You can listen to the full podcast episode here: Listen to Episode 06
So it's the beginning of December and our feeds are probably all getting filled with all of the ways we can accomplish all of our New Year's goals right now. Ways that we can look excellent for the holiday gatherings right now with only a few weeks to spare, and the entire energy of everything that I've been taking in has been about accomplishing more and ending the year strong and feeling like we're making up for all of the lost time that somehow we feel we didn't have to accomplish outside goals and make sure that we hit the new year feeling great about ourselves or being ahead of everyone else because we've already started on our New Year's goals.
And I'm irritated with it because it feels so false and frustrating and yet...
I'm human too, and I do get sucked into these things and I want to believe that it's possible for me to accomplish more and to be this superhuman person that somehow we're being sold that we all can be. But that I don't think anyone actually is. I think it's all just marketing.
And I want to call that out because I don't want you to get caught in it and I don't want you to feel bad because it's not a fun place to be.
There is a myth of the New Year's Sprint that we've bought into, I mean, I have my whole life - feeling like this is the time of year where I'm supposed to be getting it together and I should be planning out every goal that I'm going to have for this upcoming year.
And I'm starting to think already that I'm behind everyone else before we've even gotten there.
I also think that we're taught that it's natural and normal and desirable to have lofty goals or to be constantly bettering ourselves and that if we're not doing that, that somehow we're lazy or we're bad or we're not comparing well to everybody else and that we should feel bad about that.
It makes us feel bad, right? Then we're taking it in subconsciously just before we get together with everyone in our lives. And I want you to think about it because I think this is brilliant marketing by everybody to say,
"Now is the time that you should be comparing yourself to everyone," and they know that you're about to spend time with everyone in your life that is related to you, important to you, your friendships and all of that.
It's the end of the semester if you're going to school, like you're surrounded by everyone. So it naturally places you in a situation where you're going to look around and go, "Oh, everybody else is doing better than I am and I need to work harder."
And we do see everyone else starting to buy into this too, and they're working harder so then we work harder.
And it makes us very vulnerable to deciding that we're going to go out and buy more stuff and do the things that are being sold to us in these vulnerable moments. And we're doing it because we want to feel like we're worthy and that we belong and that we're gonna show everyone that we're doing better than them too.
How exhausting is that? So let's break it down and talk about how this might have come to be and what might be better in a more sustainable and effective way to move towards the new year and to move into actually having a year where you accomplish more and you feel great about yourself rather than already starting out feeling behind, which is where I think most of us feel right now is like,
We either feel like we're gathering our supplies and we're gonna do amazing things in a few weeks, but we also, we know reality.
It's gonna be, you know, New Year's Eve, it's cold, it's dark. There's a lot of parties, we're tired. We're not gonna be accomplishing lofty goals. So few of us have the energy for that, so let's get real.
What could be better for us might be recognizing that this season, this month leading into the new year, could actually serve you really well if you're looking at it as a way to gather energy rather than spending your energy, which is what the sprinting towards goals has you do.
If you instead go, "Oh, right, the season says this is a time of gathering and of rest, so this is about gathering my ideas, figuring out what supplies I might need to accomplish my goals, and maybe even figuring out what my goal might even be.
That is so much more doable and sustainable and kinder to your body and your nervous system right now, in this growing darkness, in the cold, in this season where, like let's face it, we've got parties and gatherings and things and New Year's Eve stuff.
There's a lot going on that we have to put our energy into, but we have right now the lowest amount of energy that we're gonna have all year. Like we're going into, I'd say, around January, February is for me anyway, like my lowest energy points and that's when it starts rising again is February, March.
So we're circling a drain energetically right now and thinking that we should be spending more of that precious energy trying to accomplish and get ahead of everyone else. Really just serves to deplete us even more.
And makes it more likely that whatever thing we're trying to strive for in January is more likely to fail.
What I see happening in the world with my friends, with my clients, with myself is that we are now trying to figure out all of the ways that we can succeed better next year than we did this year.
