The start of a new year often signals the start of new beginnings. It’s an opportunity to seize life with both hands and start afresh. This has never been as apparent as when we had to say goodbye to 2020 and welcome the year 2021. Many of us (me included) are glad to see back of 2020. The phrases ‘I’m sick of 2020, good riddance to 2020 and bring on the new year’ spring to mind – to name a few. However, when it comes to mental health healing, the year 2020 has given us a great opportunity to learn a few lessons that could serve us well. Join me as I attempt to extract some positivity from quite possibly one of the most challenging years of our lives.
Lessons to be learnt from 2020
Last year taught us all to have more patience, empathy and how to embrace the simpler things in life. The concept of minimalism is one that many of us will be familiar with, but perhaps not one we have ever had to face up to before. Retail therapy, a popular pastime for the avid shopper, wasn’t as easy to do in 2020. We swapped our weekends down at the shops for staying at home, exercising and embracing nature. It has allowed us to slow down our pace of life. It has also helped us to realise that all the ‘stuff’ we would usually accumulate in a year isn’t actually fundamental to our way of living.
The phrase ‘up for a challenge’ has never taken on as much meaning as it did in 2020. At points it felt that just getting through the day was a challenge. Whether it was getting used to working from our living rooms, home schooling or reinventing our businesses – the challenges kept coming thick and fast. Learning how to celebrate these seemingly small achievements was a good life lesson for many of us. Being faced with such challenges has also enabled us to embrace survival. We have all survived, adapting like never before. Some of us, like me, have also taken the time to heal from personal tragedies, taking the extra time afforded to us to work on ourselves.
Changing our mindset
Of course, things won’t magically change in 2021. We’ll all still be faced with the same problems and challenges that we had to deal with last year. I call this ‘new year, new you’ type thinking a ‘mental smoke screen’. Whilst a new year won’t automatically make things better, adopting a new mindset will. When it comes to turning a negative into a positive, there’s no better place to start! Instead of saying ‘I hate 2020’, replace with ‘I learnt a lot of lessons from 2020 and have grown.’ This way we are allowing our brain to process past events and accumulate all these crucial life lessons. To quote the great Buddha ‘If you want to grow and truly evolve, then you must befriend pain and challenges.’ Don’t forget – the most important words you say in life are the words you say to yourself.
Mental health healing
So as we leave 2020 behind and embrace 2021, let us take with us a healthy amount of respect, honour and gratitude. Gratitude in particular is vital to help put us in a place of abundance and begin the process of mental health healing. And of course, we should focus on what we have as opposed to what we don’t have. With this being said, I salute and respect 2020, and with that mindset of gratitude enter the new year. The year 2021 is going to be one where The Healing Place becomes bigger and better. I cannot wait to help more of you to heal from the inside out. Please feel free to get in contact if you’d like to find out more. You can also follow us over on Facebook and Instagram!
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