New Year, New You? Focusing on Acceptance in 2020

As soon as the Christmas holidays wrap, the blogs, Instagram stories, and social media ads all start turning toward resolutions. And many of them focus on weight loss, working out, or just taking on a large number of changes all at once that often set people up to fail. We don’t know about you, but having a big long list of resolutions to make is hard to keep. Even with the best of intentions. 

For the new year (and the new decade!) we want to encourage people to focus on resolutions of acceptance. What if your resolutions were about accepting where you are right now, in this body, and then appreciating that space? From a place of acceptance and love, we can all build great things. For ourselves and others. 

Below, we have some ideas and resources that we think will help people focus on acceptance this year. Because we all need some more kindness and self love in 2020. 

Making Positive Resolutions

Much of the resolution language out there is about changing our bodies. From weight loss to muscle gain, the language can feel negative and critical. Especially to those struggling with self esteem, body positivity, and trauma. Instead of thinking about what you want to change, make a list of what you love about your body and your body’s abilities. 

Then, make some resolutions that are about sustaining those things that you love. And that are about taking care of your body. Need a little help getting started? Check out this great list from The EveryGirl. From increasing the amount of water you drink (because all of our bodies need lots of water and chronic dehydration affects many!) to resolving to take more relaxing baths, this is a resolution list we can get behind. 

Accepting (and Changing) Toxic Friendships

Many people will find themselves in a toxic friendship at some point. This could be a friend who makes you feel drained after even a short hangout because they take a great deal of emotional labor. Or they may be super critical and express that criticism to you (and even about you) whenever you see them. 

Toxic friendships can be just as detrimental to your physical and mental health as a toxic relationship, so if you are in one then 2020 could be the time to accept that fact and move on. Tiny Buddha has great tips for how to accept that a friendship is no longer healthy or good and then also gives specific tips for moving on, which can be especially hard if the toxic friend is an old friend, too. But it’s time to accept, forgive, and move on. 

Accepting Ourselves 

The biggest change we can all make in the new year is to learn how to accept ourselves. And we mean all of it! The messy, the “unattractive” parts, the hilarious things, and the weird ones, too. And who better to help us all work toward that acceptance than Brené Brown. The podcast How She Really Does It offers an hour-long conversation with Brown, called Letting Go of Perfection. 

In this interview, Brown and Koren Motekaitis discuss how to let go of the idea of perfection, love yourself, and develop more compassion for yourself and others. And Brown provides concrete examples to get everyone started. This interview is an excellent place to start your acceptance journey! 

However you learn to accept and love yourself more in the new year, we hope these resources help you expand and embrace that acceptance.