Maintaining our Mental Health and Creating Healthy New Year’s Resolutions
As the new year approaches, it is easy for individuals to become overwhelmed with the idea of making changes in their lives, and what these changes might look like. During this time, we often reflect on how we can better ourselves, and what primary goals we might have for the new year.
For many of us, our new year’s resolutions consist of things revolving around self- improvement, as we reflect on the past year and develop goals based on what we wish we had done differently, or what we’d like to try and attempt. In some cases, these new year’s resolutions can create joy and encouragement for us, and in other cases, it can cause us to feel stressed or worried that we will not achieve our goals. Due to this, it is important to create goals that are realistic for our lifestyle, and also ensure we are approaching it with the mindset that not meeting our goals, does not mean we are failures.
Ensuring we are keeping our mental health in mind, and a priority, is important to maintain a healthy balance between our goals, and wellbeing. Establishing new year’s resolutions which align with our priorities and professional/personal abilities, is important to consider when creating goals for our future. Ways we can ensure our mental health is being prioritized during this process, can include:
Selecting a goal that is something we enjoy/are passionate and interested in.
Break down our goals into ones which are more manageable/doable
Confide in others for support and motivation
Don’t compare yourself and your goals to others
These are all great ways we can develop new year's resolutions while still managing our mental health and wellbeing. For many of us, new year’s resolutions are believed to start on January 1st, which is not always manageable. Being more realistic and understanding of not putting such a strict timeline on our resolutions, can help us feel motivated to work towards our goals, as we might not feel as stressed or pressured. Creating realistic resolutions, that are also specific and achievable, is something that is crucial to creating new year’s resolutions that best align with our needs, which are also more likely to work out in our favour.
In some cases, we might not be able to come up with any goals or resolutions that sound appealing or interesting to us. This can sometimes occur due to the pressure of needing to develop the perfect resolution to start at the beginning of each year. Instead, starting a new year’s resolution later in the year, that is suitable and appropriate for our needs, can be equally as beneficial. Focusing on our mental health, as well as the things that mean the most to us, is important to consider when thinking of any goals we might have for ourselves.