Easing into 2020: Creating Space for the New
Hey beauties!
I was going to write a post all about the coming decade for humanity - and your role in it. (Yeah, I was going to start on that light note! ;))
But I’m pushing that theme ahead and instead kicking off with a couple of questions for you:
As we embark on 2020, do you feel full of pep and vigour, ready to dive into the year?
Is your inner landscape like a fresh clean slate: you’re poised and eager for change?
If you’re saying, ‘Yes! Yes! That’s me!’ I send the angels singing on high to bless your aspirations and send out a whoop as you step into your year.
However, feel free to stop reading: this post isn’t for you.
Onwards with your energetic bad self and I can’t wait to see what you create in 2020! :)
Alternately, if you’re tired, a bit bedraggled, or downright staggering - even if your holidays were sweet - then this post IS for you.
Is your home trailing with remnants from the holidays or feeling cluttered?
Are you discouraged about aspects of your life that feel far from an ideal state or primed for change?
Maybe you’re feeling the weight of scientists chanting in unison about planetary crisis or anxiety about strange weather patterns. (In our parts, we hit yet another warm temperature record – no sledding yet and, as I’m writing, it feels like spring rather than the deep of winter…. and my heart is feeling Australia with its fires and Indonesia with its flooding).
Perhaps you’re experiencing a bit of all of the above scrambled together such that you’re not feeling all good-cheer-and-bring-on-the-New-Year-thank-you-very-much.
If you find that Big Picture awareness is puncturing your sense of purpose or dimming your enthusiasm (“Who cares if I get in shape or create the business of my dreams? Natural systems are tipping into chaos and so many people are suffering: how meaningless or arrogant to focus on my personal wellbeing” etc…), then I hope to speak to you in my next post (with cause for optimism, to boot).
But today I’m writing a love letter to those of you feeling some level of fatigue or resistance to orienting towards the new – given that the dominant culture prescribes this to be a time for forward momentum and launching into goal-achievement.
(I’m picturing the starting line of a race and some people bolting out with like shots and feeling empathy for those of us standing there a little slumped or who haven’t even managed to get our running gear on, muttering to ourselves, ‘are you kidding me? I’m not feeling this!’)
I want you to consider that there may be wisdom in your resistance to push yourself forward into change right this very moment.
Full disclosure: I’m writing this because I normally love the energy of leaping into the new year. But recently, when I carved out a day to vision for 2020, I found that I wasn’t truly in the mood for it.
So, I honored myself and didn’t push on with that plan. I took a surprising different tack, with nourishing results - and wanted to share a few nuggets of insight with you.
I hope the following ideas help you ease your way into 2020 in a way that feels good and honoring.
(I’m also going to write about the power of clearing space to cultivate new possibilities in your life. Yes, I’m going to go a little KonMari on you. Because tidying up IS MAGIC.) ;)
Let’s start with this:
Give Yourself All January to Lay Your 2020 Foundation
Yes, you hereby have a permission slip from me to not need to ‘feel ready’ for a new year.
You do not need to step across a starting line yet.
(A line that I also remind you is an arbitrary social construction, btw!)
Rather, in my books, you’ve got this whole month to lay a solid and wise foundation for your coming year.
Did you shoulders just drop a notch? Did you let yourself exhale a sigh of relief?
(I hope so)!
Because, dang it, if we feel like we’re already ‘behind’ at the start line, that’s disheartening.
So, don’t do that do yourself: don’t tell that discouraging story.
Reframe January, if that feels good to you: let the whole month be your starting line for 2020.
If you need to, let yourself recover from the holidays – hopefully, you relaxed, had some fun social time: perhaps you dropped your routines for a few days or a week or two. But, for many, there’s a way in which the holidays may feel more like exertion than ease, so it makes sense that you may be tired or depleted!
Remember that it takes energy to re-plug into routines, resume your work, catch up on your inbox, rebuild productive momentum, or get bedtimes wrangled back into a semblance of sanity (or maybe that’s just with my night owl kids?!) – and if you experienced grief, loneliness or emotional pain, the holidays may have felt like the furthest thing from a ‘break’.
So, please, go gently with your sweet self in this post-holiday and New Year’s season.
Maybe you still need rest.
Perhaps your holiday time felt relentlessly ‘go-go-go.’ (I know I haven’t yet mastered the art of punctuating all the frivolity and travels with enough down time and space for cleaning up and clearing the decks in between activities).
If you didn’t carve out time for a Year-End-Review process in December, it’s not too late for you: you’ve now got all of January to navigate your transition to a new year. (For the last time, I heartily encourage you to give yourself the gift of a reflective and visionary process - and not tell yourself that you missed the boat. I promise you won’t regret doing a Year End Review!)
