A Mantra for 2024
A Mantra for 2024
A helpful alternative to kicking off a great new year, without setting specific measurable goals.
If setting goals for the New Year isn’t your thing, but you still want a great way to set yourself up for a fresh start in 2024, picking a helpful mantra to kick off the year, might be just what you’re looking for!
I’m a huge fan of taking time out to evaluate ones current state of personal work and life, dreaming up an ideal future state for self, and then setting goals to help achieve the next few steps. But if you’ve been reading my essays for a while, than you may also recall that the proper time for doing that thought work doesn’t always align with specific date markers like the start of the new year.
In the US, our year switches from old to new during the coldest, darkest part of the year. While some of you may draw energy from setting goals, for others simply getting your head in the right place to be able to push through until Spring may be all you have capacity for.
This year instead of setting goals, I’ve noticed several of my friends and colleagues talking about the mantra they’re picking for 2024… and I LOVE IT!
What does choosing a mantra do for mindset?
I’ve written about how improvisers build flexibility and resilience, and mindset actually has a huge role to play in adopting an improvisers ethos.
Choosing a helpful mantra to help you face uncertainty with grace and ease can provide an excellent shortcut to wiring your brain for success. You can meditate with your mantra, or if meditating isn’t your thing, repeat your mantra to yourself silently any time, anywhere and and often you like!
In actuality, we're choosing mantra’s all of the time… we just do it unconsciously based on our biases, mental habits, mood, what we were just doing beforehand, and so on. Sometimes our mantra’s sound like “everybody sucks” or “I’m probably in for more of the same…”
But it’s important to understand just how surprisingly strong our minds are!
Our assumptions influence our behavior, which in turn influences our experience, which of course leads to deeper reinforcement of our assumptions… and around and around we go!
Rather than let our mindset choose us (and how we experience life as a result) we can use this pattern loop to choose our mental messaging, shift our mindset, and reverse engineer our brains!
By simply choosing a helpful mantra like “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it could be great!” we open up the possibility for better outcomes.
Pick your helpful mantra to kick off the new year!
Here is a short list of mantra’s. Choose one you like for 2024!
I have what it takes to achieve what I dream (including the capacity to learn!)
Something wonderful could happen at any moment
More joy. More fun. More making happy memories
I am blessed with abundance
I am resourceful
Notice what’s working, do more of that
I have a lot to offer my network this year
Balance. Balance. Balance.
If you don’t see one here that resonates with you, feel free to download this worksheet for free, and spend a little time coming up with something that inspires you!
Wishing you a VERY happy New Year!
From the bottom of my heart I wish you an amazing year ahead, and I offer you this blessing from my family to yours.
May your heart be filled with love May your body be fueled with good health May the Universe provide you with abundance And may we all discover more that unites us than divides us and a deep capacity for forgiveness so that we may share an incredible future together
For discussion:
Are you a goal setter for New Year’s, or does this approach feel more realistic for you?
Do moments like NYE or your birthday typically feel like a reset to you, or simply a continuation?
What is your mantra for 2024?