45: Setting New Year Intentions

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Hi everyone. Today I am recording the last episode in my maternity leave lineup. That means that starting in January, I will go back to recording episodes a few days in advance instead of weeks in advance. So hopefully it'll be more relevant content, content relevant to what's going on during that time. But today, I'm going to talk to you about setting new year intentions. Even though I'm recording this in October, and it feels a little early to be talking about this, you are going to hear this in the end of December. And you're definitely going to be thinking about the new year at this time.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

So setting intentions, what do I want to say about that? The reason I call them intentions instead of new year resolutions, is because I like to keep things open ended. I don't like to set very firm, lofty goals that maybe are all or nothing. That is really easy to set yourself up for failure. I want to think about it more as intentions, and ways to focus on improving yourself, improving your circumstances, having either just as good of a year as 2020, or better. I know 2020, for a lot of us, was terrible. So you can only go up from here, right? Hopefully that is the goal how to maintain our optimism and hope for a better year.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

What can you do when it comes to setting new year intentions, so that you are planning to have a better year, but you're also not setting yourself up for failure and disappointment? The first thing I recommend doing is reflecting on your accomplishments. Yes, that means reflecting on anything that you did and did well in 2020. That is very hard. 2020 has been a lousy year. It has affected all of us in so many ways. It has affected for some of us, our finances, our housing, our family structures, our workplace, our health. When you think about all that, it can feel so overwhelming and negative.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

But at the same time, we're all still here. We all have kept going, and for a lot of people I know, despite all of the challenges, despite our challenging circumstances, there were still some moments of joy. There were still some moments of celebration. There were still some things that you did where you didn't give up. So what are those accomplishments for you? Was it I got through another year in undergrad? That's an accomplishment in and of itself. Or maybe, I kept up with therapy in 2020. That is an accomplishment. Or maybe, for some of my friends, some of my students graduated in 2020. That's an amazing, amazing accomplishment. I have a friend who went ABD. That means that she passed her qualifying exams. That's a huge milestone. I know folks who maybe got a new job or a postdoc, or they moved this year. Those are all things to to celebrate. So think about your accomplishments. Think about things that you did well, or you didn't fail at in 2020, and reflect on how you can keep that up. Keep up with what is working. Think about your strengths, think about what you're good at, and consider ways to set intentions around that as well.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Aside from thinking about your accomplishments, and thinking about what you did well or what did work, I also want you to reflect on what didn't work. I want you to be conscious of what didn't work so that you don't try to set up the same intention this year. If last year, maybe you said I really want to go to the gym every day. Then the gyms closed, so obviously, you couldn't keep that up. Or maybe you just went to the gym in January and then stopped in February before the pandemic. Either way, it didn't work out for you, right? Instead of making that the intention, go to the gym every day, having a more flexible intention might help you out. And letting go of that gym idea is not a bad idea. If that didn't work, let it go and try something else. Maybe that something else is taking walks, or going on a run or a hike. Or instead of having a goal to lose weight, which I'm not a fan of. I'm not a fan of those types of resolutions. Instead, make a goal of moving more, being more active. So let go of the things that didn't work out.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

That can also mean letting go of toxic people in your life. That can mean letting go of a toxic workplace, and maybe considering applying to new jobs in 2021. If you're a student, undergraduate, grad student, and your department is toxic, maybe you want to develop support systems outside of your department. How can you distance yourself, and/or let go of the things that are not working for you? Think about that.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

So now you know, what's going well, what isn't really going well for you. Now you're in a good position to set specific, attainable intentions and goals. You want them to be specific and attainable, but also flexible enough that you can modify them if some things kind of change. Again, there's no way to predict what 2021 will look like. Maybe it'll be better than 2020. Maybe it'll be another hot mess, but you want to have intentions that allow for that flexibility. Don't make your goals, your intentions, all or nothing. Instead of having a goal to save money, or to save a certain amount of money, for instance, you could have a goal of maybe learning more about budgeting or making it a habit to check your budget once a month, or start tracking your expenses. These are goals that are still gonna eventually help you get to the saving, but if you make it a little more attainable, a little more manageable, less scary, it gives you an opportunity to not completely fail.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

