Three ways to become calmer this New Year that you haven’t tried (yet)

Plans to sign up for a marathon or start a rigid exercise regime may be typical January fare. But what if, instead, you committed to something significantly more low-key to help you feel good in 2026?

Making a goal out of becoming calmer may not seem grand enough for this time of year – but it’s one that comes with outsized health benefits. A stack of evidence points to the worrying impact of stress on our well-being, with links to everything from heart health to depression, while techniques that bring you to a calmer state have been found to increase self-reported happiness levels, improve your ability to regulate your emotions and boost sleep quality.

This is partly because periods of calm are essential to countering the “allostatic load”, says Sula Windgassen, health psychologist and author of the upcoming book It’s All in Your Body. “This is the wear and tear on the body [as a result of chronic stress] that means key regulatory systems – like the metabolic, neuroendocrine, cardiovascular and immune systems – can become overtaxed, and gradually lead to illness.”

Of course, when it comes to de-stressing, you have probably heard the standard-issue advice, like exercising and practising deep breathing, a million times before. And while the science undoubtedly supports these approaches, it has also shed light on other techniques – ones that go beyond just digital “detoxes” and time in nature – that will help you to find a sense of calm this New Year.

Hone your sense of control

There is lots of evidence showing that feeling more in control of stressors can help us resolve them. In one piece of research, for instance, participants filled out daily questionnaires about stressful situations they had encountered. The degree to which people felt in control of these situations was linked with a higher likelihood of resolving the stress.

“It’s not that the stressor disappears, but that people are better able to do something about it. They can solve the problem, let it go or bring it to a close,” says David M. Almeida at Pennsylvania State University, who was part of the research team.

Getting there, he says, is the work of small changes. “Feeling in control doesn’t mean controlling everything. It means recognising what you can influence in a stressful situation.” This could look like deciding how to respond, choosing when to engage or finding a way to bring the scenario to a close.

How easy you find this seems to hinge, at least partly, on your age. “Long-term studies show that while people may feel less control over things like work demands or household problems as they age, they continue to feel just as much control when it comes to handling conflicts or tensions with other people,” says Almeida. “In other words, people get better at managing what really counts.”

Tune into compassion

Being kinder to ourselves can guard against the negative effects of stress on our mental health, as a pile of evidence shows. Take one 2024 study in which researchers assessed people’s self-compassion levels by asking them to grade the extent to which they identified with statements like “I try to be understanding and patient towards those aspects of my personality I don’t like”, “I try to see my failings as part of the human condition” and “I try to take a balanced view of the situation”.

People’s coping mechanisms were then examined, again by grading the extent to which they identified with positive techniques, like “I’ve been concentrating my efforts on doing something about the situation I’m in”, or negative ones, like “I’ve been refusing to believe that it has happened”. The researchers found that higher levels of self-compassion predicted healthier coping mechanisms, resulting in higher psychological well-being and lower levels of anxiety, depression and stress over the six-week trial period.

Such findings are in tune with previous research indicating that self-compassion can act as a buffer against stress’s sharper edges. Psychologist Kristin Neff pioneered the academic study of self-compassion in the early 2000s and, according to her, the practice entails three key elements: self-kindness – being kind and understanding to yourself when experiencing pain or failure; common humanity, where you see your experiences as being a normal part of the larger human experience, rather than seeing them as isolating; and mindfulness, in which you don’t over-identify with painful thoughts and feelings.

Part of the reason why self-compassion works is that it reduces self-criticism and rumination, says William Van Gordon, chartered psychologist and associate professor of contemplative psychology at the University of Derby, UK. He warns, though, that it should be used moderately, lest it tip into self-obsession, which research shows can lead to the very thing you are trying to avoid: stress.

A good approach to guard against this is to practise compassion for others, as well as yourself, he says. Van Gordon recommends trying active listening – when someone is sharing a difficulty with you, give them your full attention, maintaining eye contact, putting away your phone and acknowledging what they have said (“That sounds really challenging, I’m sorry you’re going through that”). You could also try loving-kindness meditation. Here, you spend 10 to 15 minutes daily sending compassionate wishes to others, using phrases like “may you be happy”, “may you be healthy” and “may you live with ease”.

Switch up self-care

The stress-buffering benefits of self-care practices, from movement to social connection, are well documented. And now, fresh research is suggesting that having multiple self-care strategies in your toolkit is the most effective way to see results. A study published in August looked at how people dealt with stress during the covid-19 pandemic, asking participants to record in diaries how anxious they felt and what kind of stress-reduction strategies they were using.

Using a blend of techniques, like journaling, exercise, social interaction or cognitive reframing – in which you try out alternative ways of looking at a situation, such as considering the benefits of not getting a job promotion, rather than ruminating on what you have lost out on – was found to be the most effective tactic.

“Different combinations of tools worked for different people on different days,” says Ethan Kross, an experimental psychologist at the University of Michigan, who worked on the study. “The people who did best in terms of managing their emotions benefited from having a vast repertoire of healthy emotion-regulation tools.”