A new year can help you evaluate what needs to be changed and improved in your life. And meditation can make that reflection possible by clearing out the clutter in your mind. As you embark on a new year, it’s crucial to assess what you’d like to see more out of your life and bring that into fruition. Whether it’s happiness or success, you can have the life you want. A new year is your next chapter to start over or from where you are and move to the next step.
What is meditation for new year?
A meditation for new year is a practice where you prepare your mind for the year ahead. Often, when a year doesn’t go as planned, we get stuck in negative thinking. A new year meditation can help you let go of those thoughts to make room for and replace them with positive thoughts instead.
Guided meditations for new year
Start the next year off on the right foot by trying out this guided meditation for new years below.
Find more practices like this one in our free guided meditation app Declutter The Mind.
How a new year meditation can improve the next year
1. Changes your brain for the better
Those who meditate will notice that their brain changes drastically. And for the better. A new year meditation can jumpstart you into your meditation practice. As the year moves on, you can try different meditations to see what resonates best with you. Over the course of a year, a daily meditation practice can make you more compassionate, mindful, and improve your focus, which will only shape you into becoming the better version of yourself you hope to be.
2. Helps you make positive intentions and goals
A new year meditation can help you start the year with positive intentions and goals. Instead of going after the same goals that everyone talks about, set the goals that are reflective of what your needs are. Who are you as a person and who do you hope to evolve into? What habits do you hope to build for yourself? Are there moods you hope to embody all year long? Think these things over after your meditation practice.
3. Increases self-awareness for the new you
A new year can allow you to embark on a new you, a meditation practice can help you build more self-awareness to make understanding your current self easier so that you know which direction you should take yourself in. Those who meditate often increase their self-awareness as it makes them more mindful of their actions and words.
How to meditate for a happy new year
Meditating for a happy new year can open your mind up to a new way of thinking and living.
To meditate for a happy new year, you’ll need to find a comfortable place to meditate while wearing comfortable clothes.
You can sit in your office chair or on a couch in an upright position. Then, you’ll want to open up your Declutter The Mind app and play guided meditation for the new year.
As you listen to the meditation, follow your breathing attentively. Notice as thoughts pass through your mind without ruminating on any of them.
Keep your attention on your breath.
If you notice thoughts about what went wrong over the year or your biggest fears about the upcoming year, understand that you can control your habits and reactions over the next twelve months. You can build a better life for yourself.
Let go of any thoughts keeping you stuck in the previous year. Make way for new and positive thoughts to enter your life.
After the meditation ends, if you feel you got stuck in a thought or feel anxious, you can try another meditation to keep practicing. If the meditation ends and you feel more hopeful, you can start working on building new habits for the next year.
The growth mindset concept
A growth mindset is one in which you understand that intelligence, personality, and skills can be improved upon. It’s the belief that you can change any aspect of who you are and you aren’t tied down to a set of traits just because you were born with them.
One of the cool things about the growth mindset is that when you have one, you’ll know deep down that you can improve yourself in the new year. So, if intelligence and personality are changeable (and they are because the brain is neuroplastic), you can make the next year of your life better than the previous one.
You can build new habits, change your old ways, and learn new things to really give yourself a new and improved life ahead. If you find some of your personality traits led you down the wrong path, no worries, new habits can allow you to change course.
Your life journey will be filled with mistakes that you can learn from. It’s never too late to learn something new to give you the life that you want for yourself.
The benefits of a new year meditation
1. Clears your mind of negativity
If last year didn’t work out so well for you, it’s time to clear out the brain’s natural ability to think negatively. A new year meditation at the start of the year can help you start the year on a positive note. You can let go of negative thoughts or events that happened to you the previous year to clear the way for the mind to open up new and better opportunities that lie ahead. A meditation for the new year can help you think about all the wonderful things that can go well in your life over the next year. Make room for it.
2. Boosts your ability to relax
A new year meditation can help improve your ability to relax. When you feel more relaxed and calm, it’s much easier to make important decisions or improvements in your life. As you get a fresh start to your new year, you’ll want to meditate to improve your ability to relax and make better decisions. When you’re more relaxed, your communication skills improve as well, which will improve your relationships with others.
3. Improved athletic performance
A new year’s meditation can improve athletic performance. Those who meditate often and live mindfully are more likely to see athletic performance rise. And if you’re starting the new year with a new workout plan, you’ll want to combine your efforts of meditation with fitness to really get the results you’re after.
