2020 presented us with a lot of challenges. It felt like an emotional overload with depressing news flooding our feeds 24/7. 2020 demanded us to not only change our day-to-day lives but also to rewire our brains by unlearning a lot of problematic, conditioned thinking.

It’s safe to say that we have all been collectively traumatized by last year. The spectrum of trauma is nuanced and we all experienced the last year in our own way. We also all found ways to cope and survive in a way that was unique to our lifestyles, backgrounds, and privileges. Something I noticed was that a lot of us were extremely hard on ourselves. It was as if we had all taken on this huge responsibility of neverending trauma and forced upon ourselves the overbearing expectation to instinctively know how to heal and cope almost seamlessly and independently. So many of us drew dangerously inward last year and found ourselves more depressed, anxious, and lonely than we have ever felt before.

Around this time of year, people make their yearly resolutions. While I am personally not a fan of making a new year resolution (because you can literally make a resolution at any point in the year), I think that this year is an exception. We are coming out fresh from a hellish year and setting an intention could help in drawing a focus to what is truly important to us.

While everyone has their own goals, something we can all agree on is that we need less of the negative self-talk and more kindness and love for ourselves. This isn’t to say that we should be inviting toxic positivity (read: gaslighting and avoidance) into our lives. It means that starting this year, moving forward, we will choose to be more patient with ourselves and expect less from ourselves and others. It means that we prioritize our happiness and we don’t overextend ourselves to attempt to prove our worth. It means we ask for help – period.

Society has conditioned us to believe that being kind to ourselves is a luxury, a selfish act, and the antithesis of productivity. Everyone deserves time in their life to exist solely for themselves. Who better to provide that happiness in your life than yourself?