Your mind will have opinions about this year

Hello readers, and welcome back to another week of making your emotional health simpler.

I want to continue this January series with something many of us quietly struggle with: our expectations about how this “new year” should be.

Because we all know it. We’ve all done it.

New year, better me.

And honestly, it’s not a bad thing. Wanting change is human. Setting goals at the beginning of the year can be useful. The issue is that our minds tend to go… big. Very big.

And the moment you start doing things differently — or even just thinking about change — your mind starts to comment.

“You’ll fail again.”

“It won’t work.”

“It’s too late to start now.”

“What’s the point? You already tried.”

And so on.

Oddly enough, this isn’t a bad sign. Most of the time, it means what you’re trying to do actually matters. Your mind is trying to keep your expectations “realistic.” It just tends to overdo it.

Because imagine hoping for something and then failing. That would hurt.

So your mind’s solution is to keep you close to the ground, where disappointment feels safer.

But what if, instead of treating these thoughts as advice, you saw them for what they are: commentary?

It’s a bit like playing a game and changing your strategy every time someone in the audience shouts an opinion. That would be exhausting — and impossible to win.

Some days it’s 20 km/h in a school zone.

Both still count as moving.

The goal isn’t to silence your mind — it’s to keep going, even when it has something to say.