How to move forward into the New Year

The start of a new year, and this year a new decade, can give time for reflection about both the positives and the struggles that you may have experienced over the last year or even 10! Therefore, you may be thinking about how to move forward in the New Year.

In January we can often find ourselves recycling the same resolutions and feeling like they may not be achievable. So, if whatever you are facing this year – be it good, bad or, as is quite often the case during divorce, uncertain – perhaps now is a good time to resolve to do your resolutions differently.

The adage ‘New Year, New You’ is often cited in early January – perhaps the resolution here is to address critical self-judgement as this statement suggests there is something amiss with the ‘old you’! It could be that now is the time to become aware of critical self-judgement, work on acceptance and positive change – perhaps resolve to engage in proactive activities. These can be small and achievable immediately. For example, you could resolve to stop engaging in negative self-talk or deciding to find and work with a therapist to enable this process. This can engender a feeling of empowerment and a small success which is essential in terms of validating your self-worth.

Try to identify, either on your own or through writing or discussions with a friend or in therapy, patterns of behaviour or thinking that are either helping you or hindering you and how this interacts with your ability to set and achieve goals.

Resolving to be proactive in terms of your own thought processes and also deciding to see what you can do rather than what you should give up (in the traditional new year resolution sense) can help you find interesting new ways of thinking and moving forward into the next decade.

Happy New Year.

If you would like to contact me in order to discuss how to move forward in the New Year, my contact details can be found here.