Your 2025 Goal Setting Guide: 7 Tips to Make This Your Best Year Yet

As we step into 2025, let’s make this the year we prioritize mental health and embrace attainable changes. Whether you’re ready to start therapy, improve your sleep, or practice self-compassion, this guide offers actionable tips to help you thrive in 2025.

1. Starting Your Therapy Journey

Starting therapy can be how you make the changes you want in 2025. Therapy offers a non-judgmental space for exploration and growth. 

Maybe you’re finally ready to address the anxious spirals you go through at night, want to stop dating the wrong people, or you’re ready to understand your ADHD brain and need the right help. Therapy is going to be the place to start. 

• In your first session, you and your therapist will explore what brought you in, they’ll ask about your goals, and they’ll work with you to make a treatment plan to address your needs.

• What therapy is NOT: Only a place to vent, a quick fix, or advice-giving. 

• This year, maybe your first step is reaching out to a new therapist and seeing if you’re the right fit for one another. I’m offering Free Consultations this year to make sure the process is as easy and fast as possible for you to work with the right therapist!

2. Building Better Sleep Habits for Mental Health

I know I don’t need to reiterate the importance of sleep for emotional regulation and mental clarity, but we should ensure we understand that poor sleep is going to be a negative contributor to your mental health. 

What can we do to improve our sleep this year? We can check our sleep hygiene and make sure we have the basics covered:

• Managing screen time before bed. 

• Eating enough food throughout the day to have restful sleep at night, a hungry body and brain are going to be awake looking for food.

• Keep lighting low before bed.

• Low-stimulus activities before bed, think puzzles, reading, or colouring. 

• Mindfulness and relaxation techniques like meditation, or mindful activity before bed. 

• ADHD tip for sleep issues: If you’re struggling with excess energy right before bed, you may need to exert energy before going to sleep, different than your neurotypical counterparts. Try singing your favourite song out loud, a pre-bed dance or shake, a yoga flow, or a 10-15 minute pre-bed walk. 

Struggling with sleep can be frustrating, this year, give these strategies a go and assess how you’re feeling in the mornings.

If your mental health is negatively impacting your sleep or you’re struggling with insomnia or other related issues, reach out for support from a professional, they’ll be able to support your unique situation.

3. Making Time for Activities That Bring You Joy

What is life if it’s not meant to be enjoyed? Setting aside time for hobbies and interests that align with your values will help reduce stress, and promote relaxation and mindfulness. Joyful activities are going to promote things like dopamine (the satisfaction and pleasure neurotransmitter) and serotonin (the mood-boosting neurotransmitter). 

What do your hobbies look like? Do they tap into your creative side? Do they give you a moment of calm amongst the chaos in your life? 

This year, think about scheduling your hobbies and interests into your week, rather than only with the free time you have left. This is a tangible step to putting yourself and your needs first this year. 

4. Embracing Movement That Feels Good for Your Body

We’ve heard time and time again how good movement is for our brain and body. But, with the conflicting messages about which type of exercise is the “right” one, it can be overwhelming. Leaving a lot of us in the decision paralysis of NOTHING. 

I’m here to confirm for you that ANY kind of movement is going to leave you with the mental health benefits of exercise. Forget about the influencers arguing online about Pilates vs. walking vs. Weightlifting. The beautiful thing about exercising is that there are so many ways to do it. It’s about what is going to fit into your life and what that means for you. 

So, if this means depression workouts in your bed, go for it. A walk in the park with your dog every day? Sounds great. Or lifting weights overhead (a personal favourite)? Fuck yeah. 

This year, it doesn’t matter what you do, it matters that you do it, and do it in a way that works for you!

5. Practicing Self-Compassion Over Negative Self-Talk

Self-compassion is turning the compassion you might offer to a friend towards yourself. Offering ourselves acceptance and kindness for our humanness. Simply said, but sometimes hard to put into action. 

When you’re working hard to meet a deadline at work, what kind of person do you want on the team? Do you want the person who says “You can’t do anything right, you’re slowing us down, if you just did things like _____, you’d be better”? 

Or do you want the person that says “Wow, I can see you’re working hard here!  You’re doing a great job. I see you’ve made a mistake on this document, why don’t we fix it together, we’re all human after all”?

We’re probably going to work a lot better with the second person on our team, and we’re probably going to feel a lot better about ourselves at the end. 

This year, self-compassion can be as easy as accepting yourself for your humanness and checking in to make sure we’re speaking to ourselves in the same way we might speak to a friend.

6. Choosing Consistency Over Perfection

It’s common to start the new year with big goals, and while goals are great we need to look out for all-or-nothing thinking or setting goals routed in perfection. Perfection doesn’t exist and isn’t attainable. 

What is attainable? Being consistent over time. How boring right? Maintaining consistency over doing everything perfectly, always wins. 

There’s no perfect morning or nighttime routine, there’s no perfect way to eat, and there’s no perfect way to cope with stress. We’re human, and our lives are going to be filled with roadblocks and new challenges testing our flexibility. What’s important is that we maintain consistency when these new roadblocks pop up.

Maybe your goal for the new year looks like setting boundaries with work, allowing for more time with loved ones away from your work phone. Are you going to be setting perfect boundaries right away? The odds are no... it’s going to take some time to PRACTICE and be consistent with those boundaries as new challenges arise. 

This year, consistency and practice over perfection! 

7. Seeking Expert Mental Health Advice Over Unqualified “Coaches”

Don’t get me wrong, coaches have their place in places like sports and business. However, working with a qualified mental health professional is going to be the safest and most appropriate way to access care. 

Risks of Unqualified Advice:

• Misdiagnosis or inappropriate guidance can worsen mental health conditions.

• Unregulated coaching may rely on anecdotal advice or unproven methods that lack scientific backing.

• Vulnerable individuals may be exploited financially or emotionally by untrained practitioners.

Mental Health Care is still Health Care

• Mental health professionals (e.g., social workers, psychologists, counsellors) go to school, complete hundreds of placement hours, and are accountable to a professional body to maintain safe care for the public.

• Mental health professionals use evidence-based practice such as Cognitive -Behavioral Therapy (CBT), mindfulness, or trauma-focused therapies, tailored to individual needs.

• Mental health professionals can help if you’re experiencing anxiety, depression, trauma, sleep issues, or struggling with ADHD, self-harm, or other mental health challenges.

• They can help to guide you through relational difficulties or life transitions and to explore deeper emotional patterns or past experiences affecting your present.

• Coaching services provided by mental health professionals can have their benefits, particularly if you need support in behaviour activation, performing tasks, or body-doubling for ADHD’ers. 

  
  

  

  
  

By choosing a licensed mental health professional, you ensure you’re receiving reliable, compassionate, and tailored care grounded in expertise and evidence. Ready to work with a new therapist? I’m taking new clients for the new year and offering a Free Consultation to ensure we’re the right fit for each other! 

Go On, Enjoy The New Year!

The new year brings a lot of pressure to set goals, leaving us to start strong in January but dwindle as the year goes on. So, let’s take the slow and mindful approach to the new year, hopefully with some compassion and kindness towards yourself, and set goals that work for you!