The Time Square New Year’s Eve ball has officially dropped and it’s now 2017! This year I challenge you to let go of harsh resolutions and explore the idea of being kind to yourself. Not a superficial level of kindness but an authentic, deep kindness where you change how you care for and relate to yourself.

Suggestions:

• Refrain from harsh judgment and criticism toward yourself.
• Unconditionally accept yourself – you are enough.
• Treat yourself like you would treat a good friend. A client of mine found that by doing this she felt better about herself and had more self-confidence.
• Remind yourself that it is perfectly okay to be imperfect. Making mistakes are a normal part of life and that most successes have a backstory of failure.
• Drop the people pleasing and learn to say no so that you can say yes to what matters and is important to you.
• Each day commit to practicing activities that create positive energy and generate a feeling of personal well-being (meditation, yoga, spending time in nature, physical exercise, etc.)
• Spend quality time and break bread with people you easily connect with and are fun to be around.
• Limit and avoid spending time with toxic individuals who drain you.

“If you miss the here, you are also likely to miss the there.
If your mind is not centered here, it is likely not to be centered
just because you arrive somewhere else.”
– Jon Kabbat–Zinn

Mindfulness is a love affair—with life, with reality and with imagination, with the beauty of your own being, with your heart and body and mind, and with the world.

—Jon Kabat-Zinn

Through repeated meditation practice, we can build awareness of our existing mental habits. With awareness, there is space—allowing us to interrupt habitual response patterns and bring intention to our responses, choosing to form a different association.

—Wendy Hasenkamp, “Brain Karma”

“Voting is a manifestation of the law of interdependence: Each of our actions, no matter how small, affects the whole cosmos. Our votes count.”

—Susan Moon, “Ten Practices to Change the World”

“Happiness depends on inner peace, which depends on warm-heartedness. There’s no room for anger, jealousy or insecurity. A calm mind and self-confidence are the basis for peaceful relations with others. Scientists have observed that constant anger and fear eat away at our immune system, whereas a calm mind strengthens it. Changing the world for the better begins with individuals creating inner peace within themselves.”

– The Dalai Lama