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“Where we think we need more self-discipline, we usually need more self-love.”
– Tara Mohr
One of my favorite pockets of time throughout the entire year is the week between Christmas and New Years. I try my damndest to carve out some “deep work” time as I call it—time to clear the space, reconnect to presence after all the going and indulging, and map out a vision for the coming year. My inner dreamer gets to dance around and color outside the lines a bit. If I’m lucky, I try to take a whole morning or afternoon to do so.
This year was a no-go. It just didn’t happen—and that’s okay. I’m learning to give myself more grace and soften into life’s messy edges.
However, in the spirit of community, I’d like to do this deep work—this dreaming if you will—together, and ease into new year.
If you’ve been on this self-discovery journey with me for awhile, you may know I’m a huge fan of ritual rather than resolutions. If you’re new to my blog and this glorious work of deepening self-awareness and transformation, welcome. You are right on time and I can’t wait to connect with you.
Here’s why I have a thing for ritual. I’m convinced, over time, practicing good habits creates this soft light in our lives that draws out potential, undergirds desire, and creates balance where there is imbalance. They are also built on loving connection with self as opposed to fear-based tactics.
Interestingly, I think humans find extremes far easier than balance. We like to react out of fear instead of respond out of desire. Marketing moguls exploit this behavior big time, and anyway you slice it, they’re clever. They know we go off the rails a bit over the holidays and tend to wake up today with a foggy head and a few extra pounds. Swooping in, they save the day with their slashed gym membership prices and programs promising a new you in just one month.
Listen, If you’ve just given Gwyneth Paltrow a run for her money and spent all of yours on the hottest new cleanse, that’s okay too. I get it. Been there and have all the tee shirts and half-used supplement boxes to prove it.
Yet with each passing year, as I show up for myself and my community, I’m learning something invaluable: what we really want is to create a feeling, not just a desired outcome. As a result, this is why we’re rarely satisfied with any level of success or accomplishment—the feeling fades. We want more.
Today, let’s lay some groundwork for the edits, habits, and goals you’d like to see crystalize in 2024. Here are four crucial questions to help you do so.
I hope you’ll join me and carve out some well-deserved time to journal about the picture you’d like to build in 2024. Come back to it over and over again. Realign with its truth or tweak it if your course requires deviation.
Here we go:
What do you want to feel more of in 2024? (i.e. energized, awake, confident, accepted)
Where do you want to go in 2024? (This can be figurative or literal. i.e. I want to explore a new city, yoga class, or I want to go from full-time to part-time at work so I can spend more time writing)
What do you want to learn in 2024? (i.e. I want to learn to play drums or I want to learn to meditate)
What do you want to change in 2024? (Reminder: this is desire driven, NOT fear driven! Approach this from a place of worthiness rather than insecurity. i.e. I’d like to build in more margin for rest and play into my life.)
I can’t wait to hear your feedback from this exercise. When we give voice and ink to our desires, we take them from whim to intention. Let’s ease into the new year, listening, noticing, and responding to its inviting call to action. If you’d like some extra light for the journey ahead, I’m your girl.
I can’t wait to see all that 2024 has in store for you.
Cheers, indeed! You’ve arrived.
2024, Hello Gorgeous
“Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.”
– Meister Eckhart
I’ve been itching to say these words for awhile now: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Whereas tangibly nothing is different and the clock just rolled over as it does every December 31st, what does seem to change is our mindset—how we approach time.
There’s a stirring in the air, a blank slate if you will, and yet nothing has really changed. Interesting isn’t it?
I love what Meister Eckhart said, “Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.” A new year presents the invitation to begin again. I believe every morning presents the same life-giving invitation as well. It’s an opportunity to live wholeheartedly, with purpose and curiosity. It’s the opportunity to step into your God-given shoes of worthiness no matter what is achieved, accomplished, or lost.
You are the hero of your own journey. In every single good story, the hero is met with upending challenges that test belief, identity, and most of all, hope. And yet you, the hero, have the opportunity to begin again, every single day, with fresh vision and commitment.
I’d love to be your guide this year on the blog. I’d love to support you with tools, practices, and self-care opportunities I have been creating for a while. You can expect to gain short, practical insights every Tuesday that make it just a bit easier to show up for yourself—and be with yourself—in a courageous and loving way.
Of course I’d love for you to join me in my monthly subscription program called the Practice, if you’re interested in creating structure and accountability as you set out to meet the goals and intentions you’ve set for yourself this year. It’s a self-care toolkit that combines practical ways to use the Enneagram, mindfulness, and self-compassion in your daily experience.
And if you join before January 7th, you’ll receive $5.00 off your monthly subscription with the discount code: SELFCARE24.
Wherever you decide to join me, I want you to know how grateful I am to be a part of your wellness journey. It’s such an honor to have your company.
I’ll leave you with a question:
If you continue on the self-development path you are on, where would you like to be a year from now? What does your life look like? What’s different? The same?
I’d love to hear your answers! Drop me a line if you’d like.
Alright, friends! It’s showtime…
Palate Cleanser
“The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world.”
-Malcolm Gladwell
Happy New Year!
We’re doing it! We’re about to cross over the threshold of 2024, showing up for ourselves all along the way. In 2023, I crossed the finish line of cancer treatment for the most part. I’ve felt like my whole world has been swallowed up by health for the last two-plus years, so it’s been amazing to have more presence as a mom, a wife, a friend, and a therapist. It marked some welcomed endings and exciting beginnings.
