New Year’s Playlist

An approaching new year is a great time to stop and reassess your life’s journey, evaluate your relationships, create new goals, etc. Many people scoff at New Year’s resolutions, but I love the idea of a symbolic blank slate. This time of year reminds me to let go of any guilt or stress that doesn’t serve me. It also reminds me to focus on relationships I want to develop or goals I’d like to achieve. Even if I don’t accomplish everything on my list in 365 days, it is so helpful to create an “ideal” roadmap that I can reference throughout the year and track my progress.

This year, I also created a musical soundtrack to my New Year’s roadmap. Here’s a few songs I matched to some of my goals for the year. The brain responds to music in such powerful ways – here’s hoping my soundtrack will help me stay motivated! What’s on your New Year’s Playlist?

Feel Good Inc – Gorillaz
I’m not so interested in losing weight this year as I am about feeling good in my skin. I want to shift my focus from insecurities about what my body looks like on the outside to being mindful about the nutrients I put inside my body and taking care of my physical and mental well-being.

Fix You – Coldplay
One of my goals for the year is reducing the amount of waste I produce and increasing the amount of love and compassion I show toward others. I consider waste to be both physical (trash) and spiritual (negativity) – both are threats to life as we know it. Sometimes it can be a little depressing to witness all the ways our world is broken, but I very much believe that one person making tiny changes can result in huge global improvements.

Mint Condition – Caroline Spence
One of my biggest goals for the year is starting my own family. This song perfectly captures the idea of creating a partnership that will last a lifetime. I expect that parenthood will be one of the most challenging aspects of my life, so I’d really like to make sure I have a teammate who will commit to that challenge with me.

Gimme Something Good – Ryan Adams
My band The Lovebirds is such a huge part of my identity, it gets a separate (very long) list of goals. The music business is so challenging; sometimes we get lost in our struggle to make it to some imaginary musical mountaintop, and we forget to stop and enjoy the fruits of our labor. My main goal is to make a living out of my life’s passion by continuing to share music with more and more people. But I also want to remain grateful for all the good I’ve already experienced because of music.