How to Restart 2025 with the Lunar New Year

• Purpose Of Lunar New Year Reset [00:02:11] 
• Traditional Cleaning Ritual 
• Cultural Food Traditions [00:08:23] 
• Reset and Become more Flexible [00:09:49] 
• 2025 Year Of The Snake Colors [00:10:32]
• Winter Energy Alignment [00:14:07]

QUOTES: 

“One of my favorite things as an adult is really stepping into and owning traditions… to really support myself in every way to start every year fresh and new.”

“I really enjoy January as a time to do that. And then the Lunar New Year obviously shifts every year, so there’s just always a different amount of time. But there’s generally typically enough space to really do that physical reset.”

“One of the things I love about Chinese New Year and the theme of Chinese New Year is it’s always the same… it’s always about wealth, prosperity, and abundance for everybody and to clear out the things that didn’t allow that to happen.”

“You can reset at any time. You can do it in any way. And I love that there are traditions and times of year that really naturally encourage that.”

“Because a lunar New Year is based on the moon and the lunar cycle… I always feel like there’s a really good energy behind this reset, right? It’s actually cycling and timing in with nature.”

NICOLE

Welcome to the School of Self-Worth, a podcast for ambitious women who know they are worthy of an astoundingly great life. Join us weekly as we get on the right side of your intuition, redefine success, and reclaim your self-worth.

I’m your host, Nicole Tsong, an award-winning journalist who left it all behind to become a best-selling author of three books and a work-life balance expert. I help ambitious women unlock their intuition and step into a life of fulfillment and radical joy. Every week, I bring you diverse and meaningful conversations with successful women from all walks of life who share insights about what it takes to be safe, joyful, and authentic every day. Every episode is thoughtfully designed to leave you feeling empowered, with tangible tips and advice that will lead you to your next breakthrough.

Hello, friends! Welcome back to the School of Self-Worth. I’m your host, Nicole Tsong. Today, I have a very special episode for you to talk about one of my favorite times of the year—celebrating the Lunar New Year. In particular, I really want to talk about how to leverage this new year opportunity to give yourself a reset and a restart for 2025.

I have so much goodness in today’s episode, including tips on using questions and timing to give yourself that jumpstart you may not have had at the actual New Year. If you’re a high-achieving Asian American corporate woman and want to know the exact step-by-step to restart yourself for a powerful and purposeful 2025, DM me “Snake” at Nicole Tsong on Instagram, and I’ve got something special for you.

Okay, friends, let’s jump into this super fun episode!

Hi, everybody! Welcome back. I’m so happy to talk to you about this really fun topic. It’s actually one of my favorite things to share every year because I know for myself that when the end of the year happens, there’s just so much intensity and energy heading into Christmas. Then, you get like one week, and all of a sudden, it’s the new year. You’re expected to have cleaned up your entire year and have all this information about how you did in the previous year, and you’re ready for the new one.

But honestly, I never feel totally ready for the new year. And so, one of my favorite things as an adult is stepping into and owning traditions. For me, growing up with Chinese New Year and Lunar New Year, it really supports me in every way to start every year fresh and new.

I’m going to talk a bit about my experience with this holiday growing up and then share with you ways that you can use this holiday to your advantage and support yourself with it.

When I was a kid, I grew up in the Chicago area, and my mom didn’t really do a ton for Lunar New Year. I do a lot more now than I did when I was growing up, but we’d almost always eat dumplings, which represent wealth and prosperity, or we’d do hot pot on New Year. My mom didn’t talk about it much, but we always knew what it was. Chinese restaurants would have placemats with the different zodiac years, and I’d learn all about which animal year it was—dragon, tiger, snake, those kinds of things. So, I had some basic education around it.

I also went to Chinese school until middle school, and we always had a Chinese New Year party. I remember those parties being in a church basement with lots of potluck food, and an elder would always give us a red envelope. Red envelopes, right? These are given to kids with money inside, and I’d always be excited to see how much I’d get. It was usually a quarter or fifty cents, but it was still exciting!

