an Intention can include:
Identifying your core values
Finding what brings you joy
Reflecting on the successes of the past year
Envisioning your aspirations for the year ahead
In preparing for the new year, it can be tempting to imagine that when the clock strikes midnight, we can all start fresh and change completely, however with setting intentions, our goal is not to change, but to be more of our truest selves. In setting intentions as opposed to resolutions, we provide ourselves with more opportunities to succeed in living in alignment with our values.