New Year, New Environment: A Reset from the Inside Out
It’s a new year. A fresh start.
Perhaps you spent the last few weeks in a holiday haze—not doing much, or maybe reflecting on the past year and setting intentions for the year ahead.
And now you’re ready, standing at the threshold of a new year…yet you already feel like you’re hitting a wall?!
If that resonates, let me reassure you: it’s not you, and it’s not your goals or intentions.
But there’s this nagging feeling that keeps resurfacing—your environment is no longer supporting your goals, desires, and the life you want to live.
This is not failure. This is growth.
In our early years, changing environments is built into life. We don’t make a fuss about it when we naturally move—from preschool to elementary to high school and university; from dependent student to employed independent; from single to partnered life.
Then midlife arrives and we experience profound emotional, physical, and lifestyle shifts.
And yet, we expect that our old and potentially outdated environments will be sufficient to support us!
They often don’t, and that’s where the frustration and feelings of being “stuck” begin.
Before we go any further, let me be clear: this is not a declaration in support of the total upheaval or abandonment of our current lives.
There was a time when I felt deeply out of place in my own environment and longed to run away for a fresh start.
But circumstances didn’t allow for that, and in hindsight, I am grateful.
The truth is, I would have dragged my grief and anxiety along with me wherever I went.
So I stayed and learned that an environment is not just the physical place where we live.
Environment is created by how we relate to our life and circumstances.
Our perspective, energy, boundaries, habits, and relationships collectively create the environment we live inside of every single day.
So let’s stay where we are and start with what we have.
By using the tools of reevaluating, reassessing, and reinforcing, we can intentionally create an environment that supports our goals, values, and well-being.
Reevaluate Your Relationships
This is not about cancel culture or ridding your life of “toxic” relationships (we’ll leave that discussion for another time).
This is about taking an honest look at your most important relationships and ensuring that you feel heard and understood within them.
Strong and supportive relationships are built on clarity, not assumptions.
One of the biggest sources of resentment I see as a life coach comes from unspoken expectations.
When we silently hold expectations and hope others will miraculously meet them, we set ourselves up for disappointment and emotional exhaustion.
Instead, this is an opportunity to have meaningful conversations—to express and clarify expectations, and to translate them into mutual agreements.
I know these conversations may be uncomfortable or difficult, but it’s the gateway to create deep and intimate relationships, and to ensure feeling emotionally supported in the long run.
Reassess Your Calendar
This one is simple to do, but potentially difficult to actually execute.
Your calendar tells the truth about your life.
Take a look and see what your days are filled with:
Do your activities excite you or fill you with dread?
Do you feel content and grateful when you get into bed at night or simply exhausted and overwhelmed?
Do you wake up in the morning ready for all that you get to do or do you snooze to avoid an endless list of chores and obligations?
It’s time to remove the dread-inducing and exhausting chores from your life by becoming very intentional about what you say “yes” to.
Speaking as a former people-pleaser, I know that making the switch from saying yes to everything and accommodating everyone else to making “no” a frequent part of your vocabulary can be quite intimidating.
But an overfilled, unsatisfying calendar is one of the fastest ways to feel disconnected from yourself.
Maintaining an intentional calendar is the basis for a supportive environment.
It creates space for rest, joy, and alignment.
Start small, one tiny shift at a time.
Reinforce Your Foundation
Anytime I feel unstable or overwhelmed, I return to my basics to feel grounded and supported.
I call these the Pillars of Life.
They consist of fundamental habits to reinforce physical health, emotional regulation, mental clarity, spiritual connection, and purposeful work. These Pillars create stability, so life doesn’t feel like a constant struggle.
Reinforcement doesn’t mean perfection.
It means meeting yourself exactly where you are (sometimes that’s at the bare minimum for me!), and slowly building momentum and optimizing from there.
When your foundation is strong, growth becomes sustainable instead of exhausting.
It may be a dream to simply pick up, move, and start fresh in a new environment any time your current surroundings stop feeling supportive.
But for many, such a dream will never be a reality.
Rather than feeling forever stuck or waiting for a new environment to save you, I offer you an opportunity to realign within the life you already have—and shape it into one that truly supports you.
Feeling grounded and supported in your environment does not necessarily require a new zip code.
Intentional alignment through reevaluating relationships, reassessing calendars, and reinforcing foundations can effectively upgrade your environment from the inside out.
Start where you are, use what you have, and build an environment that allows you to thrive.
