The new year is a great time to take a step back and evaluate where you are and where you want to be in your life and in your business. One of the best ways to look at that and figure out the roadmap for the next year is by creating a new year mantra.
A mantra is a word or phrase that you repeat to yourself to motivate yourself and constantly remind yourself of your goals and what you deserve. Even if you have never sat down and intentionally written a mantra for yourself, you’ve probably used them before.
Creating a new year mantra can be really powerful and can help set you up to have a purpose-filled and fulfilling year. Below are some tips for creating a new year mantra that has helped mine actually stick.
Pssst! You will need a notebook or journal, so go snag one now before we dive into creating your new year mantras.
Creating a New Year Mantra for Yourself
Think about your values and your goals for the next year
Before doing anything else, it’s important to sit down and think about your values and goals for the next year. This can be the baseline -the perfect place to start – before you start to brainstorm your actual mantra.
Ask yourself:
- Is there anything that happened in the past year that you want to change for the new year?
- Are there certain goals in your business that you want to reach?
- Are you working on creating a greater sense of confidence in yourself and what you are doing?
Take some time to write all of these down on a piece of paper so you can visualize each of them individually and think about what is most important to you and how you can transform that into a mantra for the year.
Start with a single word (or a word dump)
Instead of trying to jump into writing your whole mantra, start with a single word. A great way to do this is to brain-dump a ton of words as they come to you. Don’t feel like you have to filter anything out at this point.
Try to think of feelings or emotions that you want to embody in the new year: confidence, worthiness, love, success, etc. These can be things that you want in your personal life, in business, or in both.
Make sure the words you come up with are personal to you
There are a ton of people out in the world who will give you mantras or tell you ‘this is how you should feel’, but at the end of the day, mantras, aka what you say to yourself, should be something that is deeply personal to you.
While that may sometimes align with what other people say, that is not always the case. This is also something that shouldn’t be thrown together or something that you look at and say, “Yeah, that’s good enough.”
Your mantra should really resonate with you and where you are in your life right now. Take your time putting this together, and don’t rush it. As more thoughts and ideas come to you, stop and write them down until you feel confident in what you have and your goals before you write out your full mantra.
Look for inspiration
While I wouldn’t directly take what other people say, you can look for inspiration in your everyday life to help you create a meaningful mantra for yourself.
These can be quotes, song lyrics, poems, or anything you come across. You don’t have to take them word for word, but write them down. Think about why that resonated with you. Was it the way it was said? Was it the emotion it evoked in you?
Sit with that for a bit and dissect why it was significant to you and how you can use that to create your own New Year mantra.
Use only positive words and language
Be sure only to use positive language in your mantras. I know that sometimes this can seem difficult, but positive language is always going to motivate and resonate with you more than negative language.
If you do initially think of words, phrases, or mantras that use negative language, take a moment and think about how you can spin it in a positive way. For example, let’s say your mantra is “I don’t deserve bad things.”
Instead of using “don’t” and “bad,” we can change the phrasing to say “I deserve positive or good things.” This may seem like a really small change, but it can really make all the difference in how you think about your mantra and how it shapes your year!
Keep your mantra simple
We are constantly consuming so much information all at once, and it can be really overwhelming. The same is true when it comes to your mantra. You want to make sure that your mantra is simple and straightforward so you are able to connect with it easily.
This may mean keeping your mantra a bit shorter, or it can mean making it a bit more general versus making it very specific. (Typically, affirmations are very specific, and those can stress out your nervous system if you’re not ready for it…)
For example, instead of saying, “I deserve a million-dollar house, a car, and a successful business,” we can say, “I deserve good things in my life.”
Conceptually, these two mantras are saying the same thing: we are manifesting positive things in our lives. However, the first one is very specific, and we can start to feel unmotivated or defeated if we aren’t reaching those goals right off the bat. It can stress out our nervous system and not really work to shift our mindset. Mantras work when we believe them, and same for affirmations, so be careful with what you choose.
On the flip side, if we look at “I deserve good things in my life,” that can definitely apply to things like a nice house or a successful business, but it can also help us be more appreciative of smaller things in our lives: the appreciation you get from a client after working for them, the dollar bill you find on the sidewalk, the upgraded seat on your flight.
Keeping things simpler and more general allows you to look at everything that is happening in your life or your business that fulfills that goal and purpose you are repeating instead of just one or two specific things you are focusing on.
Write it down and put it somewhere you will see every day
This is one of the most important parts of creating a new year mantra. You absolutely want to write the mantra down and put it somewhere where you will see it every single day. This might be on your mirror, your fridge, your laptop background, or anything.
Remember the Lucky Girl Syndrome trend on TikTok this year? Folks were writing ‘I am so lucky, everything works out for me’ on their phone screens or simply watching enough of those videos; it was sticking.
It can also help to write it in a meaningful way. This may mean writing it in your own handwriting so you can look at it every day and know that it is something you chose. Or maybe you write it out in your brand’s font to make it feel more connected to your business.
Whatever you choose, make sure you put it somewhere you are always going to see it and be reminded of it!
Say it to yourself often
You also want to make sure you say it to yourself often. A mantra is something that is supposed to be constantly repeated. Maybe you decide that you are going to wake up every single morning and say it to yourself in the mirror before you start your day.
Or, you can decide to say it when you are feeling a certain emotion. When you are overwhelmed, feeling under-appreciated, or just not confident in yourself, you say your mantra over and over until you truly believe it.
Be open to changes throughout the year as your goals change
Finally, remember that just as anything else in your life or your business, these mantras are not going to be set in stone. The New Year is a great fresh start, but you can create new fresh starts at any time. Where you are right now is a very different place than you were even six months ago.
So, as the year progresses, be open to changes and flexible in how you approach your mantras. If your goals change throughout the year and your mantra no longer aligns with where you are, take time to come up with a new one.
While these New Year mantras can help be a guiding light for you, they are not going to be that forever. Allow yourself some flexibility to make changes to feel like your mantra actually resonates with where you are at that moment in time.
Final Thoughts on Creating a Mantra for the New Year
Hopefully, these tips will help you as you work to create a new year mantra for yourself. At the end of the day, this is for you and you alone, so be sure to take time to reflect and create something that is personal and meaningful to you.
If you are looking for a support system to help you achieve the goals you set in your mantras, check out my Creative CEO Mentorship. We will work 1-on-1 to create goals and set roadmaps to help you get your business to the next level!
