Contemplative Practices for Setting Intentions and Welcoming the New Year

As we approach the new year (saying goodbye to 2020 and hello to 2021), I recognize that this year especially is calling for intentional reflection, ritual, and recommitment—ways to mark the passage of time and to honor longings for change.

Over the past weeks, I’ve received multiple questions for the Patreon Q&A newsletter asking for meditations and resources to set resolutions and goals for the new year. In this blog post, I answer by offering contemplative practices: a guided meditation, writing prompts, ritual ideas, and additional resources. I share these in four parts, each intended to build on the previous one:

Part 1: Grounding Meditation
Part 2: Writing Prompts
Part 3: Rituals to Seal Intentions
Part 4: Additional Resources

Part 1: Grounding Meditation

Part 1 begins with a grounding meditation because I typically need to settle my body before doing serious reflection. I recorded this 23-minute guided meditation during a writing retreat this week. It’s based in the practice of yoga nidra (yogic sleep) and is intended to facilitate deeper relaxation and embodied awareness.

As I’ve experienced it, yoga nidra is guided meditation that invites active participation in deepening self-awareness. This practice integrates embodied, emotional, mental, and spiritual knowledges. It truly brings together the heart, head, and hands and asks us to know ourselves so that we know our commitments.

I always have much more to learn about this and other contemplative practices, but I’m so grateful to be learning and to be listening to my body’s inner compass. 

Try this meditation or another contemplative practice to get grounded before freewriting.

Part 2: Writing Prompts

Once grounded, writing can help with deepening understandings and setting intentions.

I find it helps me to have some writing and reflection prompts to work with, so here are questions for journaling. My hope is that a few will resonate. I’d suggest working with any questions that speak to you and leaving the rest. And perhaps these writing prompts will bring others to heart, mind, and body.

What feels especially urgent at this time—personally and collectively? What’s nonnegotiable? What’s something I must say yes to? And something I must say no to?

What is currently giving me energy—firing me up or inspiring me? What is currently draining my energy so that I need to refuel in other directions? What do I need more or less of to be well-fueled in the new year?

What have I shown up for in 2020? Where have I been putting my energies? And where, when, what, how, and with/for whom do I want to show up in 2021?

What are priorities in my life? How have those priorities remained consistent or changed over time? What are top priorities now, heading into the new year?

What has been coming together or coming undone in 2020? And what do I want to come together or come undone in 2021? In other words, what am I longing to welcome into my life? And what am I ready to release?

How do I describe my commitments, or what I’m dedicated to in life? How well is my life aligned with these commitments? What would bring me into greater alignment in the new year?

What more do I need to feel, learn, or do (heart-head-hands) to mark the transition from 2020 into 2021?

Part 3: Rituals to Seal Intentions

After journaling with any of these prompts that resonate (take what speaks to you and leave the rest), I hope you can spend some time with a ritual to release the past, to welcome the future, and to be with the present. 

Rituals can help direct our attention, remember what we’re learning and unlearning, mark the start and end of things, and make what’s intangible concrete. Rituals can also seal intentions, bringing them into being. Think of this as speaking aloud longings, desires, and plans toward making them real: toward realizing and manifesting.

One ritual idea is simply to light a candle and to watch the light while saying aloud what you’ve written. Another is to write or revise a commitment statement, which you can return to throughout the year. Still another is to put mantras on the bathroom mirror (I currently have posted “I trust the process of life” and “I trust my strong yes”—toward developing trust where it’s been eroded by internalized sexism and white supremacy). Alternatively, you might write a spell to take into the new year. I really love the 25-minute meditation by adrienne maree brown for spell-casting at new years.

Whatever ritual you choose, may it bring a shape or form to the process of setting intentions. May it bring intentionality to everyday living for justice. And may it bring a renewed sense of possibility.

Part 4: Additional Resources

In addition to the three parts suggested here (meditation, writing, and ritual), I offer additional prompts in this list of 10 questions for career discernment and through the e-course on aligning career with commitments.

Also, if you’re open to astrology, I love the new app from Chani Nicholas. In addition to lots to personalized transit and chart information, there are journal prompts and meditations for each moon cycle, including this time we’re in now, transitioning from 2020 to 2021.

And if you’d like to involve another person in your reflective intention-setting process, consider one-with-one coaching or a writing retreat around the new year.

In whatever way you mark the passage of time, may 2021 deepen commitments and everyday living for justice: social, racial, environmental justice. I share many good wishes, along with these contemplative practices for setting intentions and welcoming the new year.

Acknowledgments:
I have a lot of gratitude of writing retreat participants who’ve supported me in working through the questions at the core of this piece. Thanks, too, for Patreon subscribers requesting these resources and for talking with me about new year rituals and writing.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee, Ph.D. for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, check out “How Small and Sustained Actions Turn Resolutions into Habits” and “Spell-Casting and Other Contemplative Practices for Reflection and Recovery.”

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