Another beautiful thing about giving yourself a whole month to create your foundation for the year ahead is that you build in more time to noodle and integrate than if you tried to rush through that process in a few hours. You can muse a little, scribble some notes, perhaps talk to a coach, friend or mentor about your ideas… and then let your subconscious marinate further on your vision or plans.
Perhaps you’ll have a dream that illumines a new angle on your intentions or have an aha! pop into your mind when you’re in the bath – and you’ll have time to weave that new insight into your intentions, because, hey, you’ve got all January to plant seeds for your year ahead.
I also see this extra time as a gesture of trust in yourself: trust that you’ll honor your intentions, that you’ll make good on your heartfelt longings, that your dreams will bloom in their own right time - that you don’t need to bolt forward out of urgency, social comparison or fear-driven pressure.
You can trust yourself and the unfolding of your own unique and precious life.
(Take another breath and please really invite that sentiment to sink in!)
Handling Resistance to a New Year & Change
Now, maybe you’re in the boat where you feel genuinely inspired to nurture some new habits, kickstart some change, or embrace new directions but there’s simultaneously resistance in you.
Have you ever been at a buffet where you see some dishes you’d love to try, your mouth is watering at the prospects – omg, that looks delicious! - but your stomach is full?
Regardless of authentic desire, you simply don’t have room for more?
Sometimes it’s like that on a psychic, cognitive, physical or emotional level.
In our physical environment, it may be quite obvious that if we want to bring in some new items (and not tip towards the hoarder-end-of-the-spectrum) we’ll need to let go of some old ones.
In our inner lives, sometimes our past experiences similarly haven’t been adequately integrated or released: we may notice that we don’t feel ready to embrace creativity and birth - we’re too full!
So how about you: do you have (inner and outer) space to welcome the new into your life?
If you’re excited for change but the timing doesn’t quite right to start yet, I invite to you look closely at what you can let go of.
Let me dive right into the concept and offer some practical tips for your consideration.
Create Space for the New:
Well, that other day, when I intended to be visioning, you know what I ended up doing instead?
Dusting my shelves. Pulling out the teeniest bits of debris and clearing little piles of (what else can I call it) crap that weren’t serving a purpose of beauty or function. Reading old notes and recycling or filing them away. Setting aside books to pass along and creating an inspired stack of those that I can’t WAIT to connect with in 2020. Peeling sticky notes off my old calendar.
I let my inbox keep to itself. I told my plans for the future they needed to wait for my attention.
It was sheer heaven!
And while I cannot point to the science that absolutely backs this up, I swear to you I have just contributed to the awesome possibilities that are available to emerge in my home and life in 2020. I really believe that space and beauty contribute to nourishing potential and ‘inviting in the new'.’
Letting myself move slowly (in rare silence, no less) and clearing those smallest bits of space around the physical objects in my office was a gift. I felt like I was ‘catching up to myself’ in a way that’s hard to pin down and I certainly loved the results: seeing and feeling care in my room.
Note: I did not attempt to do this in the whole house!
I chose one ‘power spot’ - my office, the one room of my own - and I gave it this loving treatment.
The day was a surrender to what I really longed for: it was like taking a deep exhale (after a fall that, at moments, felt breathless) before asking myself to inhale again.
Instead of letting my mind lead (‘you should get cracking on your visioning, it’s already late December!”) I let my body and instincts guide my day.
Since that day of calm clearing, I have found myself gearing up for the new year with genuine enthusiasm and curiosity, passionately jotting down new notes and questions for myself - and it’s been a reorientation that feels emergent rather than forced.