When you're setting goals, you don't want to just completely set brand new goals and intentions. You can set goals and intentions that are based on things you're already doing. Maintaining is just as important as starting something new. For me, this year, I wanted to maintain keeping up with smoothies, with daily smoothies, because that was really helping me with my with my physical health and my chronic illness. I also wanted to keep up with going to therapy, because again, that has been helping me so why not maintain what is going well. Those were some of my intentions. Those were two of several intentions that I had for myself for this year. So maintaining is completely okay as a goal or intention for the year.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Then some other examples of goals that could work for you is, instead of setting a goal of like, this year is the year that I am going to graduate. I'm going to finish my PhD or I'm gonna finish my BA or MA. Then things happen, and maybe it doesn't quite happen this year. So instead of saying I'm gonna graduate this coming year, why not say I'm going to make steady progress on my degree? So long as you're still enrolled and you're still kind of making progress, you're not completely leaving your program, you're good. Similarly, instead of let's say, you say this is the year that I'm gonna get published. Why not, this is the year that I'm going to develop a writing routine and I'm going to submit my writing to at least one writing venue for publication. That doesn't mean you're gonna get published, but it means you're working towards it. You're on your way there.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Again, maybe this is the year that you want to run a half marathon. But again, what if it doesn't happen? How can you still work towards that? Maybe you can work towards that by setting an intention of, this is the year that I develop a writing routine. So that if you do the half marathon, great. If you don't, and you just do a 5k, or you just develop a routine of running two, four, six miles, that's still progress. You're still getting better. Then, like I mentioned earlier, for me, the therapy thing. Maybe you haven't felt comfortable going to therapy. Maybe it's still very much stigmatized for you, but you're kind of tempted to try it out. Instead of saying, I'm going to start. I'm going to find a therapist and start going into therapy regularly. Maybe the the goal can be I'm going to identify mental health resources available to me, and try one out. So it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be seeing a therapist every week. It could mean you're going to try a support group. It could mean you're going to attend a free mental health workshop. That is still, like I said, progress.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Another way to think about new year intentions, and this is something that has helped me too, is having a word or a theme for the year. Instead of- maybe you don't like the idea of having two, four, six, eight or even 10 New Year intentions that you write down, that you're going to work on throughout the year. Then maybe in the middle of the year, you're gonna forget about them. Maybe instead you'd rather focus on one word and everything, throughout the year, that you do, you're going to have that in the back of your head. That's the main thing I'm going to work on for this year. That's completely fine too. Again, whatever works for you to get you to be in a better place in 2021.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I've done this. I've done both. I've had goals and intentions that I write down in a vision board with bullets and six to ten things that I'm going to work on. And I've also done the main theme idea for the year. For instance, in 2018, that was the year that I had already graduated from grad school. I had been working for a year, and I felt like I didn't really know about money, financial literacy, budgeting. My main intention for that year was learning about financial literacy. A lot of the things that I did with listening to podcasts, reading books on the side, I was just focusing on, okay. Let me learn more about money, about management, about creating a budget, and that helped me out a lot.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Then in 2019, what I focused on that year was healing. I really wanted to focus on all kinds of healing, on physical health, mental health, spiritual health. So that's what I did. I started meditating. I started seeing a therapist regularly. I started going to see a bunch of specialists to address my chronic health issues. I kept up with my appointments, multiple doctor appointments. I started seeking out other forms of healing, trying out different forms of medication. I tried out probiotics, and just other things to enhance my diet. So I did a lot of different things, and it was all focused on healing. I'm just feeling better. I felt like my body was falling apart, and I really needed to prioritize my health over anything else. That was 2019.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Then this year, 2020, my main intention, or this main concept, idea, in my head was, I need to let go of fear, and I need to be willing to take big risks. Risk taking and increasing my risk tolerance and making decisions that scared me, that was the main kind of thing that I was focused on this year. For me, one of the big things was opening myself up to even the possibility of having another child, because of how traumatic it was for me to have baby number one. I had this crippling fear that I would pass, that I would die giving birth, or that I would hemorrhage again and have complications again. And because of that, I was just so afraid to even try. I didn't even know if my body was capable of getting pregnant again. That was very risky, to open myself up to the opportunity. Another thing for me this year, was I purchased a home. I never in my life could have conceived of the idea of buying a home, especially after having so much student debt, that that was so risky for me. I was so afraid. I was really close to not doing it, because I didn't know if we could afford it I didn't know if it would even go through. I didn't know about our debt to income ratio. I just didn't know so much about the process. But again, I opened myself up to the possibility by saying no matter what, even if I don't buy a home, I'm at least going to move into a new home, even if I continue renting. But opening myself up to the possibility and considering the options and doing the research led me to even having the opportunity to buy a home this year.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I still don't quite know what my 2021 intention will be. I'm still trying to figure that out for myself, if there's a main concept or idea or theme. But I think what I'm gonna do is, is I'm gonna think about the things that I told you. What went well? What didn't go well? Do I have, you know, see if I have certain specific goals that I want to maintain, or that I want to try out that are new for 2021? Then see what comes from there.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

