Setting Intentions for the New Year

The beginning of a new year can stir up a lot of different feelings: hope, anticipation, dread, worry… Have you checked in to see how you are feeling this new year? If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed by people talking about new year’s resolutions, new year new you, and not to mention the inundation of new workouts, new diets, and new wellness routines. The thing is, you don’t need to reinvent your life or yourself—and research shows that a complete overhaul is not sustainable and leaves most people feeling like a failure when they can’t maintain an overly rigid lifestyle.

Living with intention this new year can be the antidote to the stress of trying to make big changes really fast. When you live with intention, you create a theme for how you want to approach each moment, each day, each week, and each month, which will all add up to your year ahead. Living with intention allows you to become empowered to choose how you want to feel.

Creating a daily intention-setting practice can set up your day with a theme, a hope, and an opportunity to feel in control of your life. You can begin each day asking yourself, “What is my intention for today?” “How do I want to feel today?” Once you have determined these, you can then ask yourself, “What do I need to do to feel this way and to bring this intention into each moment of my day?” Get very specific about what actions you can take to create this feeling for yourself and to bring this intention to life so that you feel empowered and connected to your true wants and needs. Repeating this process as a daily practice will help to inform the days that will make up your year.

Practicing daily intention setting may be all that you need to feel that you are creating momentum to live your intentions. However, if you are desiring to prioritize an aspect of your health this year in a more intentional way, you can consider what pillar of health that would improve the quality of your health and life the most. Then determine how you can focus in on that specific pillar as you begin and move through the new year. Here are some of the most common pillars of health and wellbeing:

Sleep

Nutrition

Movement

Connection/relationships

Intentional relaxation

If you are hoping to focus on your health, it is helpful to choose one area to invite in your life for intentional for change. Each of the above pillars can improve your mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. Which aspect do you feel you need the most at this time? Then consider what small, actionable, and doable steps you can take daily towards your goals. This can be such an impactful way to create change in your life.

Taking pen to paper and writing down your goals that come from your intentions and how you want to feel and making them specific, doable, and desirable is the most effective place to begin. From there, you can determine the specific action steps you can take daily that will bring you closer to what you want. Checking in daily can help with follow-through and create a new habit.

This has been a daily practice of mine for a while now, and I use an old fashioned planner with pages for journaling in it; however, there are many apps out there that many people find very useful. I begin my day by writing down:

What is my intention for today?

How do I want to feel today?

What action steps do I need to take to help create that feeling (or those feelings) for myself?

My planner also has a habit tracker that I love because I see very clearly in a small space if I am following through! It’s super simple; I just write the goal I want to focus on and the action steps to take and it has a months worth of check boxes to check off if I complete it each day. Consistency is historically my downfall, and this very simple tracker has helped by offering a visual reminder that encourages me to follow through. Checking off the little box that shows how consistent I am being, provides feedback for what is best supporting my desired goals. It keeps my intentions and action steps fresh in my mindset. The data I receive from a simple check box can be used as just that, information on my consistency and follow-through, as well as how to make any shifts when needed if I am not following through for any reason. This reflection keeps me focused and accountable to my future self!

What works for me may not be the best practice for you, however, I encourage you to experiment with what does work for you. If you need support with even knowing where to start, this can be a great practice to have the support of a therapist or coach to help you get going. Change is possible, if you feel blocked towards creating change, reach out!

Finally, the process of consistent reflection is super helpful for continued growth and planning for the future. Actually, I believe continued self-reflection is essential to create any meaningful change. While all of this can be simple in concept, getting going can often be challenging. Finding one place to start, one place you can shift into hope and belief in yourself, will slowly begin to provide motivation towards consistency. Start with your intention and go from there. If you feel stuck, reach out and find support—you don’t have to do it alone if it feels hard or overwhelming. I’ll leave you with this quote I have on my desk and provides daily inspiration for me by Oprah, “The number one principle that rules my life is intention. Thought by thought, choice by choice, we are cocreating our lives based on the energy of intention.” I hope you feel inspired to create and live a life you love in 2025 and beyond!

How to Cope with Food Cravings Throughout the Holiday Season

We are now fully into the holiday season. It’s the time of year when we are inundated with treats, displays, parties, and leftover candy pretty much everywhere. You might currently find yourself trapped in a whirlwind of Thanksgiving plans and gatherings that will lead into a month of holiday parties, baking, and special treats everywhere - and this just continues into the new year.

When you struggle with emotional eating and food cravings, the holidays can feel overwhelming. If you struggle with stress and dread related to the holidays, this time of year can be particularly challenging. 