Here are some ways you might experiment:
Clear space in your mind:
Create some digital-free or silent time
Write: release thoughts and mental energy surging around in your brain
Slow down, meditate (sitting or moving) or get yourself into nature
Clear apps and files that clutter up your computer or phone screen
Cull your email inbox or consider ways to simplify your daily decision-making
Clear space in your heart:
Write a letter (it might be for another, it just as likely need never be sent - the benefit may be for you alone)
Talk aloud to someone kind and compassionate: unburden yourself through expressing the pain, questions or struggles currently alive in your heart
Clear space in your body:
Dance: try 5Rhythms, tunes in your kitchen, or some other movement practice
Go for a run, walk or do whatever kind of physical activity lights you up and helps move energy through your animal body
Clear space in your calendar:
One other benefit of the Year-End-Review process is that it encourages you to be aware of patterns or inertia in your life: to notice the commitments you’ve fallen into more out of habit or momentum than conscious choice – and provides a nudge to help you examine what you want to continue and what you want to stop or start, moving forward
Say no to most invites for the remainder of this month or cancel a few things: deliberately counter-balance if you had a jam-packed December
Clear space in your physical surroundings:
Identify YOUR ‘power spot’ (a place in your home that you often spend time or that you sense is a restorative zone for you) and clear it
If you haven’t used something in a dog’s age, give yourself permission to let it go
Do you have piles of paper that represent unmade decisions or postponed attention? Set a timer and plow through them and/or give yourself permission to let them go. (Consider that if some experiences are meant for you, they’ll present themselves to you again)
Notice the subtle difference when you create space ‘around the edge of things’
Recommendation:
If you can afford it, don’t hire a professional cleaner to do this for you. There is something powerful about embodying this energy yourself - don’t underestimate the ritual of wiping even one shelf, dusting a little nook, connecting with your home and sorting through and letting go of the old.
Clearing space and tidying up is a spiritual practice that extends beyond the physical realm - and I swear, it somehow opens up space for the new (in our whole selves).
I have a hunch that quantum physics will explain it one day, such that there are natural laws to support this phenomenon - but in the meantime, it does seem kind of magical to me!
Letting Go is Often the Pathway to Welcoming In
Finally, many of us have a tendency to want to add more and more to our lives without considering what we will need to release in order to have space for the new.
For example, to follow through with a new exercise routine that involves a dedicated 5 hours per week, you may need to consider what’s gonna get cut from your current routines to make that possible: less time cooking? less time with friends or the kids? Sleeping in? Something.
If you want to cultivate new relationships, some of your old connections may take a little hit.
If you embark on a radical new life direction, you’ll almost certainly need to let go of familiar ways of thinking and doing and seeing yourself - you may be letting go of aspects of your identity!
We can’t just keep cramming more and more into our lives - we are not machines that can endlessly do.
I remember my first coach, Tammy Neilson, asking me to articulate what was birthing and dying in my life during a transition I was in - and it was such a helpful and poignant clarification.
The focus in our dominant culture tends to be on creation, birth, and growth, not maturation and death: many of us are not so comfortable with letting go and grief.
It’s my understanding that the wisdom of clearing out old energies is practiced in many Asian households when they deeply clean the house at the end of the year and then deliberately stop cleaning as the festivities to mark the coming year begin.
To me, honoring letting go as preceding welcoming in embodies nature’s cycles of death and birth.
I think many western or industrialized societies, households, and individuals would be enriched to embrace practices of clearing out the old to support making space for the new.
On this note, please pay attention especially to the things in your life you may be hanging onto because they feel incomplete: courses, projects, intentions that fell short, friendships or relationships that you want to work but no longer truly fit or feel quite right.
Consider giving yourself permission to either recommit to something or someone OR let it/them go, rather than dragging your energy down with holding on to things that you’ve outgrown or conditions that make you feel ‘behind’ or keep you in a state of frozen limbo.
So, let’s wrap this up with a summary:
you’ve got all January to create a nourishing foundation for your 2020
you’ve got time to noodle on what feels inspired and true for you
you can rest
you can cultivate space in your life and inside yourself
it’s safe to let go, dear one
You can trust your own pace, move less out of fear and more out of trust, and nourish beauty and ease as you move through 2020.
I hope this is helpful and, as always, I welcome your comments, questions and thoughts below.
Wishing you an incredible year ahead - unfolding in its own spacious, perfect way!
P.S. Speaking of space, do you long to feel more roominess in your calendar - or for the things that matter most to you? Would you like to feel powerful and intentional as you nurture your upcoming priorities, dreams and important projects? Have you ever wanted to experiment with using an agenda or time planner - or elevate your current ‘time management system’? If any of this resonates, please feel free to check out a recent video where I outline how I’m approaching planning time in 2020 and offer some tips as to how YOU might cultivate a more conscious relationship with time. Hope you find it helpful! XO, N
Nicola Holmes is a Life Coach who helps people turn their potent questions, dream and longings into inspired action. With warmth and wisdom, she’ll guide you to untangle constraints and cultivate courage to create a more aligned and joyful life. She has a BASc in Human Development, an MEd in Adult Learning and spent two decades working in the non-profit sector. Along with coaching for the past 14 years, she’s mama to two young spirited kids and dedicated to Buddhism. Having experienced long Covid and a move over the past two years, she brings deep empathy to others who are exploring how they’ve changed and who they’re becoming in turbulent times. Check out Nicola @nicolaholmescoach or join the email party for inspiration and resources to fuel the changes you want.