The other thing I wanted to mention that is a great thing to try out. You don't have to if you don't want to, but I definitely like to do this in the new year and it helps me with kind of clearing my thoughts and helping me get set up for a new year, is decluttering. I know a lot of people right now are talking about decluttering when it comes to decluttering their homes and all of that. I'm not talking about decluttering your home. I'm talking about decluttering your mind, decluttering all the things that are getting in your way of you making progress and having a better year. It can be a number of things. It could literally mean decluttering your inbox. Moving all of your emails to the archive so that they're not in your inbox. You can pull them up when you need them, but they're not overwhelming you and causing you stress because they're still in your inbox. It could mean unsubscribing to the millions of things that are sending you junk mail. That can be helpful, because then you unsubscribe, that means you're getting a lot less email. That means you don't have to see that number going up and up and up of unread emails. It can mean decluttering your desktop. If you have a bunch of folders on your desktop, you always struggle to find things. Why not put them in umbrella folders, or why not delete some of the stuff that you no longer need on your desktop? Decluttering your desktop can help. I don't know if everybody's like me, and most likely not. But for me, it does bother me to see a desktop full of folders. I like to be able to easily access things.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

You could declutter your social media. This is one thing that if you still using social media, because I know some folks have completely left social media. If you're still using it, decluttering social media can make a big difference. It can mean unfollowing accounts, deleting "friends", but people who you don't actually talk to or anymore, or maybe don't even recognize. Like, when did I added this person? This will help you curate what you actually see on your social media. So I'm a fan, I have no problem with deleting accounts, with deleting people. If I haven't talked to you in a long time, then why do I need you to be knowing all about my business? If I haven't really enjoyed the content that you're sharing on Instagram, I will gladly unfollow you. Decluttering your social media can be very, very helpful.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I know I said I wasn't gonna be focusing on decluttering your home, but for those of you that are like me and are more type A, and are affected by the way that your environment looks and feels, it doesn't hurt to take on a small project. It doesn't have to be your whole home. That is way too much and very overwhelming. I don't recommend it. But a light spring, something kind of like a spring cleaning- I guess you would call it a winter cleaning, wouldn't hurt. For me, it usually means tackling my closet or perhaps my son's toys. But really, it's just anything that's affecting you. For a lot of us, it's our workspace. Maybe decluttering, cleaning, organizing whatever space you use for work- your office, your desk, or your kitchen table, whatever. Like I said, whatever has become your workspace right now.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Then not related to decluttering, but still related to planning for the year and planning hopefully for a better year, I recommend now is the time to update your calendar, to try to get organized for the coming term. Now is a time to update your CV, update your website, update your LinkedIn. Anything just to reflect on accomplishment things from the previous year that can be updated, go ahead and do that. So I really hope that you're able to take some time to set some intentions. It doesn't have to be a lot of them. It could even just be, I'm going to set a word or a theme for the year. And I'm going to try to stick to it no matter what 2021 hits me with. Then think about what are things I can do right now to get myself set up and organized for the new year, so that I really do feel like I'm starting fresh or hitting a reset button, and so that I don't set myself up for failure? All right, I think that's all I have to say about the New Year intentions and goal setting. I hope that you found this helpful. Thank you so much for listening everyone.