So there's this sense of needing to compare and that we need to do better year over year or somehow we failed or that's very upsetting to us. What I would like to offer instead is to say,
What if we could look at who we are? Who we are as people and what we would like to experience and feel more of as a more sustainable place to draw energy from and also an easier way to reach that goal.
So if I am going to describe myself for you, I would say, well, I want to feel...
that just like last week, I want to feel more peaceful right now. And I would also like to be someone who's continually learning and enjoying creativity.
That's always been something that's a part of my life. I love making things and learning new things. And that's going to be who I am probably forever. So if I look at that as an aspect of myself, that I can pretty reliably draw on, that's something that I can say, great, how can I nurture or use that aspect of myself to accomplish some goals in the coming year?
So if you look at your own personality, your own desires, your own habits, and go, "What is the thing about me that I'm probably always going to do? Am I always full of humor? Do I always find the joy in things? Am I always looking to connect people?"
Or am I always wanting to move my body and I enjoy sharing that with people? Find the things that you are already really true to, that you find easy, that are things that sustain you and think, okay, how can I use that as this skill that I have or this capacity that I naturally contain that I could nurture and maybe give more energy to this season?
Rather than demanding something of it. So for instance, if you're wanting to be more creative and I'm thinking about like maybe I want to do some paintings next year and that sounds really great.
Rather than thinking, "Okay, how can I hit the new year running and be ready to create 25 paintings next year?" Like, that feels exhausting to me this week.
But if instead I said, "How can I nurture my capacity for creativity? How can I inspire myself right now?"
So that I want to get up and do a drawing and a painting next year and make it more likely for myself to show up and do that...
That becomes a much more interesting and an easy to accomplish goal.
It inspires some curiosity with me that asks me an interesting question that my brain wants to answer. So it's like, "Ooh, where can I gather inspiring goodies? What things make me feel like I want to draw or paint?"
What experiences make me think of ideas that I want to do? So that gets my brain going and that feels so nourishing. And even as I'm talking about it, you can hear how my energy lifted up doing that.
That's what I would recommend anyone do. When thinking about the new year and thinking about goals and setting all of these intentions, the thing that's going to give you the most energy and the most likelihood of accomplishing something right now is not setting yourself a hard and fast goal.
It's not following the traditional advice that everybody else is selling right now, which is sit down and hammer out your goals and come up with the five things you're going to accomplish and how you're going to measure it next year and how will you gauge your success and blah, blah, blah.
That... I mean, it works for some people. Obviously it does, or it wouldn't still be getting spouted out there.
But for the vast majority of us, I think that it's too early in the year for that kind of measurement and tracking. I think that all of that definitely serves a purpose, but I think that tackling it in January is wrong.
I think that's much more of something that you want to set yourself up for in the spring and the summer when you naturally have a lot of energy and you're tired of not doing stuff and you feel an actual need to get things done. That's the time to start measuring and make sure that you're taking the right actions.
But right now in the winter, it's the time when we should be gathering resources and nourishing our capacity to do stuff and feeding ourselves so that we have the energy to do it later. So that means feeding our mind so that we have the thoughts that we want to have. It means feeding our emotions and our soul so that we're nourished and we have creativity and imagination and wonder about it, which helps feed all of that desire. And you also want to be able to nourish your body and give yourself enough energy to be able to do all this stuff.
So if you think that you're looking at the new year and going, OK, I want to tackle weightlifting and I need to gain muscle and lose fat. And I want to measure all this. This is my goal for the year. And I want to be a size five or size six by X, Y, or Z date.
I'll say that's all well and good, but perhaps the way that you're going to get there with the most ease and the most likelihood of getting there is asking what do you need to be able to do that?
And not even to ask like, what do you need in terms of equipment and all of the things that you might want to buy that will help you to accomplish that.
Maybe what you actually want to be doing is looking at what are activities that you enjoy doing that might naturally result in you doing the activities that you're saying you want to do next time.