Whenever my relatives would visit, they’d give us red envelopes too. These envelopes are really meant to pass on good luck and fortune to kids. So, I grew up with that tradition, and I went to Chinese school. We probably learned about Lunar New Year, though I honestly don’t remember much about it from school. As an adult, I just became more curious about it.

I lived in China for a year, and that was a really eye-opening experience during the Lunar New Year. It’s such a massive holiday there—basically the equivalent of Christmas in the United States, in terms of the energy and time people take off. People take anywhere from three to four weeks off. I was teaching English, and our university gave us four weeks off, so my friends and I would travel around China, and it was just wild to see all the celebrations.

The firecrackers go off to scare off evil spirits at midnight on New Year’s Eve and then continue for weeks—like three weeks straight of firecrackers. I remember backpacking through small towns, and the firecrackers just never stopped. I gained a much deeper understanding and appreciation for how big of a deal this holiday is.

I tried to participate in the traditions, like eating hot pot, but I didn’t fully understand them. As I got older, I became more curious. When I was younger, I tended not to talk much about my cultural heritage, especially at school, where it was predominantly white and black, and there weren’t many Asian kids. I didn’t really want to be associated with the kids from Chinese school—I wanted to be cooler and fit in with the mainstream.

But as an adult, I’ve embraced the Lunar New Year traditions much more. For example, one of the key traditions is the “house purge.” For the month leading up to Lunar New Year, you clean your house from top to bottom. This isn’t just tidying up; it’s about getting rid of bad luck, old energy, and anything that’s holding you back. I’m not necessarily the best at this, but I try to keep it in mind.

This year, my husband has really taken charge of the purge. He’s been systematically going through every room in our house—taking everything out of drawers, cleaning, and reorganizing things in ways that work better for us. I feel like this year we really did a good job of it.

If you’re listening to this podcast and have a week before the Lunar New Year, I encourage you to consider doing a physical reset in your home. It’s a powerful way to clear the space and start fresh.

There are other traditions, like eating food for longevity—noodles, dumplings, or having hot pot—and surrounding yourself with community, as family is a huge part of this holiday. My husband and I don’t have family here in Seattle, so we usually invite friends over to embrace the traditions of Lunar New Year.

One of my favorites is cooking. I picked up a book this year on how to prepare different traditional foods for Chinese New Year. My mom has told me stories of her mother preparing for days to make a big feast for New Year’s Eve. While my mom didn’t do that much growing up, I’ve come to love these traditions as an adult.

But the most important tradition for me is using this time to reset for the new year. I try to get things in order before the new year starts, but I can never manage a full house purge between December 25th and January 1st. That’s just a hectic time, and like most of us, I’m exhausted from holiday preparations. But I really love that the Lunar New Year gives me a second chance to do that reset.

It’s also a reminder that we can reset ourselves at any time. You don’t have to wait for January 1st or any specific date. Every day is an opportunity for a fresh start. I love that the Lunar New Year is a tradition that naturally supports that reset.

This year is the Year of the Snake, and I encourage you to embrace the energy of the snake—its symbolism of transformation and shedding old skin to make way for something new. Wear red or yellow, bring in the wealth and prosperity, and most importantly, embrace the abundance that’s available to you.

If 2025 has felt overwhelming or off to a rough start, know that the Lunar New Year is a perfect opportunity to step into the energy of a fresh start. It’s a moment to reflect, reset, and choose the direction you want to go.

If this tradition resonates with you and you want to explore how to work through this reset, DM me “Snake” on Instagram at @NicoleTsong. Let’s chat about how to do this for you and step into 2025 with a new sense of purpose and possibility.

Happy New Year, everyone! Xin Nian Kuai Le! I’m so excited to be here with you today. Thank you for listening, and I’ll see you in the new year.

Thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode. Before you go, don’t forget, if you’re a high-achieving woman who wants to uncover your biggest blind spots and make fast, intuitive decisions, I’ve got a 72-second assessment for you. DM me “quiz” at @NicoleTsong on Instagram.

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Until next time, I’m Nicole Tsong, and this is the School of Self-Worth.