I wanted to offer some support for anyone struggling with food triggers, holiday triggers, or a combination of both. Hopefully you can reference this post all throughout the season!

I recommend having a journal or your notes app handy and consider the following:

When you arrive at the end of the holiday season, when you are welcoming 2025, how do you want to feel? 

What is one small, doable, and desirable goal that you can set for yourself this season? 

What action steps can you take to support how you want to feel to achieve this small goal? 

As you are moving through the season, it’s helpful to check in regularly and ask:

Have I been taking consistent action and using the action steps to ensure that I can feel how I want to feel once the new year arrives?

Am I getting enough balanced nutrition?

Am I hydrating?

It’s so easy to go into autopilot mode and become mindless and distracted and to just numb out when feeling triggered or stressed. This holiday season can be different! If you bring in some daily intention setting, connect with your feelings and experiences consistently, and practice some of the coping strategies below, you may have a different experience this year.

Here are some helpful ways to cope (even just slightly) more effectively this year:

Practice the 3-step cravings protocol - Pause, Reflect, Release: Use this anytime you are experiencing a food craving:

Pause: Take a deep breath, drink some water, relax your body, and create some space between you and the food craving.

Reflect: Use the BLAST technique, ask yourself, “Am I Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stressed or Sad, or Tired?” If you answer Yes to any of these emotions ask: What does this emotion need? To explore what the feeling you are experiencing is needing you can ask: What is the opposite feeling state? Here are some examples: Boredom needs Stimulation, Loneliness needs Connection, Anger needs Peace, Calm, and/or Kindness, Stress needs Relaxation, Peace and Calm, Sadness needs Uplifting, Tiredness needs Rest.

Release: If it’s truly an emotional craving, name the emotion and the opposite feeling state. Ask yourself, what would it take to get to that opposite feeling state? Practice being present with the feeling and see if you can receive the message of the emotion. You can use a coping skill such as journaling or talking it out to let it go. It can also be helpful to use self-affirming statements to help support the release, such as, “I am capable of handling my emotions,” “I am learning to listen to the messages from my body,” and “I can make a different choice.”

If you are experiencing a more general food craving and you find that you are truly hungry, eat it mindfully and listen to the cues from your body.
If you need additional support if it’s an emotional craving, you can try journaling through this decoding emotions practice:

Ask, what is the message from this emotion? What does it want you to know?

What does it need from you? Is there any action you can take?

Can you mindfully witness the emotion and let it be without needing to change it? Can you radically accept it as it is?

If the holidays are triggering because of others imposing their own thoughts and feelings about food, here are some ways you can practice setting boundaries with others:

Common irritating statements: “Should you be eating that?” “Are you sure you want seconds?” “Wow, that looks like a lot of food/sweets…”

Helpful Boundary Setting Statements for each of the above: “I understand you might not notice that it upsets me, but I don’t like it when you question my food choices.” “I prefer you not comment on my food choices.” “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t comment on my food choices.”

Sometimes during the holiday season you might find yourself with food guilt and shame, or criticizing your own choices. Here are some ways you can practice setting boundaries with yourself:

Common irritating internal statements: “I shouldn’t eat this.” “They are watching everything I’m eating.” “What’s wrong with me.”

Helpful Boundary Setting Statements for each of the above: “I deserve to eat what I am eating.” “I can only control myself and my choices.” “It’s normal to enjoy and indulge in food sometimes.”

One of the most useful ways to make it through the season is to have a plan for remaining present and mindful, to practice consistent self-care, to reflect and check in with yourself daily, and to have a plan of action. Having a plan is where you start; you can practice daily intention setting, daily decisions about your action steps that you will take to achieve your goals, reviewing the pause, reflect, release protocol, and journaling. Self-compassion is a huge part of remaining grounded and surviving the challenges of the holidays.

Practicing mindful eating, intuitive eating, and attuned eating can also support feeling connected to your body and discerning what is emotional and what is truly desired when it comes to food.

• Mindfulness is paying attention from moment to moment with a nonjudgmental awareness.

• Mindful eating is applying mindfulness to the process of eating.

• Intuitive/Attuned eating is listening to your body and making choices based on your relationship with your body. Asking these questions can keep you more mindful and attuned to your body: What do I want? What am I hungry for? How hungry am I? How satisfied did this choice make me feel?

The last tip I will leave you with is to keep a Win-Log. This is a log of positive eating experiences daily, including allowing yourself to eat when you were hungry, finding the right food match for your craving, stopping eating when you felt satiated and satisfied, and being able to savor feeling good overall about your actions and choices.

Putting all of this together will allow more communication, acceptance, balance, and the ability to be more grounded and centered within your choices throughout this season.

