Do The New Year A New Way

It’s 2026! On your marks, get set, GO!

Or maybe, don’t?? As an alternative, choose to pause, take a few deep breaths, and purposefully start off slow. After all, life is typically much more of a marathon than a sprint. It’s almost ingrained in us to begin the new year by identifying our goals and resolutions. Flip the light switch immediately to the on position and get at it. While this can certainly be a useful time to reflect on change and growth, it can also be equally helpful to settle in at a more leisurely tempo.

For example, use the dimmer switch to gradually activate. Perhaps begin by first taking an inventory of your 2025 successes, strides, and highlights. Practice giving yourself credit for all you navigated in the past twelve months before simply moving ahead to what needs to be better. Sit there in that space of appreciation and self-gratitude for a beat before taking off at full speed into the first lap of 2026.

Let’s also consider the idea that our named objective moving forward might just be to maintain the strides we have made. Despite the tendency to measure our worth by wins, accomplishments, and achievements, try to instead focus on connection, belonging, and feelings of contentment. While these latter experiences may be less quantitatively measurable, the psychological research certainly supports the clear value such qualitative happenings add to our overall well-being.

Therapy can, in fact, can serve as a useful arena to both name what we would like to look different AND to recognize what already looks great as is. When we are doing enough, let’s focus on that. Solidifying and celebrating our current sense of self can be an important anchor from which we can keep exploring the mysteries of life, year after year after year.