New Year, New You! Starting off the Year with Positivity

Team OSCIE
Darya Hajiseyedjavadi

Every year, when the calendar changes from December 31st to January 1st, one chapter closes and another begins. So many of us, though, just continue to drag on with the past, and we forget to start the new year with a fresh mind. While the changing dates don’t exactly give us a completely fresh slate, we have to take the new year as an opportunity to start fresh, emotionally speaking, and here’s why:

• Continuing to think about and live in the past for extended periods of time can emotionally exhaust and drain us. Your mind needs a break!! 
• Just like in books, chapters of our lives need to end at some point. You should continue moving forward with your life journey; you can’t keep living in the same chapter forever!
• It is essential to start the new year with a fresh mind so that you can start with happiness, and be open to whatever is to come. If you don’t, previous feelings will keep carrying over, and you might have a hard time finding closure with different parts of your life.

In every single year, especially 2020, our minds are put through so much that sometimes, we just don’t know how to make our minds fresh and clear. Sometimes, many of us don’t even feel like a new chapter in our lives is starting! While it might take a little bit of practice, starting with a fresh mindset every once in a while is SO important. Here are a few tips to help you do just that:

• Doing something as simple as telling yourself, “new year, new me!” can really really help you start fresh. Our minds make themselves whatever we want them to be, so keep telling yourself that it’s a new chapter.
• Set a goal for yourself, like a new years’ resolution, and keep it!!! Try writing it down and putting it in a place where you can always see it, and come back to that goal often. New goals can help us begin new parts of our lives.
• Live in the moment! By thinking about the past or the future too much, we forget to live in the present and we become so sidetracked. Another thing, too, is that if we focus on the past too much, we can’t really move forward with our lives. Try your best to find closure, and a fresh mind will come quickly after that.

Keep going, you got this! I know 2020 was a tough year, but by emotionally resetting, we can make 2021 so much better. Happy New Year!

Some Quotes about New Beginnings…

“Celebrate endings—for they precede new beginnings.”

Jonathan Huie

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”

Edith Lovejoy Pierce

“Every moment is a fresh beginning.”

T.S. Eliot

Team O.S.C.I.E

Optimism

Strength

Confidence

Independence

Empathy

We are a group of students who deeply want to help young teenagers find a safe place in their minds. Our goal is to eliminate negative stigmas towards mental health and make it a topic that is thoroughly addressed and becomes normalized for everyone.