10 Ways to Overcome Anxiety of Ending The Year (With Practical Exercises)
Tags: New Year, Self Improvement, Goals, Resolutions, Self

If 2020 was a nightmare, December feels like being high on a fever dream.

woman wearing white sweater sits on gray fabric sofa

As frightening as it might seem, it’s just so exciting to plan all the exciting goals for2021.

These are the ten strategies I’ve created to deal with the fear of the year slipping right through our fingers. Feel free to add some of your own and modify them according to your preferences.

1. Gratitude Journaling

Seeking thankfulness instills a long-lasting impact. When a major problem shows up, it feels like all the happy things in our lives vaporized into thin air. The best way to restore calmness in the coming new year would be by practicing gratitude in advance. The vibes we carry into the new year must be brimming with joy and hopefulness of new beginnings.

Exercise: Get a small notebook. Write a list of three things you are grateful for. Every single day.

Letter to Your Future-Self

As cliché as it might seem, letters are perfect. There is no better way of expressing love than writing it down on fancy paper and sealing it inside an envelope. Love and emotions might fade one day, but those words remain. Letters serve as a reminder of the feeling that was once existed.

Write down how it felt living right in the thick of a pandemic. It’s not a typical set-up after all. You’ll be curious to remember what it felt like after a year or two.

Exercise: Grab a craft paper and an envelope, (even better if you design it yourself). Release your thoughts. Write about your extended pajama days and missed showers. Write about how you binge-watching cat videos and TV shows.

Write about how excited you were to start a new decade and expectations, how they blew off in just a turn of hours. One day you were dressed, fast pacing, and the next thing you remember waking from your lazy slumber to sipping tea with honey. You could write pretty much anything.

Reflecting on 2020

Start now to reflect on 2020. Review what you’ve learned. Recollect before forward into a new year. The past educates the best view-point to focus on the future.

Celebrate small wins. Reflect on how things worked, and the ones that didn’t. How you’d change that for the next year.

Exercise: Write down one accomplishment and one improvement on each aspect of your life.

5,4,3,2,1 Journal

I love bullet journaling. My shelves are slipping out with junk diaries and morning pages. And yet, with all the experience, I still feel like chucking them all out of the window.

Bullet journaling is not just a goal, it’s a mindset shift. Don’t just make a goal that says “I want to start bullet journaling”, get intentional. Write down the details and how you want the journal to serve you as.

To learn more, I recommend reading the book “The Bullet Journal Method“ by RYDER CARROLL. In his book, Ryder Carroll explains exercise associated with goal setting, the 5,4,3,2,1 exercise.

Exercise: 5,4,3,2,1 stands for timestamps: 5 years, 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days, and 1 hour, and you break those goals into sprints, which you will expand. document in your Bullet Journal. Write 3 goals under each category.

List-a-thon

Start resolutions laid down early so that come January 1st we hit the ground running. Set mindset habits and systems for 2021.

Exercise: Bucket list. Resolutions. Mindset habits

Any aspect you want to improve and get better at in the new year, make a list of it.

Clean and organize your closet or workspace.

Cleaning is therapeutic. I relied on mom to clean my room for many years. I’m not proud of that. The sooner you start cleaning your room and space, the better. Who would have guessed, you generate your best ideas while cleaning!

Exercise: Start with the place you use the most. Color-code your closet, arrange your mini book-shelf sequentially from the most favorite book to the least.

Reread a favorite book

Hermione’s (Granger from Harry Potter) concept of reaching out for books on every obstacle felt funny back then. But, I learned the lesson the hard way. Books are the anecdote to absolutely every situation in your life.

Exercise: Reread your favorite book of 2020. Read a classic or the one special book you always wanted to read.

Gift Yourself

I’m sure you’ve been through the process of hunting the best gift for your sister, or best friend, colleague, even. This time, spend a few hours brainstorming a gift for yourself.

Think of something that means so much to you and gift yourself that.

Exercise: Get a succulent, cactus. A very funny meme print. A journal. Get a tattoo.

Summarize 2020

This is a nice exercise of going through all the good and bad that happened in the year in chronological order. Write those down as a list of bullet points. It serves as a nice reminder of all the memorable things that are worth revisiting.

Exercise: This is how I do it. Write a sentence about each month of the year. Describe the month based on the places you’ve been to (or the lack thereof), books you’ve read, or an artist you accidentally discovered.

Describe each month in one sentence.