When the New Year Doesn’t Feel the Way It’s Supposed To
Adriana Barbara is a mind-specialized coach who is focused on helping CEOs and high-level entrepreneurs to develop their leadership teams by assisting each member to transform their mindset from the root.
A new year begins, and almost automatically, we fill ourselves with excitement and hope. We start defining our “New Year’s resolutions”, losing weight, saving money, changing jobs, finding a partner, and starting a business. January arrives loaded with promises, a new calendar, new plans, and new expectations.
However, for many people, the start of the year doesn’t only awaken excitement, it also triggers anxiety, guilt, and a quiet sense of inadequacy. This isn’t the first year you’ve set out to change, and experience tells you that things don’t always unfold the way you imagined.
Why does this happen, and what impact does it have on our minds?
There is a compelling collective narrative at the beginning of a new year, “a clean slate.” We repeat phrases like, “This time I’ll make it,” “This will be my year,” “Everything will be different,” “I will be better.” The problem is that these declarations, rather than creating calm, often spark an internal conflict.
Our mind performs an analysis, though not always consciously, between the expectation of radical change and meaningful achievements, and the results obtained in the past. Results that weren’t necessarily bad, but were incomplete, slow, or disappointing. And that’s where internal tension begins.
Our conscious mind is the rational part of us. It analyzes, plans, sets goals, and designs strategies. It’s the mind that dreams, visualizes, and writes resolutions. However, it represents only a small portion of who we truly are.
On the other hand, our nonconscious mind knows us deeply. It holds our accumulated experiences, our past emotions, and above all, our mental conditioning, the beliefs we have about ourselves and what we are capable of achieving. When the nonconscious mind detects an idea that is not congruent with those patterns, it activates automatic mechanisms to bring us back to our familiar state of being.
To illustrate this, let’s consider one of the most common New Year’s resolutions: exercising, losing weight, and adopting healthier habits. At first, you feel excited. You imagine yourself slimmer, energized, going to the gym, and eating better. You research diets, sign up for a gym, and everything seems to fall into place.
However, your nonconscious mind stores years of neglect, frustration, discouragement, or low self-esteem emotions linked to beliefs such as “I’m inconsistent,” “I lack discipline,” “I always fail at this.” Here, a deep incongruence is created between what your conscious mind desires and the self-concept that governs your mental conditioning.
And the mind doesn’t seek change, it seeks coherence with the identity it already knows.
So what usually happens next? After a few days, more work comes up, you feel tired, or a physical discomfort appears. That becomes the perfect excuse to quit. This new “failure” reinforces the old belief and restores coherence between how you think, feel, and act. You stop struggling, and a sense of “peace” emerges.
But this “peace” doesn’t bring fulfillment or satisfaction. It’s a numbing kind of peace. It allows you to stop spending energy fighting against who you believe you are, but it doesn’t help you grow or transform.
The real danger of this false peace is that it invites you to settle, to accept the same results you don’t like, simply because you don’t know how to recognize this internal struggle or how to transform it at its root.
To avoid this, here are five simple steps that can help you create real change this year:
Identify your related beliefs: Be honest with yourself and observe what you truly think about the goal you’ve set.
Do the inner work: Question that belief. Identify its origin and ask yourself whether it is truly true or simply a learned story.
Redefine and stabilize: Replace the limiting belief with a new, healthy, and expansive one. Work daily on your thoughts and emotions to reinforce them.
Be congruent: Align your thoughts, emotions, and actions with this new belief. Act as the person you are becoming.
Be consistent: Don’t rely on motivation. Even when doubt or fatigue arises, maintain your inner commitment.
Applied to the example above, the process would look like this: I recognize that my belief is “I’m inconsistent, and I fail at this.” I discovered that it comes from past experiences and learned messages, but it does not define who I am today. I redefine my belief as, “I am capable of developing discipline and improving.” I act in alignment by exercising daily and taking care of my nutrition. And even when doubt appears, I sustain my new identity through consistency.
This requires mental discipline and intentional inner work. At first, it may feel challenging, but over time, it becomes natural. And when that happens, change stops being an effort and becomes part of who you are.
This way, you won’t just achieve your goals, you’ll become a person who is congruent with the results you want to create.
If this start of the year doesn’t feel the way you expected, it doesn’t mean you’re failing. Perhaps change doesn’t begin with more pressure, but with learning how to understand and consciously direct your inner world.
Would you like me to guide and support you in transforming your mind and your team’s to create real, sustainable change? Learn more about my training and coaching services here.
In my next article, we’ll continue exploring how to use the mind and emotions in your favor to move forward with greater balance and clarity.
Adriana Bárbara Rodríguez, Mind Coach
Adriana Barbara is a mind-specialized coach who is focused on helping CEOs and high-level entrepreneurs to develop their leadership teams by assisting each member to transform their mindset from the root, achieve their full potential, and improve their highest productivity in order to accomplish the organization’s goals in an effective and sustainable way, with her innovative neuroscience method in leadership.
