5 Ways that New Year’s Resolutions Depend on Introspection

What Is Introspection and Why Does It Matter?

When I think about introspection and why it matters, the quote that pops up for me is Lewis Carroll’s, “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Introspection feels like the multi-faceted roadmap that becomes the direct path to where we fantasize about heading. It is what happens when we spend time reflecting on the difference between where we are and where we would ideally like to be and subsequently what the roadblocks are. Or what has successfully dismantled roadblocks before.

Since both roadblocks and successful dismantlers tend to resurface, we can start to see patterns, repetition, and recurrences that are demanding our attention. When we dismantled a roadblock, did we reward ourselves? Or did we ignore it because we felt like it was too small and we did not deserve anything good? What we typically do with positive reinforcement says a lot about whether the new habits stick. The more we get these reflections out of our head and onto paper or e-notes, the more room we have for creativity. Cleaning out the old to make space for the new.

• Our lens of ourselves carries the most weight

• Nobody else knows us in the way in the way we know ourselves

• If we recognize the gap in our functioning levels, we can change them

• Roadblocks vs. dismantlers tend to repeat themselves, so we have a chance to recognize patterns

• Positive reinforcement looks so different for everyone. We get the chance to make it happen in a unique way

Tactics That Promote Higher Levels of Introspection

Introspection says that we need to find spots that allow us to consciously reflect in a way that detaches us from our environments. So, for people that struggle with loneliness and isolation already, this can feel overwhelming. It seems like people often get lost in ruminations rather than truly “reflecting” without attaching. It can also feel stressful for extroverts to consciously remove themselves from others in order to find this spot. Extroverts recharge with other people, so pulling themselves away in order to do healthy reflection seems counterintuitive. The key seems to be allowing conscious time for reflection without triggering debilitating side effects, so somewhere in the middle.

Some tactics to help introspection include:

• Accessing a professional counselor so they can give us ideas of what the gap looks like

• Attending a yoga class to practice mindfulness while also being surrounded by others

• Engaging in prayer and/or meditation while in the comfort of our own space with loved ones close by

• Writing our thoughts or emotions down as they come up or landing them on a safe person

• Reviewing different life events on our calendars or vision boards and asking safe people to give us feedback

It is possible to be in the space of others, use the external stimulation as motivation, and have our entire focus on the inner workings of our brain. It feels similar to having the tv or the radio in the background, sometimes extra stimulation can promote better focus on introspection. Asking others, safe others, for help, can help us to get out of ruminations into the world of health self-reflection.

Blocks to Introspection

It can feel discouraging to either struggle with blocks to introspection from the start or having blocks to introspection pop up along our journey. For a lot of us the main blocks seem to be related to other people. This can look differently for different people, but it can be subtle like hearing indirectly that someone is talking negatively about us, or more intense, like getting blatantly rejected. But it is human nature to absorb, not only our own emotional content, but also the emotional content of others. With negativity being more rampant than positivity, we have to be mindful of who and what we are surrounded by.

Areas to be mindful of include:

• The people that we are regularly surrounded by

• Toxic work cultures

• Triggers

• Hard seasons

• Responsibilities drowning our passion and self-care

The bottom tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs stresses the necessity of safety and security before all other things. So if the people or environments we are constantly surrounded by do not feel safe, it feels as though there is less incentive and ability to dig deep into our own ways of mentally processing the world. Even if we do not know exactly what about the people or environments that might be potentially blocking our ability to be introspective, we can trust that even small shifts in different directions will alleviate some pressure.

Overcoming Blocks to Introspection

It feels completely natural for all of us to go through either temporary or more permanent bouts of blocks to our ability to dig deep. Life feels rather fluid and our ability to be happy depends on our conscious awareness of the ebbs and flow. Putting extra coping skills into place with the ebbs. Relaxing a bit during the flow and using this spot as the open door to exploration.

If we are going through an ebb, we can focus on putting ourselves as the priority:

• Be kind to ourselves, always

• Change the temperature often, cold vs. hot

• Carve out space to just be as we are

• Connect with our communities

• Change the scenery, inside vs. outside

If we are going through a flow, we can focus on more actionable steps:

• Smaller, more frequent, increments are easier to measure

• Look towards reasonable lifestyle changes rather than jumping into a fad

• Compartmentalize our categories as to give each individual attention (mind, body, relationships, and economic contributions)

• Strongly reinforce the wins, independent from how little they feel

• Reinforce boundaries and protect our efforts

The tactics that we put into place are fairly different between ebbs and flow, but both are equally beneficial. The acceptance of the duality between struggling and doing well often creates space for us to spend more energy on implementing the tactics rather than trying to overpower or control the ebbs.

Why New Year’s Resolutions Depend on Introspection

Every year we are presented with the most daunting of all questions, “What are your New Year’s resolutions?”

Maybe there are people that have a list ready to go: all the things that they plan on doing differently this year that they did not do the previous year. But, for most of us, it seems like the answer is solely dependent on the efforts we have made toward introspection.

Why?

• We know ourselves better than anyone else, so reflection will allow us to see where we have been

• We need direct evidence to support progression, stability, or even regression

• We get to analyze our own metric to determine if it is an accurate reflection of our efforts

• We have the freedom to see if there is any open space on our calendars

• We get the chance to insert new habits that are in better alignment with our passions, hobbies, and interests

Taking the lens of New Year’s Resolutions gives us opportunities for introspection that feel far less overwhelming than pulling items out of the air that feels more societally applicable rather than catered towards our individual needs.

Pairing New Year’s Resolutions with Introspection Increases Our Odds of Success

New, fresh, and healthy habits stick when we see positive side effects immediately. When we look back on our lives for the last year and identify a very specific habit that decreased the frequency and/or intensity of the ebbs- all of our efforts officially pay off.

What’s the end game here?

• Feeling more powerful than the thoughts that can debilitate us

• An understanding that our thoughts are the direct link to our feelings

• Positive energy is contagious

• Our positive energy will attract others with the same positive energy

• There is freedom in fluidity in the relationship with our beliefs, perspectives and ideologies

Now, imagine going into the New Year with a new found layer of confidence this year. This year we have committed to truly understanding the unique gap between where we are and where we are headed. Not only have we analyzed all the direct evidence we could possibly muster up, but we have asked our safe people for feedback, we have sought out some professional assistance, and spent some time practicing mindfulness along the way.

Once we’re able to answer the most daunting question of “What are your New Year’s Resolutions?”, we can believe in ourselves enough to make our values come to fruition. After all, no one is responsible for looking out for our needs more than ourselves, and even if they were – they wouldn’t be able to create the best journey forward.

Cheers to bountiful amounts of introspection this year,

Dr. Meaghan Rice, PsyD, LPC