When you can manage emotional food cravings more effectively, it creates a feeling of empowerment, deeper self-awareness, and more connection to your body so that you can begin to create a more peaceful relationship with your mind, your body, and food. Using tools to make a choice on how to manage your cravings builds self-compassion, self-trust, and self-empowerment. I hope you have a happy and healthy holiday season!

Using Compassionate Listening to Increase Open-Mindedness

This past spring I was asked to give a talk at a local university about the health benefits of being open-minded throughout your life. They were having a health fair and wanted to bring mental wellbeing into the conversation just as much as physical wellbeing. The person who reached out read a blog I wrote a while ago about this very topic (The Health Benefits of Remaining Curious and Open-Minded Throughout Your Life) and thought it would be helpful to help young adults learn how to communicate in a way that fosters connection, tolerance, and acceptance. It seems that learning how to communicate with compassion, understanding, and acceptance is now, more than ever, absolutely vital — and not just for young adults.

When I asked the group how many people considered themselves to be open-minded, everyone raised their hand. When I asked how many people liked to be right, again, everyone raised their hand. When I asked how many of them felt the need to prove that they were right, many kept their hands raised. Most people hold onto their viewpoints for dear life and are willing to fight to feel as though they are right, to fight to prove that they are right. 

The truth is, our thoughts, beliefs, and opinions can be different, but we can still learn to understand one another. The trouble is we are hard-wired to go into fight or flight mode when our nervous system perceives that we are under threat. When we feel threatened by someone else’s viewpoint, beliefs, opinions, or thoughts, we can go into sympathetic nervous system arousal, or fight or flight mode. Living in a state of stress, fear, and defensiveness leads to poor health outcomes over time. Learning to create more room for open-mindedness actually increases a sense of feeling safe and decreases the experience of feeling under threat due to someone having a different viewpoint than you. 

This is where we can make some space for becoming open-minded through the most valuable of skills, which is learning how to listen. When it comes to communication, listening is the most important aspect. When we are truly listening, we have to hear, take in, and digest what a person is saying. This has nothing to do with agreeing; it has everything to do with becoming open and interested and how to consider that your perspective and someone else’s can differ greatly, and that is not necessarily a threat.

How often when you are in conversation are you thinking about what you will say in response versus hearing what the other person is saying? How often are you formulating judgments about someone based on what they are saying? Of course these things happen; we are all humans after all, loaded with our open opinions and judgments, whether we recognize them or not. This process is about recognizing and making a new choice on how to connect with another human being. Learning to listen, to hear, with curiosity and compassion is essential to learning how to communicate and become more open-minded. Curiosity and compassion are the cornerstones of open-mindedness. When used in communication you create a space to allow someone to feel heard, seen, and valued. This is mindful communication in action.

When children are small and trying to make sense of the world, they ask one question over and over: they ask “Why?” They are curious; they want to learn and understand. Maintaining this sense of curiosity allows you to be a human being, to reduce the need for perfectionism, to reduce the feeling of being threatened by someone else’s perspective, and to reduce the need be right at all costs. Being curious in conversations, especially when you aren’t necessarily understanding someone, can contribute to your growth, expand your awareness, and create mental flexibility and openness. So often when we are having discussions with others, we can be concerned about making a good impression, to come across a certain way, to be viewed in a light we desire - and to be right. However, if you can enter into conversations and discussions in a way where you are concerned about making a positive connection with the person, that will contribute to feeling more positively about yourself and the other person. When you focus on making a positive connective (which feeds the soul) versus a good impression (which feeds the ego) you can create more compassion and understanding. This process creates a feeling of safety, and this can come from listening mindfully, truly hearing, contributing, and being curious. This is how to become more open-minded.

Here are a few ways you can integrate open-mindedness in a conversation about anything where you may not agree with or understand a person’s perspective, so you can focus on connecting versus impressing or fighting:

• I’m curious, when did you first start to see it that way?

• Are you interested in hearing a different take on that?

• From my perspective, I see it differently; can I share with you how I see it and why I see it that way?

• I enjoyed learning about your perspective; thank you for sharing.

When asking the first three questions you will usually find that many people actually are curious; they do want to hear more, and they love to share their own reasons behind how they think and feel about what they do. The last one is great because you don’t always have to share just because you have a different viewpoint, perspective, or opinion. At the root of compassionate listening is just that: being present, mindful, accepting, tolerant, and open. As soon as you notice any hint of feeling threatened, see if you can take a deep breath and just get curious. Notice what happens when you practice communicating with others in a way where curiosity leads. You just might make an unexpected connection.