Part 2 of 2: A Practice to Mindfully Close 2015 and Consciously Welcome 2016.

Between the Closing and the Opening

If you’ve come here from Part 1 — the closing process — welcome. If you haven’t done Part 1 yet, I’d gently encourage you to start there before diving in here. The opening prompts are most useful when they emerge from an honest reckoning with the year you’re leaving behind, rather than skipping straight to aspiration without doing the integration work first.

In my practice, I use the period between Christmas and New Year’s for both parts of this process: a few days for the closing, and then the days immediately before the new year for the opening. The temporal landmark of December 31st creates a kind of natural portal — a moment where something psychologically meaningful happens that can be used consciously rather than unconsciously.

What I’ve found, both in my own life and in working with clients, is that the opening intentions that come after genuine closing work are substantively different from those that come from the usual New Year’s energy. Less about achieving more and more about being differently. Less performance-oriented and more oriented toward what actually matters.

The Science of Intention and Behavior Change

Dr. Peter Gollwitzer, PhD, psychologist and professor at New York University, has spent decades studying the gap between intention and action — why people set goals they don’t follow through on, and what actually increases follow-through. His research on “implementation intentions” — specific, if-then plans (“if situation X arises, I will do Y”) — demonstrates that specificity dramatically improves behavior change outcomes compared to vague goal-setting.

This has a practical implication for the opening process: the most useful intentions are specific enough to generate implementation plans. Not “I want to be less stressed” but “when I notice I’m overwhelmed, I will do three minutes of physiological sighing before checking email.” Not “I want to improve my relationship with my mother” but “I will limit phone calls to thirty minutes and have a script for ending them when I need to.”

Additionally, Dr. Kelly McGonigal, PhD, health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University, research on willpower and behavior change emphasizes the role of self-compassion in sustaining change. People who can meet their inevitable lapses with compassion rather than self-condemnation are more likely to return to their intentions after deviating from them. The opening process, when done with this orientation, plants that compassion at the beginning rather than having to excavate it after failure.

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” — Carl Rogers, PhD, psychologist and founder of client-centered therapy

The Opening Prompts

Take the same care with these as with the closing prompts — pen and paper, quiet space, no time pressure. These are not a checklist to complete. They’re an invitation to get genuinely curious about the life you want to live.

1. How do you most want to feel at the end of this coming year?
Not what you want to have accomplished — how you want to feel. In your body, in your relationships, in your relationship with your work. What quality of experience are you longing for?

2. What one change, if you actually made it, would most improve your daily life?
Not the most impressive thing on your list — the most impactful. The one you’ve been circling for years. What is it?

3. What do you want more of this year?
More rest. More honesty. More depth in your relationships. More creative work. More movement. More solitude. More community. Be specific. What, when you imagine having more of it, makes something loosen in your chest?

4. What do you want less of?
The obligations you carry out of guilt. The relationships that consistently drain rather than nourish. The habits you maintain out of inertia. The commitments that once made sense but no longer fit. What are you willing to release?

5. What support do you need that you haven’t given yourself permission to seek?
Therapy. Coaching. A mentor. A community. Medical care you’ve been putting off. A difficult conversation you need help navigating. What support is available that you’re not accessing — and what’s in the way?

6. What are you most afraid of for this coming year?
Name it honestly. Fear that you don’t acknowledge tends to run things from underground. Bringing it into the light doesn’t eliminate it, but it does reduce its power and create the possibility of addressing it directly.

7. What do you want your closest relationships to feel like by December?
In your partnership, your friendships, your family relationships — what quality of connection are you hoping for? And what are you willing to contribute toward that?

8. What is one thing you want to finally give yourself permission to do, try, or be?
The thing you’ve been waiting for the right time for. The creative project, the conversation, the change, the choice. What is it time to actually do?

9. What does a good life look like to you, honestly, as you enter this year?
Not the aspirational version for an imagined audience. The one you’d actually want to live. What does it include?

10. What do you most want to remember from this year’s reflection?
From both the closing and the opening — what is the most important thing you want to carry forward? Write it somewhere you’ll encounter it regularly.

The Both/And of New Year Intention

Jordan, a 30-year-old I worked with, came to this opening process deeply skeptical of New Year’s in general — she’d had too many years of performative resolutions that dissolved by February. “I’ve learned to distrust this time of year,” she told me. “It makes me think I’m going to change when I’m not.”

The both/and I offered her: you can be appropriately skeptical of the cultural performance of New Year’s goals and still use the temporal landmark for genuine, grounded reflection. The cultural noise around New Year’s is real and often unhelpful. But the psychological reality of the temporal landmark is also real — the fresh start effect is documented, the impulse to reflect is legitimate, and the invitation to ask honest questions about your life is one worth accepting when it comes.

Jordan did the process, skeptically. She came back in February with something I didn’t expect: “I actually changed one thing,” she said. “Just one. But it’s the thing I wanted to change for three years.” The thing was a weekly commitment to her own creative work — an hour on Sunday mornings, phone in another room. “I didn’t make it a resolution,” she said. “I made it an implementation intention. Gollwitzer was right.”

The Systemic Lens: Beyond Individual Change

Individual intention-setting is valuable. It’s also insufficient if the systems we’re embedded in don’t change. One of the patterns I see in driven women from relational trauma backgrounds is the tendency to place the entire weight of change on themselves — to believe that if they just work harder, regulate better, decide more carefully, they can overcome structural obstacles through individual effort.

Sometimes they can. And sometimes the honest answer to “why isn’t my life working the way I want it to?” isn’t about the choices you’re making — it’s about the system you’re operating in. The workplace that doesn’t support human beings. The family system that drains rather than nourishes. The social structures that make certain paths harder than others.

The opening process is more complete when it includes both personal intentions and structural honesty: what can I genuinely change, and what requires changing the conditions I’m operating in? The latter sometimes requires different kinds of action — advocacy, setting limits with systems rather than only with individuals, finding or building communities that support different ways of being.

Carrying Your Intentions Forward

The greatest risk with year-end reflection is that it becomes a meaningful, moving process on December 30th and then disappears by February 1st. A few practices that support continuity:

Keep one key sentence visible. From your entire reflection, distill one sentence — the thing you most want to remember, the intention you most want to carry — and put it somewhere you’ll encounter it regularly. Not an overwhelming list of goals. One thing.

Schedule quarterly check-ins. Put a reminder in your calendar for March, June, and September to return to your reflection and ask: how am I doing? Not to grade yourself, but to notice where you’ve drifted from your intentions and course-correct with compassion.

Share with someone who will hold you gently accountable. Not someone who will shame you for not following through, but someone who will ask, with genuine curiosity and care, “how are those intentions going?” A therapist, a close friend, a partner, a coach.

Practice the both/and when you falter. You will falter. Old patterns are persistent, and change is rarely linear. When you notice you’ve drifted, the most useful response is: I notice I’ve drifted. What do I need to come back? Not: I’ve failed again, see, I can’t do this.

Happy new year. Whatever the year ahead holds — and it will hold things you can’t predict from where you’re standing now — may you enter it with more of your own authority. More awareness of what actually matters to you. More willingness to seek the support you need. And more compassion for the moments when you fall short of your own intentions, which will happen, and which are not the measure of your worth.

This is the year ahead. It’s yours to write. Write it consciously.

Medical Disclaimer

Medical Disclaimer