Other ways to improve your life in the new year
1. Set new goals
The new year is your opportunity to get a fresh start. Instead of creating new year’s resolutions for you to stick with an entire year, break your goal into weekly chunks to help you inch closer to what you actually want to achieve. After all, you don’t want to be one of those resolutioners who quits their goal in the first month. Really think long and hard about what goals are meaningful to you. How do you want to improve your overall health? Are there any career goals that would better your life? Can you start a new hobby or learn a new skill? People often focus on improving their life with serious goals. But you can also create goals to inject more fun and happiness into your life.
2. Start a gratitude journal
When we start a new year, we’re getting a new opportunity to grow and evolve. Feeling grateful for the end of one year and the start of another one can be a great way to start the next year. A gratitude list is one where you list all the things you’re grateful for. Adding things to your gratitude list every day can be a great way to compile all the amazing things you have in your life. Instead of reminding yourself of the same few things every day, strive to add new ideas into a journal that come into your life with each passing day. At the end of the year, when reflecting on how it went you’ll see that you had so much to be grateful for.
3. Reduce screen time
With desk jobs, social media, and constant texts from friends and family, we’re always glued to our devices. To make the most of your time this year, consider reducing your screen time with a social media detox. Chat with people less virtually and more in-person. Make more time for the people you care about by restricting your screen time. Challenge yourself to take device breaks by going for a walk outside, reading a book in bed, or heading out to dinner with friends.
4. Boost your fitness routine
The most common new year’s resolution is often to get in shape. Taking care of your health is a great way to start off the year. You can start the new year off by dancing to your favorite songs for an hour a day. Or you can learn a martial art to protect yourself from danger and any threats. Strength training can build muscle mass and bone density could be a way to make yourself tougher or stronger too. Choose workouts you enjoy doing. Maybe you enjoy going for runs in your neighborhood. Or maybe you prefer walking slowly with friends. No matter what your favorite type of workout is, you can emerge as a stronger and healthier person in the new year.
5. Eat clean
On top of a good workout plan, a meal plan can help make you a healthier person as well. Cutting out processed foods, sugars, sodas, and more can help ensure that you have healthy teeth and a healthy body. You’ll be able to mentally tackle any problems that arise throughout the year when you fuel your brain with the good stuff like healthy fats and proteins. Aiming to eat clean seven days a week will help prevent the weekend binge that ruins all the progress you made during the week.
6. Develop a new hobby
Learning a new hobby, language, or skill can be a great way to recharge your new year. As long as we’re growing, evolving, and getting better with time, we’ll be more likely to appreciate the good things in life. When we see how hard we work to learn something new, enjoy the thrill of being challenged, and thriving after some hard work, we begin to realize that we can get smarter over time. As we begin to grow from these hobbies, it’s easy to be proud of what we accomplished over the course of a year.
7. Declutter your space
We often talk about spring cleaning to clear out the old. But the end of a year is also a good time to declutter your space and bring in freshness into your home. Maybe you get rid of junk you don’t use. Or clothes that no longer fit you. You might throw out low quality products that leave you annoyed and replace them with better ones. Cleaning out your closet and making space for new stuff could be a great idea too. And if you decorate your home for the holidays, putting away those decorations but replacing them with happy decor, such as beautiful flower arrangements can brighten your home.
8. Make new friends
Whether you re-spark conversations with old friends or make new ones is up to you. But life is meant to be social. If you found the previous year lacking in social energy and leaving you feeling lonely or housebound, you can make new friends. You can meet new people at the gym, at work, via your children’s friends’ parents, or apps for networking or friendship building.
9. Listen to positive music
Aside from a new year meditation, you can also listen to audio like positive music. Listening to songs with uplifting lyrics will have you thinking more positively throughout the year. So turn off the sad songs, and replace them with some happy ones. Rewire your brain to think happy lyrics, phrases, and words all year long. Shift your focus from sad to happy by changing how you think. If something upsetting happens it’s normal to feel upset. But if you find everything upsets you, a mindset shift can really help you enjoy the next year.
10. Make your family feel the love
You can improve your life in the next year by doing everything you can to make your family feel loved. In every interaction with the people you care most about, find ways to make them feel appreciated. You can share things you love about them, thank them when they do something kind, and help them with the things they need help with. When they’re struggling and need extra support, give them so much support that they feel like they can tackle their problems with ease.
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