This week feels like a new beginning of sorts in the U.S. The winds of change have been blustery so far in 2021, and it's unclear if one major change in Washington is likely to settle them down. Whether you think the change is going to be positive or not, it can be worthwhile to take the time to explore the fresh start in your mind and set an intention moving forward.

Here are a few online meditations with a focus on new beginnings.

The Mindful Movement posted this meditation on Jan. 2, 2017, with a focus on the new year, but it fits in pretty much any time you might have a new change in your life. The emphasis here is on choice. Circumstances around us frequently change, but we can decide for ourselves when it's time for a change in our lives and how to face it.

Guide Sara Raymond asks us to think of what we want our own story to be a year from now, and to hold that idea in our minds. Then, she brings us on a little "trip." For this trip, we pack our old, bad habits — anything we'd like to remove from our lives — into a backpack, and travel outside in our minds. We pass people and events from our past. In this visualization, it's as if these individuals are congratulating us on moving forward, away from our past.

Finally, as we go down the path and into a new phase of life, we remove the backpack from our backs. The idea is to no longer see all the backpack's contents as baggage, rather as necessary stepping stones in getting to where you are right now. We place the backpack in the river and extend loving-kindness to it as it flows away.

"Everything happens for a reason, and you are exactly where you need to be," Raymond says.

Mark Nepo's short meditation can be done for new beginnings big or small. Any time you're standing at a precipice, you need to ask yourself what you're carrying with you. He tells a story of a friend who had returned from the hardware store, prepared to paint his family room. Carrying too much (paint, brushes, cloth) and refusing to put anything down, he spilled everything as he tried to open the door, red paint going everywhere.

Nepo says we must pause in moments like these and think about the things we are carrying with us. Like the backpack in the Mindful Movement visualization, we might need to say goodbye to old things in order to welcome new experiences. His method:

• Imagine the change that's taking place, the new threshold you're crossing.
• Breathe. Assess your current situation. Ask yourself what you're carrying with you.
• Slow your breathing and with each exhalation, put down everything that came up in the previous step, all that you're carrying that might not be necessary.
• Keep breathing and "open the door."

davidji's meditation on new beginnings emphasizes that every moment is really a new beginning. If we are to embrace change when it feels intense and inescapable, we must learn how to embrace it at the beginning and end of every breath. We can come to "understand that change is like breath," he says. "It's not part of the process, it is the process." Our very moment-to-moment lives exist in periods of incredible change, and if we approach life this way, we'll be better able to manage in times when we feel we're crossing over a great threshold.

Of course, this is difficult to wrap our minds around. We simply can't adjust to the recognition that every moment is a new beginning. We crave constancy and stability. davidji argues in his four-minute video that this is pretty much the entire game. Life is full of change, and yet our minds constantly struggle to avoid it. Truly accepting and understanding that every breath is a great new beginning is to find freedom from the suffering that comes with resisting change.

Finally, here's a meditation on setting intentions for new beginnings from Katie Krimitsos at the Women's Meditation Network. (For what it's worth, I think this session can be valuable for everyone. Jump forward a few minutes in the audio to skip the ads.) The goal in this meditation is to calm the mind and see oneself as a blank canvas.

We can't actually eliminate the impact of everything that's happened to us in our lives. But, we can recognize that the blockages in our mind are just that — in our mind. In this visualization exercise, Krimitsos asks us to imagine the mind as a blank, empty room. When we open the door, we visualize what it is we want to invite in for our journey ahead. These words, concepts, or images can be our intentions for the days and weeks ahead. Or, they can be as simple as the feeling we want to get out of a few minutes of meditation. After all, things will be rapidly changing the moment we open our eyes, and we'll be confronted with an endless number of new beginnings.