Wow, that was fast.

Where did 2025 go?

And now, here it is: 2026.

Did you make your New Year’s resolutions yet? I’ve done it in the past, but I don’t know if I’ll do it again this year. Maybe writing this article will help me decide.

If you’ve always embraced this tradition in your life, how has it been working for you over the years? Have you been successful in making positive changes? Do you think those changes had anything to do with making your personal New Year’s resolutions?

If your New Year’s resolutions didn’t actualize, did you stop making them entirely? Did you feel discouraged, guilty, depressed, or anxious when you couldn’t live up to those expectations of yourself?

Frankly, this year I can’t decide what to do or how seriously to take them. Sometimes, a new way of thinking helps me, so instead of calling them “New Year’s resolutions,” I’m using a loftier term:

Setting intentions.

Every year, I make new starry-eyed promises to myself. I’ve gone along with this tradition because I like the idea of possibility and hope. And sometimes, my newly set intentions work and I’ve been successful at making positive changes in my attitude, behavior, mood, thoughts, and feelings.

Focusing on intentions encourages me to try on a new lens in my life. What can I do differently? How can I breathe in new breaths of hope-filled promises and start the new year fresh, recalibrated, and renewed? How can I walk toward my life with a healed tabula rasa—a clean slate?

When I set new intentions, it makes me feel as if I am giving birth to myself. And I like that idea.

Here are my intentions for 2026:

>> Balance my indoor creative projects with going outside more often. Breathing in the healing miracle of nature and taking time out just to be.

>> Turn on inspiring music and dance to my heart’s delight. Dance all the time. First thing in the morning, mid-afternoon, and even when I’m making dinner.

>> Continue surrounding myself with light-filled people on social media, in my town, and beyond.

>> Let go of expectations, false assumptions, made-up stories in my head, and put a permanent stop to my inner judge.

>> When I engage in conversations with both strangers and friends, put my phone down, keep my heart open, give warm eye contact, focus, and be fully present with their words, tone of voice, facial expressions, and gestures.

>> Always ask to know someone’s name. Visibility matters. Everyone matters.

>> Show my husband even more of my appreciation and love. We’re still learning about, as Tina Turner sang, “this crazy little thing called love.” Keep it going.

>> No more self-ageism. Gratefully, I am still going strong in my body, mind, and spirit, and I will continue to keep a twinkle in my eyes and a song in my heart until the last breath.

>> Stay curious about life.

>> Help children through these hard times.

>> Reduce my fears and depression about what is going on in the news. I will continue to stay informed and active, but I won’t become the toxicity of the news or allow “him” and all his cronies to destroy my soul or my hope. I will protect myself with the healing tools I know, and choose love, joy, and creativity as my acts of resistance.

>> Continue to help those less fortunate, feed those who are food deprived, and work toward justice and peace. Racism, religious prejudice, gender bias, the removal of women’s rights, “the disappeared” and random deportations without due process are causes I will work against with every fiber of my being.

>> Go on more adventures, take more risks, laugh more often, and return to my personal joy for singing and composing.

>> Take a class in holistic singing therapy. (Done! I signed up!)

>> Speak out more, don’t sublimate myself, believe in myself, share my intuitive wisdom freely, and don’t hold back or hide my true self.

>> Stop taking on the past and feeling as if it was all my fault. Because it wasn’t. I tried my best and did my best, but some things were not under my control. They weren’t in your control, either. Focus on the present. Focus on the future. On peace. On love. On activism. On justice. On forgiveness. On compassion. On kindness.

>> Stop taking another person’s actions and words personally.

>> Read meaningful books. Play my singing bowls. Re-learn playing my precious cello.

>> Stop feeling like a failure just because the careers I pursued didn’t make money. I am passionate about what I do. I love to help others with my writing, my books, my songs, my life coaching for communities on Facebook, on Elephant Journal, on my Substack (“A Light Between the Cracks”), and as an intuitive life coach.

>> Remember that everything I do is surrounded by a higher purpose, and I love every minute of it. Everything I do has helped to heal the wounds from my past, too.

>> Focus on joy, peace, kindness, and love.

I set these intentions but there is another part of me that thinks New Year’s resolutions and setting intentions is a lot of “pish-posh.” I don’t know how life is for you, but my resolutions get wobbly after the first month. Sometimes even after the first week or first day.

For example: I feel a great deal of fear about the present situation in America. Our current “leaders” separate people. Discard them. “Other” most of us. I don’t think I will “get rid” of that fear.

But fear can also be a good thing. It can propel us into positive action steps and a sense of caring protection toward each other and ourselves. It can shift you into being courageous beyond your wildest expectations of yourself, too.

If fear takes over my being or yours, here are my antidotes:

Focus on peace and activism, breathing in moments of unexpected joy, noticing the sacredness, and anchoring ourselves in gratefulness.

Breath in goodness and light, embarking on more creative projects of the heart and to the heart, honing more humor and playfulness in your life, creating more connections with others, adding prayer, meditation, yoga, sound healing, positive thought transference, and the healing power of visualizing peace for our families, ourselves, each other, and the world.

Yes, even toward those with whom we don’t agree.

The vengeful ones were once innocent babies whose upbringing created irrational venom within their wounded souls along with a closed heart and a mind with no conscience for the collective whole of humankind. Sometimes, if you know the root cause, it can help you understand people who are vastly different from you, while still vehemently not agreeing with their toxic personalities, actions, and words.

Acceptance is a word that keeps coming up for me, too. I don’t mean “acceptance” in a passive way. I mean it in a realistic way. When we accept our flaws and see them more as new lessons to be learned and relearned in “Life 101,” we become free again.

Add in mindful acceptance, radical love, and days and nights filled with new resolutions, intentions, affirmations, promises, and positive action steps.

And when we mess up? Forgive. Breathe. Try again.

Happy 2026 everyone. As the Metta Meditation Prayer of Loving-Kindness says:

May you be happy.

May you be well.

May you be safe.

May you be at peace and at ease.

May the whole world be happy.

May the whole world be well.

May the whole world be safe.

May the Whole world be at peace and at ease. 

A love note to my readers: I’d love to hear from you on Elephant Journal. What did you decide? Resolutions or intentions or neither? And why? And of course, I’m curious—what are they?

~