At the end of every year is a time for reflection. Did you accomplish your new years’ resolutions? Was this a good year? What went well? Or what could you have done differently?

We begin to look back on the year analyzing if we are living a great life, are we doing what makes us happy? Sometimes we can reflect and dissect the previous year with good intentions to learn from our past to improve and create better years ahead of us. Often, though, we find ourselves going down that ugly rabbit hole where we scrutinize ourselves to the point of making ourselves sick to our stomachs.

This year we decided to share lessons we’ve learned to remind ourselves at the beginning of every new year for encouragement to start the new year off on the right foot and to ease our fears of wasting another year away.

1. Expect the unexpected.

No matter how much you try to plan out your year ahead,  you will never be able to predict what the year ahead has in store for you. We’ve learned over the years that a lot can happen in one year and many of it may be things we would never have thought of let alone be able to predict.

You can do your best to plan your upcoming year and fill it with all things you want to do, but life will always take its course.

You may find yourself moving to a whole new place or meeting someone new, maybe someone from your past returns or a life-altering event occurs.

Many people are afraid of the unknown, full of fear of what the new year holds, but the beauty of every year is that the world has a way of taking your plans and giving you something even bigger or better that you could never have planned for yourself and it is these miracles that make every year a wondrous adventure…something to treasure, not worry yourself over.

2. You will be able to find your way to where you’re supposed to be.

Throughout the year if you find yourself at a crossroads or struggling to make the right choice or even going down a path wondering if you made the right decision, no matter which road you take they all lead to the same destination.

If you are meant to be on a certain path it doesn’t matter which one you choose, the universe will always re-route you to where you need to be.

“If things aren’t happening as fast as you want them to, that means there is a lot of kick-ass sights to see along the way.”

Find peace in knowing that if you do ever find yourself trying to figure out what the next step to take or where you need to be or if you are ever worried you are making the wrong decision, that you will always be guided to where you need to be and there is an abundance of beautiful sights and stops to see along every path.

3. Don’t set yourself up for failure.

Set yourself up for success isn’t always as easy as it sounds, but taking time to plan ahead to avoid setting yourself up for failure is a much more manageable task.

One way to avoid setting yourself up for failure is to set goals that are aligned with your values and are doable within your lifestyle. Do your best to avoid setting unrealistic goals that will leave you feeling disappointed and leave you falling short. For example, settings goals such as reading three books a week or starting exercising every day for two hours six days a week. If you have never been able to read one book a week, trying to jump ahead so quickly and so far is expecting yourself to do more than you’ve been able to. This isn’t about not believing in yourself, it is more about pushing yourself too hard too quickly that you crash before you can even give yourself a chance. You know yourself better than anyone and you already know what you are capable of handling on your plate with your mindset, your abilities, and your lifestyle…with these in mindset goals that are manageable for you to avoid setting yourself up for failure.

The second way to avoid setting yourself up for failure is less about mastering tasks and more about handling negative situations you find yourself in throughout the year. We can’t always predict when something bad will happen to us, but we can take time to think ahead to avoid negative situations within our control. Whether you are chasing a dream and taking risks or surrounded by toxic people, sometimes it just takes a moment to yourself before taking action to avoid getting ourselves into a situation we don’t want to be in. For example, setting high expectations of others or upcoming events can lead you to imagine things to turn out perfect and we all know that if you put something on the highest pedestal there is only one way it can go. Another example is, do you your research. If something doesn’t feel right or if you aren’t sure about something, whether that be a decision you have to make or a person in your life, take the time think things over and try your best to follow your intuition.

Changing your mindset from ‘set your self up for success’ to avoid setting yourself up to fail can help you ease your fears and refocus yourself in the right direction. This mindset change can take daunting tasks and big dreams into more manageable and digestible tasks and lead to better decision making.

4. Don’t fight against the waters.

People say that if you feel too much resistance in life that means you are on the wrong path and not aligned with the flow of the universe. However, that statement also leads to the belief that every time you keep hitting obstacles that means you are chasing the wrong dream, but no dream come true story didn’t have its fair share of bumps in the road.

Just because you are hitting resistance doesn’t mean you are on the wrong path.

Don’t fight against the waters doesn’t mean give up every time you come across an obstacle, it means to let go of your control.

Let go of your “I want this” for the upcoming year, let go of your “I want to change this.”

Let go of your ‘I wants.’

Stop trying to hold on too tight to control that you wind up strangling the air out of your life.

If you are starting to feel too much resistance, ask yourself is it something you want? Something you’re trying to control?

5. Chuck the resolutions, goals, and tasks.

It has become a trend now to stop setting new year resolutions that no one ever sticks out. Let’s be honest, because it is true. People rarely ever follow through on their new year resolutions.

The question is, though, why is that?

Yes, because most of the time they are unrealistic expectations. There are many reasons why people don’t make it to the finish line, but all those reasons have one common denominator…

At the end of every year, it isn’t about how many resolutions you accomplished or how many goals you crushed or how many tasks you checked off that make the perfect, happiest, kick-ass year ever.

When you look back at the end of the year and evaluate how great of a year you had, what will make you smile?

That feeling that you were happy, you feel good about all the times you felt joy, happiness, love, excitement.

It’s not about all things you do, it’s about all the feelings you want to feel. You can read more about setting the right new years resolutions for you here. 

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A new year can bring a lot of emotions for everyone, from excitement to anxiety, hopeful to fearful. We are filled with hopes and dreams of what the new year can bring us, but at the same time, we can be filled with fear of repeating mistakes, fear of the unknown and things we cannot control, and fearful of not making the most of our lives.

With these five lessons, we’ve learned how to calm our fears. These lessons help us start our new year off with a positive and encouraging mindset and we allow these lessons to be a resource to remind ourselves throughout the year that we can choose to create a year of joy for ourselves and continuously replace our anxiety with reassurance and a sense of peace.

We hope these lessons help do the same for you in this new year.