Hello 2025, Goodbye 2024
My December newsletter has announced itself in spurts. I now have a collection of texts to myself – sent over the last few weeks – of things I thought I might want to expand for a newsletter. The texts, in order, say:
Engagement and aliveness is more important than being “professional.”
People like to be fully expressed if they have an invitation…and as coaches we issue the invitation.
You don’t have to remake yourself. Go slow. Practice.
Choosing to work with a coach takes courage.
Will you celebrate yourself, just as you are?
What’s hibernating?
A sea change: does everyone now agree that we can just end the year softly?
Read all at once it's mesmerizingly weird and such a hilarious peak into some very stereotypical coach thoughts. #selfaware
When I first started brainstorming this newsletter I thought something about acceptance would finish off the year nicely: an affirmation that you get to end this year (and start next year) however you want. An affirmation that you don’t need to end the year STRONG if you are unable to. You don’t need to do anything in fact. You can melt from this year into next year if you want. You can ignore this email! You don't have to flip the calendar page on Wednesday if you don't feel like it.
You can set 25 grand intentions or pick one, solid, supportive word to anchor your year. You can make goals right now or in March 2025 or in December 2025 or never again. (Controversial coach take!)
You can feel gratitude for the year that is coming to a close. You can feel annoyance. You can sigh and say, “That was a lot!” You can wail into your favorite sweater/pillow/cat/dog/plant that this year was too much or that this year wasn't what you hoped for at all. Next year might already feel like too much and not enough all at once!
As a coach I am mindful of making the space for my clients to feel permission to feel: to accept whatever is right here, now. And I’ve thought that was an under-expressed sentiment at the New Year, which historically has been a time of a fair amount of tough loving yourself into a better version. The New Year has traditionally told us: stop wasting time because every moment is an opportunity to self improve!
So I have been texting myself all month brainstorming different New Year messages (along with some other thoughts that I might return to and expand on later). Then I started noticing that my corner of the internet – my community of poets, artists, coaches, therapists, witches, magic-makers, herbalists, & farmers – has spent much of the last few weeks hanging out in pillow forts and encouraging unhurried, easeful, soft transitions from 2024 to 2025.
Someone even shared this Virginia Woolf quote (from A Room of One's Own): "No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. When you let go of the frantic search for validation, you find yourself exactly where you are meant to be, with the tools you need to go forward. It is from this place of quiet assurance that the most beautiful things emerge."
It makes me smile how the culture has shifted from the hustle boss babe era to whatever we are calling this mega cozy, low-pressure era. The already valid era, just as we are.
Collective exhale.
Do y'all feel like you are noticing this shift as well? If you do: what's the impact on you? How does it feel when you draw these messages near? What changes? (This newsletter now – officially – has the appropriate number of coachy questions.)
Maybe we, collectively, are growing our capacity to acknowledge we can transition from one year to the next however we want. Maybe the culture is getting better at a core part of Co-Active coaching: facing what is present with curiosity and tenderness instead of tough love.
How that would delight me!
So, beloved human, I hope wherever these words find you, you have access to even a small bit of loving acceptance for whatever is emerging or hibernating or hiding. That the moment you are in can feel like an ending, a beginning, a quiet breath, all of these things or something else entirely.
And if a simple reflection would support you during this calendar transition, I made a low-pressure worksheet for you to say your 2024 goodbyes and your 2025 hellos. Pick a word! Express some gratitude! Declare your intentions! Set the worksheet on fire after you're done (safely)! It's up to you.
You can download a copy of the worksheet here.
Perhaps this newsletter has been a long-winded way of reminding you that I believe you get to:
Show up messy (to this New Year), break and make the rules (of how to transition), and take your time (to say goodbye 2024, hello 2025).
Ending the year very on message, it would seem.
With love, softness, curiosity, and a hope that you are finding a bit of "quiet assurance," your coach.
