I hope your holidays were filled with love and connection, with some sprinklings of joy. Personally, I love New Year’s traditions – the idea of a fresh start, reevaluating plans, and acknowledging new goals. New Year’s is also a time to reflect on everything that has transpired over the past year. This year instead of making a big list of goals, I’m focusing on just four intentions – meditate, create, play, and pray.

The simplicity of these four goals feels refreshing. Committing to meditate, create, play, and pray will not only restore my nervous system, but will also help me to achieve any secondary goals more easily since I’m prioritizing my self-care. I also expect to have more balance in my life by regularly implementing these four intentions.

I’m committing to meditate, create, play, and pray most days. Feeling like I need to do these every day adds a lot of pressure and sets the stage for perfectionism to play out. As I talked about in my last blog, Alcohol & Anxiety, I don’t do well with absolutes. Absolutes feel intense and leave no room for the realities of everyday life. They also keep me on autopilot instead of tuned into myself – my heart, my intuition, and my soul. Healing anxiety requires you to check in with yourself consistently - daily, hourly, and sometimes by the minute. Healing anxiety also requires gentleness and compassion for yourself.

Committing to meditate, create, play, and pray most days covers many of the bases of self-care and healing. They strengthen your connection with yourself and the divine. If done consistently, your anxiety will heal as your days become more filled with joy. Meditating, creating, playing, and praying will also strengthen your resilience so that you’re better equipped to handle any hardships that come up. Below I go into depth about each of these New Year’s goals so that you can decide if they’re a good fit for you.

Meditate

Daily meditation is a game changer for anxiety. My anxiety improved significantly when I started to meditate every day. Meditation activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which works to keep the body calm and relaxed so that it can repair itself and help the body’s systems and organs to function well. Meditation significantly helps to reduce the production of cortisol and adrenaline that afflicts most people who have anxiety (see my blog Anxiety and the Adrenaline Cycle).

Meditation helps you to slow down and connect to your breath. With anxiety, people often unknowingly take shallow breaths which triggers your body’s sympathetic nervous system, keeping you always in a state of fight or flight. People who meditate daily also experience improved self-awareness, memory, and sleep. Additionally, meditation decreases blood pressure and lowers your resting heart rate.

Meditation is not about pushing away what’s perceived as “intrusive” thoughts. Instead, mediation is an invitation to observe your thoughts, which gets easier the more you do it. Some thoughts may come up during your meditation to help you process any thoughts or feelings. Other thoughts that enter your meditation are messages from the divine.

There are different types of meditation including guided meditations, mindfulness meditations, and mantra meditations where you repeat a mantra or affirmation that has special meaning to you. There are also different types of moving meditations such as yoga, tai chi, qi gong, or walking meditations. If you don’t already have a meditation practice, this New Year commit to practicing whatever type of meditation appeals to you, or perhaps a combination of different styles of meditation.

Before and during your meditations I recommend taking measures to ensure that you’re in a quiet (or mostly quiet) environment. Make sure you’re physically comfortable and relax your breathing. Start with five minutes a day initially and then gradually increase your meditation time to 20 minutes a day. Observe how you feel as your meditation practice develops.

Create

I believe everyone is creative. Sadly, there are many narratives that don’t value creativity in our society, causing it to become tempered. Research shows that creating helps anxiety and is especially helpful for people who have PTSD.

Creating is another tool that helps you become more grounded in yourself. You’re receiving guidance about what you want to create and how to create from your soul. You’re tapping into your intuition to really hear what wants to be expressed through you. This is what your soul craves, the freedom to express itself. Since creativity and intuition come from the same place, you’re strengthening your intuition and heart connection every time you create. Because of all these benefits, creating helps you become more grounded in yourself, which is needed to heal anxiety.

There are so many ways to create: painting, cooking, baking, drawing, dancing, photography, writing, sewing, gardening, building, making music, and more. When you create, start by creating just for yourself so there’s no pressure as you begin to open the spout for your creative juices to flow. Just like any other muscle, the more you use, it the stronger it gets. The more you create, the easier it is to tap into that creative flow state. Try to set aside some time most days to create and don’t worry about making mistakes because this is just for fun (and for yourself). Just have fun with it! What have you always wanted to create?

Play

Create and play are similar but there are some differences. Many of the outlets for creating feel like playing for some people. The difference is that you don’t have to create to play. There is no output required. Playing is just as it sounds, tapping into yourself to find out what you like to do for fun. The only requirement is that whatever you do bring you joy. That’s it!

If you’re unsure about what you want to do to play, think back to what you did as a child. You may be surprised that some of the things you did to play as a kid still bring you joy now. And even though you’re an adult, you still need space in your life for things that bring you joy. Joy is the panacea to fear and therefore anxiety. The more joy you bring into your life, the more that joy becomes your overriding feeling. Playing and doing joyful activities also adds vibrancy to your life.

Some activities I consider playing are snuggling/playing with your pets, getting out in nature, roller blading, reading, swimming, doing puzzles, in addition to the creative outlets mentioned above. What will bring you pure unadulterated joy?

Pray

Praying to the divine, God, the angels, or whomever you pray to is another important practice to incorporate daily. For some people prayer is another form of meditation. It strengthens your connection to the divine as well as your intuition, helping you to receive guidance. It can feel like a weight is taken off your back when you surrender your worries and concerns over to the divine.

Prayer is a reminder that you’re not alone, that you’re held, and that your divine support is walking alongside you. Prayer is an opportunity for you to ask for love, support, compassion, or whatever else you need. For all these reasons, praying helps with anxiety. The divine wants to help you, so include what you need in your prayers. How you pray is unique to you and there is no wrong way to do it.

I hope you’ll consider committing to meditate, create, play, and pray this new year, if you’re not already doing them. Each one helps to alleviate and heal anxiety. They help restore your nervous system, putting out the flames of anxiety while building resiliency. They also add richness to your life.

Happy New Year!

My book Bold Trust – 6 Steps to Unravel the Long-Term Effects of Gaslighting, Unapologetically Trust Yourself, and Heal Anxiety is now available for purchase here.