28/12/2024
New Year’s intentions, not resolutions…
Is New Year’s intentions a more therapeutic and better mindset to adapt than resolutions?
Let’s first discuss the word “resolution”, it means the quality of being determined, resolute, a firm decision to do something. The issue with “resolution” is that it focuses on just strong will and when this fails motivation wanes and we may feel despondent or perhaps give up. So just strong will does not allow for flexibility of mindset. It is a good plan to improve our health and wellbeing by setting objectives, especially at the time of New Year, when motivations are high. However, New Year’s intentions may be a more realistic approach.
Setting New Year’s intentions is an aim or a plan, we intend to achieve. Setting an intention builds in more flexibility to achieve our objectives, aligning ourselves with being human, understanding that relapse and feedback are part of the process to successfully achieve our set intentions. Intention also allows for reframing our mindset towards a more forgiving mindset to ourselves, so not just strong will and determination but also goodwill and skilful will, allowing ourselves to be imperfect, not succeeding on some days and bringing in love and compassion for ourselves during the process. With skilful will, we can raise awareness of the reasons for not achieving our intentions and learning from these situations and experiences and accept them as feedback and not failure or mistakes. Awareness is a stepping stone to change. Perhaps, we may start to ask ourselves some questions, such as, what happened on the day I did not achieve this? Who was I with? What was I doing at the time? Our environments also have a role to play.
So, perhaps this year you may set your New Year’s intentions, not resolutions…we are beautifully imperfect, part of being human…
As a Certified Health and Wellbeing Coach, EFT and NLP Practitioner we can discover together what is getting in the way of achieving your intentions https://www.vanessapickford.co.uk/get-in-touch/
Wishing you a happier and healthier you in 2025!
Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay