How to Mentally Reset for the New Year

I personally have always disliked posts like this one. One, they always take way more spoons than I have to accomplish the things on the list. Two, they are always designed for people who have their lives somewhat together.

I’ll be honest. A lot of these things felt very unattainable to me until about 9 months ago. I struggled so much trying to keep the emergencies in life from happening that I didn’t have time to focus on things like goals or meal prepping. I was simply doing things as I had to do them. If this feels like you, check out my article Reset from Rock Bottom for more info and tips on how to begin working chaos out of your life first.

It has taken me months to get to a place where I can actually set goals for the New Year, to become someone who understands how to focus on habit tracking and improving myself while still doing the things I need to do to survive. It’s not easy, but I promise the end result makes it totally worth it!

There is no reason for you to try and accomplish these tasks all in one day OR even all before the beginning of the New Year. Take each idea, one step at a time, and take as long as you need to do it. This will set you up for ultimate success in the beginning of the New Year and help make this year the year you change everything.

With that being said, here’s a few things you can do to make sure your New Year starts off right.

Decide what you need to let go of.

The first thing you’ll need to let go of is judgment. Judgment for anything you didn’t do or accomplish in the past year. Anything that you feel shame or guilt about for not doing. Let. It. Go.

Declutter your closet. Decluttering this year, even one thing a day, changed my life.

Unfollow pages and people that don’t give you good vibes. Maybe even do a good begin of the year detox from social media. (I strongly recommend this for everyone. I did a 3 month detox once and it was one of the most eye opening things I’ve done. To this day, I am still very limited with my social media interaction.)

Make a list of what things that did not work for you this year and then decide those things will not be following you into the new year.

If you don’t already have a system, create one.

If you don’t already have a system that you follow for prioritizing your tasks, appointments, meetings, and such… now is the perfect time to choose one and begin building a system you will actually use.

It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. What’s important is that it’s something you will use!

Overall, this can be a low spoons task as this is something you will build out as you use it, not something you need to create right now. As you decide what areas or parts you need to manage your life, you can simply add them in as you go.

If you are a creative and like to hand write, bullet journaling is definitely the way to go. This brand from Amazon was my personal favorite when I tried my hand at bullet journaling. I purchased it 7 times and had no complaints.

If you prefer to keep things digitalized, I highly recommend using Notion. Notion has been a game-changer for me and it’s free.

Make a vision for the upcoming year.

Choose a word for the year. (This year my word is tenacity, last year my word was simplify.)

Define what you want this year to look like for you and why.

Create a vision board on Pinterest or from magazines.

Create your current self versus future self. Then write out steps you can take to become that person.

Put your vision somewhere in front of you where you’ll see it going into the New Year. Having your vision in front of you and visible every day will help ensure that you are focused on and taking the time to work on things that really matter to you.

Reduce decision fatigue

You can reduce decision fatigue in the upcoming year in a number of ways.

Begin batching similar tasks and items together. This may be difficult to do at first (it can be hard to think of things that are similar) but if you keep it in mind while you’re living life, you’ll begin to see ways you can save time and improve decision fatigue.

Some of the things I batch together that save me time:

Meal prepping. Focusing an hour or two on meals one day for 1-2 weeks of food has saved me so much time and money during the week.

Reading and taking action on emails only 1-2 times a day. I started off at 4x a day but was able to bring down when I began to feel less worried about missing something important. (If someone is sending an email, they shouldn’t be expecting an immediate response.)

Deciding on clothes for the week on Sunday. I can’t explain how much headache and time this has saved me in the morning. It is such a small thing but I promise its reward is huge.

Paying all your bills and organizing your budget in one set time period.

Respond to text messages only a few set times a day. Non-urgent ones can wait.

Turn off all notifications on your phone and set aside certain times to check the apps that are important or have scheduled times your phone will send you all notifications instead.

This has also been really helpful in my work life. Although this will likely look different for everyone, I now break my day into sections. My work flow has become so much better and I’ve been getting a lot more work accomplished each day.

Set SMART goals

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time-bound

When it comes to goal-setting, I had a hard time at first. I had never really set a goal for myself where I organized out just how I was going to achieve it and most of my successes I had kind of stumbled into, without intention. I wasn’t really sure where to start. With goal-setting, depending on where you’re at in your journey, I would suggest one of two things.

One - If you are used to setting goals for yourself and believe you understand the process behind smart goals enough to set a pathway for yourself, go ahead and do that!

Two - If you’re just starting out and don’t know where to start, I highly recommend choosing a few goals you’re interested in pursuing and instead of setting time frames for achieving these things, focus on creating habits that help work you towards the end goal instead. Have your goals formulated around your habits so you’re more likely to stick with the goal in the long-term and not become discouraged by dates or time frames.

An example of this was me with financial goals.

I wasn’t really sure where to start or what was most important. So instead of setting a random savings goal or an investing goal, I just set a goal of reading 15 minutes of a financial book every day.

It’s been a few months of this now and I’m already 6 books in! Because of this, I started a savings goal for myself and was able to build a financial plan for my future. To think this ALL started and was achieved from simply reading 15 minutes a day, it blows my mind!

When all is said and done, I strongly believe you should be doing resets a few times a year.

There is nothing magical about doing this at the beginning of the year. For me, it’s just an ideal time to restart over fresh with all the excitement and energy I can tap into for the new year. In all honesty though, this will be the first New Years I’m doing this FOR REAL. In April, I began setting goals and looking to set up a system for myself for the very first time. I set my goals and time frames to match up with the new year.

If you’re reading this at the beginning of the year or in the middle of the year, the information should still hit just the same. Wherever you are, wherever you are starting from, start there and build. A strong foundation is the only reason I was able to consistently maintain goals and habits throughout this year, and it has definitely changed my life for the better.

For anyone who needs a reminder that they can be whoever they desire to be by taking small steps, tiny steps, but steps forward each day…

“I hope you realize that every day is a fresh start for you. That every sunrise is a new chapter in your life waiting to be written.” ~ Juansen Dizon

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