If you want to be working out and doing weightlifting in January, February, March, what will help you be able to do that? Do you need to start building into your routine just the time to be able to have that weightlifting session, when do you think that's going to be?
So you can start planning that now, and the planning aspect is actually something that we have a lot of capability of doing in these quieter months. I think that our capacity for dreaming is very high in the winter months and I think that's a natural rhythm as human beings that we have and I like to nurture it.
And I think this is a time for storytelling and maybe telling yourself a great story about what's going to change in your life as you take on these new habits. All of that feels extremely supportive and it's not energetically depleting.
So I guess that's what I'm getting at right now is if you're feeling depleted by your goals and you feel like you have to work really hard and sprint towards them, and make sure that you accomplish faster than everyone else in your life... Maybe that's not the approach that's going to feel that great for you this year.
And perhaps instead you could set yourself up for a lot more success by feeding yourself the ideas and the excitement and the nourishment that allows you to accomplish later on. I wonder if we could all start like a Slow Start Checklist for the new year rather than the Quick Start Checklist that everyone else would want to say.
Because it is a slower season. So what would a slow start look like?
And how fun and delicious does it feel, like so counterculture to just say, "I'm gonna do a Slow Start New Year."
I don't want to launch right into all of my goals. I want to have a slow start, so the engine's gonna just like slowly get stoked as we move into January.
And then I want to see that fire starting to burn by the end of January. And then in February, I'll actually get off my butt and start doing these things because that'll feel natural and like I'm ready to do it.
Let's do that. Let's make a Slow Start Checklist for our new year.
You would ask yourself right now, what do I need less of? So the first part of setting your slow start goals is to figure out what are the things that I should get rid of and not worry about or not do or spend as much time on to clear the space so that it's possible to do this new thing that I want to do.
And again, remember that you have right now several weeks until January that you can just enjoy fantasizing about it and come up with a story in your head or an idea of your timeline and wouldn't it be nice if?
And if I was going to do x, y, or z, it means that I just don't have time to put up with this other stuff that's going on. And I would like to give that up right now.
And to feel like, wow, just saying no to something, which seems like, oh my God, are we allowed to do it? Yes, yes you are.
If you were to do that, and no, not only did it free up some time now for you to rest and to dream and to recalibrate and recuperate some energy, but it also is preemptively clearing space for you to create something even more exciting later.
That's like two awesome things. And I think that's the natural outcome of it.
If you're able to slow down right now, you're able to receive the energy that you have gathered all year long, you're able to allow yourself to recuperate and have the energy in a few weeks in a month and a year to do amazing things.
There's so much opportunity for quiet and reflection in this month of December, but most of it gets drowned out because we have a background noise of everything that's going on and we've just gotten used to it.
I can't remember a time in my life where you're not constantly hearing all of the Christmas songs and hearing about all of the sales and all of the things that we need to do and ways to prepare yourself for the gatherings and, you know, even ways to mitigate the stress of the holidays, but it has actually become background noise because we hear it constantly all the time.
And we're not really taking it in anymore. It's just one more thing to do. So honestly, it just feels like another push to run.
To run towards the holidays to gather everything that everyone else is doing to compare well against everyone else.
But what if instead you decided rather than sprinting towards the new year and changing everything about myself and changing my circumstances? Because I think that is what the sell is of a new year's resolution is to decide that there was something subpar about our lives that we need to do better somehow.
But what if we flipped that narrative and decided, well, what am I really happy about with who I am and with what I do and what do I want to maximize and really enjoy and appreciate?
And what if the holidays this season I decided was more about gathering with people to appreciate who I actually am and who they really are rather than
trying to support each other in becoming different.
I mean, that's an important thing too, right? Like you do want to be surrounded by people who support you and want you to better yourself and become a better person.
But rather than feeling like there's this comparisonitis and trying to prove that we're doing well and that things are continually improving and getting better to just say, you know, things are as they are and here I am as I am.
