Beware the Urge for a New Year’s Resolution: Why Setting Intentions is the Better Path Forward

Impulsive New Year’s Resolutions often lead to self-criticism, so it may be better not to bother. Setting an intention on New Year’s Day, with the support of Mindfulness meditation is a better way to go.

The Problem with New Year’s Resolutions

The worst thing about New Year’s Resolutions is that we don’t stick keep them. Then we have to deal with the blame and self-recrimination. All that work on self-love out the window!

Imagine, a great New Year’s Eve party with your buds, a kiss for your honey under the mistletoe, a couple of drinks. Singing Happy Days Are Here Again and Auld Lang Syne. A potent cocktail for party highs and emotional intensity.

And at the stroke of midnight, it hits you. You haven’t made a New Year’s Resolution. It’s 2025 and the clock is ticking. What should you do? Give up drinking? Start up at the gym again? Lose 30 pounds? Quickly, you choose something to fix within yourself.

I’m sorry to say, but you’re very likely to fail. It won’t be the end of the world - you’ll soon be getting lots and lots of emails about courses nurturing self-love you can take. Something to undo the recrimination that soon is to come. Mindfulness meditation and work on self-love come to the rescue. But it’s relying on these practices in the first place that is the way to go.

The sense that New Year’s Resolutions won’t be fulfilled is widespread. As I write this, I’m in a restaurant. I just asked the owner if they make New Year’s Resolutions. They said on New Year’s Eve they ask everyone eating there to make a resolution, write it down on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope. The restaurant then mails that New Year’s Resolution to them on June 30 as a reminder!

Setting Intentions

Setting an intention is a deliberate, mindful choice to guide your actions, not a rigid goal. It’s about creating a path forward with kindness and self-awareness, adjusting as you grow.

There’s another way. It’s called setting an intention. Intentions tend to be softer, less quantitative, more qualitative. Intentions need to sift down into the unconscious mind and sit there in the background throughout the year. Intentions can be gently – and frequently –encouraged, for example during your morning meditation.

Intentions need encouragement because, inevitably, they will only be partially fulfilled. So, however well or badly you’re doing, your morning meditation can include sending some gratitude for yourself just for trying. This will help keep you going!

Let’s say your intention is to be more present in your life, moment by moment. You will not have chosen this intention on New Year’s Eve with the booze and the kisses and the laughter. You are more likely to set this as an intention on New Year’s Day, which leads us to Rule Number One.

Rule #1 - New Year’s Resolutions are for New Year’s Eve and setting intentions is for New Year’s Day

And because we have the tendency to dislike ourselves when we don’t achieve our intentions, we have Rule Number Two.

Rule #2 - Dig deep when choosing your New Year’s Day intention

With New Year’s Resolutions there may be a tendency to be impulsive, and to overreach.

In setting your intention, you can be more thoughtful. And there’s a method for this, too. It goes like this:

Meditate for 5 or 10 minutes, or for whatever time it takes for you to get centered.  Now, imagine you’re out in the countryside, and you see a well near a farm. You walk over to it and lean on the stone wall surrounding it. You look down into the well. It’s so deep you can’t even see the bottom. As you look into the well ask yourself this question:

“What is my heart’s deepest desire?”

What thought or realization comes into your heart? Now imagine you’ve tied the question to a pebble and release it into the well. As it falls your awareness goes deeper and deeper into your heart, and you may hear an answer come up inside you. But now wait for the pebble to drop even further down – until it settles in the water at the bottom of the well. What answer comes to mind now? Consider that awareness as the starting point in setting your new intention.

Rule #3 - Set an intention as small as possible, but still large enough for it to be meaningful.

This reduces the risk of disappointment. And there’s a method for this, too. Whatever you first come up with - for example, the resolution to live more in the present every day - it can be lessened. Would it still be significant if you lessened the intention to live more present each morning? Or to limit it to one activity every day, for example, brushing your teeth? During this activity once a month? Each time reducing the scope of the intention. At what point does the intention become so easy that it is not meaningful? For me that comes with doing something mindfully less than once a day. What would it be for you? Let that be your intention.

Rule #4 - Nurture your vulnerable self, the self-concept that resides deep in your unconscious. Nurture it every day, for example, in your morning meditation.

If you don’t follow Rule Number Four the guilt and self-criticism around slow progress will soon be likely to impair memories of your efforts.

The Right Intentions Can Bring Great Satisfaction

Setting intentions in this way can bring great satisfaction and even joy to your life. Each day you have a purpose. A direction for personal growth. And each day you are realistic about how far you’ll go in accomplishing it. Some days you may fly, other days sit on the couch and do nothing. In all cases, you can practice self-forgiveness by congratulating yourself for the progress, or congratulating yourself simply for having the intention. Whatever happens, you have a purpose, and you regularly give yourself the positive feedback we all hope for!

And there you have it. Good luck with your New Year’s Eve Resolutions. Setting a New Year’s Day intention is really starting out on a path and having the tools to return to the path when you stray away, and to forgive and encourage yourself as life progresses. Holding them all within a mindfulness meditation framework is a great way to start.

Setting intentions can be an important part of life. Even as we appreciate the present, so do we also move forward. Setting the right intention and giving it the right effort are important tasks. As is congratulating ourselves on the effort.

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