There’s always the temptation to bite off more than we can commit to when considering New Year’s resolutions. Like I’ve said before, I’m convinced humans choose extremes over balance more days than not. We go all in, sink or swim, only to wake up a week later in too deep and grasping for air.
So let’s ease into it. Let’s hit the palate cleanse. Let’s listen to the gentle rhythms of our desires, our longings, our needs. Let’s partner with ourselves from a place of self-compassion, like we would a loved one we believe in and want to support. Let’s speak to ourselves with kindness and curiosity, turning down that harsh inner critic that keeps us small and hustling for worthiness. Let’s breathe more—slower and deeper than usual. I’m convinced we could all use a return to the breath and the body as a way of being present.
Let’s start small. And from that place of stillness and silence, we begin to etch out the tiny, two-degree shifts of growth and expansion that over time, create big breakthroughs. It’s often helpful to partner with a professional in order to gain greater support and accountability. If you’re looking to use the Enneagram as a part of your 2024 self-development, I’d love to help make that happen. You’re the expert at you, and I’ve got a detailed roadmap to get you from where you feel stuck to where you long to be.
No matter what you want to create in your life this year, I hope you’ll continue to journey with me. I’ve got some exciting stuff coming your way that I can’t wait to share.
In the meantime, do a little dreaming…a little playing. It’s time to let your true self take the wheel. She’s ready!
A Christmas Letter to You
“Just remember the true spirit of Christmas lies in your heart.”
-The Polar Express
I have a hunch you have a lot going on this week. With Christmas only a few days away and New Years just around the bend, many of us are traveling, gathering, and hopefully…connecting.
I’m reminded of how lonely this time of year can be as well. I’ve had many seasons of life where the holidays were, very truly, bleak. So I can’t help but write you today and check in. As an Enneagram Type 4, that sensitive ache is never too far off, for better or worse. I say yes to the ache, though. Without it, I forget how fragile and thin life’s veil is. I learned that big time with my cancer diagnosis.
I feel more connected to you as I connect to my own human frailty. This is why the practice of self-compassion is so beautiful and spacious. It invites our pain and suffering to have a voice, knowing that this is the connective tissue of this being human. It doesn’t shut that voice out in the cold, though. It leans in, curiously, with kindness—so as to alleviate that felt pain and loneliness. It says, “I see you, friend. I see your pain—the weight of your heavy burden—and I love you no matter what. I’ll stay awhile with you.”
This season, consider someone in need. Who might be alone? Who may be hurting? As you enter into the spirit of the season, invite them there with you, even in the prayer chamber of your heart. What a powerful message we send to the world as we create space in our hearts for the ones who are broken…we overcome scarcity with generosity—lack with abundance.
I pray this week, you would hear more love than noise, see more light than sorrow, feel more joy than fear. In the quiet hours of the morning, I pray that you sense a palpable belonging.
Merry Christmas, Love.
How to Finish Strong
“For last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.
-T.S. Eliot
Last week, a dear friend said something so profound in conversation. I’ve been marinating in it since. She said, “I’m struggling to find my now. I’m either stuck in the past or out somewhere in the future. I desperately want to find my now.”
Can you relate to this? I can. It’s tempting to camp out in what “could have been”: more productivity, success, health, passion, what have you. This temptation is then compounded by the seductive tendency to run tactics on a fresh new start right around the proverbial bend.
You know the drill. The diet and exercise folks join forces and broker a zillion dollar deal every fourth quarter counting on you and I to wake up January 1 after sipping on the stiff and steady cocktail of two parts bloated, one part foggy, and a heavy shake of shame. We buy in to the ultimate extreme makeover our resolution(s) of choice promises only to throw in the towel a week later hangry, and with the selfless support of your dearest pint: Ben & Jerry, or Stella Artois.
It’s so predictable, right?
Thankfully, there is another way. Conscious living invites us into self-awareness. If we accept this invitation, we immediately enter a room full of freedom—and responsibility.
Viktor Frankl, Austrian psychiatrist, Logotherapy creator, and Holocaust survivor, said it best, “Between the stimulus and the response, there is a space. In that space, there lies your freedom and power.”
The holidays present us with a vital passageway—a sacred space.
Incidentally, it’s one of the tightest spaces in which to remain present and self-aware. If we consciously choose presence—that powerful space of the here and now, as opposed to the sugar-laced trans of consumerism, I believe we will finish strong.
“Buzz-kill much?” you ask.
Fair enough. However, I wholeheartedly believe our most powerful, abundant lives are built with consistency, brick by brick, and experienced moment to moment. Why? Because if I am present in each moment, I hold the keys to reality and connection. By this I mean, I live in wakeful presence and respond truthfully to my desires, needs, and those of others. I also forgo the trap of extreme, reactionary living.
Speaking of the needs of others, the Holiday season is often one of deep pain and loneliness in the hearts of many. I’ve known this pain well. Yet at the same time, there is this massive expectation to shine up the shell of appearance and ignore the voice of pain that hums a haunting cry for help.
When you and I narc-out in unconscious trance, we are unavailable to those needs all around us. Likewise, we silence our own. Needs such as connection, compassion, and rest get overrun by the loud liturgy of commerce and consumption.
These next few weeks, give yourself and others this gift of presence. Enjoy the heck out of them, consciously choosing to come back to the moment, no matter how often the drone of chaos calls. Each time you make this choice, you step into your freedom—your power. Don’t bother eliminating the noise. That’s a crap-shoot.
Finishing strong looks more like staying soft than hustling hard.
Love & Gratitude,
Katie