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Mindful New Year: Self-Care Tips for 2025 to Start with Intention & Rest

Regina Stafford

Hi Friends! Happy Safe, Slow, and Peaceful New Year to you All.


Hope 2025 has started off well for you.


Considering what the past year has held for all of us, I wanted to offer you a softer way of entering this new year than how we’ve previously been encouraged to.


In past years we’ve been encouraged to hit the ground running and to get started on your goals immediately. That may have been fine for previous time frames and may still be for some people, but if you’re anything like me, you’re still lacing up your sneakers.


Busy, demanding, stressful seasons of time, deplete our reserves of energy, physical capacity, and emotional and mental strength. This is a fact. Where there’s been a depletion without a restoration of stores, you go into overdrive. Overdrive is the place where the breakdown starts to happen. It usually begins with signs like irritability, less patience, low tolerance, and anger. If we don’t listen to those signals, we’ll get others like fatigue, feeling run down, lack of energy, colds, and other slight ailments. Our body and minds care for us so much that if we don’t get those messages, then more serious ones can occur to get your attention, effecting your heart, your gut, back pain, etc.


We can excuse all of these as just part of life or we can slow down and take a listen for something deeper that might be happening. Our body may be trying to tell us something.  


I’d like to suggest taking a different approach, a little slower pace out of the gate this year. We can begin to replenish, just by moving a little slower into our days.  (Especially after coming right out of the holiday season.) You can begin by not pushing yourself so hard and by not rushing. Rushing is extremely stressful. Make a few changes to your sleep habits and got to bed a bit earlier for some extra rest.  Learn to enjoy some quiet time by not being constantly stimulated with entertainment from screens and music and TV. Our brains need peace and rest too, this will open new space, bandwidth, for mental clarity. The lack of stimulation will also give also you’re your emotions a chance to settle down, a breather so that you have room for the people and tasks in your life.


Constant stimulation, good or bad taxes our system. Without giving it a little respite, it can become a state in which we function from. We were not designed to live from this place.  It may feel good at first and you can get a lot accomplished from this state for a time, but it comes at a cost if we don’t readjust ourselves. We’ve been designed to live from a place of rest, of peace and confidence. Anything less is an anxious stance. Anxious to get things done, to get ahead, to achieve, to look good to others, to live the dream. All good things but they don’t need to harm you to achieve them. Since our society isn’t made for this slower pace, we need to adjust ourselves for our own well-being.


So, here’s your New Year invitation to slow things down. To enter 2025 with intention, with purpose, and with some mindfulness over your own self-care.  It’s not just what you can produce that’s important. You matter! Give yourself permission to enjoy some quiet time, meditation and prayer, a bit of rest, a little walk, quiet and do something for pure enjoyment. I think you will benefit from this so much that it may just become your new way of living. Wouldn’t that be a sweet accomplishment.



Upcoming Event

Marriage Builders

February 1 – May 3, 2025


Tom and Regina Stafford are offering their Marriage Builders class Saturday’s from 11AM-1PM, starting on Febuary 1st and runs bi-weekly for 7 classes until May 3rd! They have been teaching this course for over 30 years and have adjusted their curriculum to best address modern day challenges in Christian marriages. While this class is happening at the BK location, this is open to all couples in ZION Staten Island & ZION Brooklyn.

To learn more about the class, click here


Register by Jan 27



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