Change How You Think About Your New Year’s Resolutions (with the Help of Your Therapist)

Every year is the same game: we choose our goals and set them, treating each goal like an A+ we need to get in a class. But what happens when the pressure of these goals sets in a month into the new year? We all know how difficult it can be to keep up with our standards for ourselves. So let’s start to think about our goals differently. 

There could be many things in this life that we desire– cars, a nice house, optimal health, someone to do our dishes for us. We may long for these things on the daily, and yet we don’t always take the time (or have the time) to think about if and how these desires align with our values. This is where therapy comes in. Your therapy session is an hour a week just for you, and as we go into the new year, it can be a space for you, if you so choose, to explore your desires and their alignment with your values. From there, we can start to ask ourselves if these are things we want to work towards– if we want to form these desires into goals.

When it comes to setting our goals, it can be frustrating to have a vague, overarching statement to govern our changes. For example, a common resolution people make is working out; “I want to work out more”. The generality of this statement leaves us feeling confused as to what steps to take, and makes it feel as though we’re going from 0 to 100, breeding a feeling of immediacy in us, and adding unnecessary pressure. It’s easy for our minds to go from “I want to work out more” to “If I don’t work out 5 times this week then I won’t have met my goal” to “I may as well not try at all”. Let’s avoid this spiral of self-doubt, and hone in on what we can achieve in the present, something that will help us make steps towards our bigger goals, instead of burning out too soon. Turning “I want to work out more” into “I’m going to take a walk this week, because I value my physical and mental wellness” not only gives us something more tangible to accomplish, but affirms us in that decision, while bringing it back to why we value this for ourselves. 

Now that we’ve established our values and our goals, let’s shift to how we think about our goals. In life or in therapy, we are sometimes able to have one clear goal and achieve it within a certain time frame. However, oftentimes, we go a while down the road, and realize that our goals have changed, or achieving said goals may look different than how we originally imagined. The same applies to our new year’s resolutions. Think back to the beginning of 2025; what did we want back then? Now coming back to the present, how has that desire changed? Holding the knowledge that our goals may look different in the future than they do now allows us to think flexibly about them. Thinking of our goals rigidly can lead to disappointment, and again apply pressure on ourselves to perform a certain way. Within a year’s time, we change a lot as people, and with that, our wants change too. We have the ability to ride that wave by being flexible. Flexibility in our goals and how we go about achieving them can allow us to continue to fit the ever changing mold of who we are.