And I just want to enjoy everybody else being here as they are too. And just actually be present for that moment.
What would your holiday maybe look like if you're gathering with everybody in these next few weeks just as the person that you are and maybe even admitting that you're kind of tired and you don't want to put in crazy amounts of effort?
What would a minimal effort holiday look like? I don't know, that seems so rebellious and delightful to me to be like, "Oh, a minimal effort holiday."
And I find the minimal effort ones tend to be the most delightful ones where I'm not trying to impress anyone, but I'm just really excited for them to come in and to participate in holiday traditions, just gathering and watching silly movies, having the cup of cocoa, even like opening stockings and things like that with family and friends, but not...
I don't know, not feeling like it needed to go a certain way. I don't know how many of us have expectations about how it's supposed to go or what we want to have happen.
I don't know how much of that harkens from earlier in life and feeling like I had a lot to prove in my 20s and 30s and now I just don't as much and I just want to enjoy things for what they are and be with people.
I think the things that I've recognized now that I love the most is honestly just like making rolls and bread and cocoa and hanging out with people.
Eating, you know, boring-ish stuff, but being with them and not feeling in a rush and feeling like nobody has anywhere that we have to be.
I guess that's part of it too, is just being like, "Hey, everyone can be here, and if everyone's gonna be here for a day or two, and we're not in a rush to arrive and do everything and then leave,"
There's space to relax and enjoy and to take a break and I know I've talked about this in prior episodes.
My particular nervous system capacity to deal with that much input of things happening and noises and textures and sounds and smells, I like it to be a little bit more calm. So if there's no big rush on everything, I feel a lot more permission to just take a break and be like, "Oh, hey, I'm just going to like step away from everyone for a while." And I don't feel bad about it.
So now is a good time to ask yourself, what would a low-pressure kind of month be?
What would a super slow start be like? Not only for the New Year, but for the holiday as well, that would allow you to take things as slow and as easy as you need to make it as enjoyable as possible for everybody with the most amount of harmony, I guess, and the least amount of work and difficulty.
I want that for all of us, because I think we all deserve it. It's been a really long year.
So if this month is your time of preparation, let's decide what we're preparing for. I think that's a great question this week. So what are you preparing for?
What is the feeling that you'd most love to experience going into the new year? Like if next year was the year of blank?
What would you fill it with, and how would that feel, and what might it look like?
And allow yourself time to really dream and feel into that.
To wonder about what that feeling might be and how you might cultivate it and all of the different ways that it's possible that it could happen.
Because rather than latching onto the next big idea that tells you that it will help you feel X, Y, or Z way, if you approach it from the opposite angle and you already know how you want to feel, you're going to have lots of answers about ways that you could feel that way and things that you already know help you feel that way. And maybe that's a great place.
Just start looking at what you want your next year to look like and what some of those activities might be.
And from there you can go, "Okay, great. Well, if I know how I want to feel, let's figure out how I can maximize opportunities for that and look at what I might be willing or ready to let go of that might be in the way of feeling that." Mm, that is a wonderful thing.
So I hope for you that the week goes spectacularly well, but that it has lots of space in there for you to think about what you enjoy and what you personally desire out of life.
And I also wish for you to notice all of the marketing coming at you, telling you that it's not enough.
And now that you've heard me say it, you're gonna have the thought pop up like, "Oh hey, there's someone trying to sell me something again."
Do I really want this or is it just making me feel like I'm not enough or there isn't enough?
And if you notice it, you now have yourself armed against it and you're able to go, "Oh, hey, I actually, I am fine. I'm enough."
And I don't need to change for anybody else or to prove anything. I only do that if I want to. Mm, yes.
Have a wonderful week, my friends. And I look forward to seeing you next time, where we'll talk a little bit more about using this month as the season of calm and pause that it can and could be for all of us so that we all have a really pleasant holiday and transition into the new year.
All right, I'll see you there.
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