Holy Smokes! How is it New Year’s Planning Time Again!
2025 is almost here…use these 4 steps to help you get prepared to attract what you need, want, and desire!
Does it feel like everyday life
gets in the way of planning & doing
things that are meaningful, desirable?
Interruptions. Sidetracks. Procrastinations.
This is me. Is it you, too?
Let’s do something about it together!
How do you plan (aspire)?
How are you planning (aspiring) for the New Year? How will you make 2025 work for you? Have you thought about it yet?!
Do you typically think your way into (and out of!) your plans, or do you feel your way into them?
Feeling, meaning…working with all your senses – sight, sound, touch, smell, taste – to attract what you need, want, and desire.
Incorporating all your senses when you plan helps you connect to that which you are calling in, and allows that to connect to you. That or something better.
And for full effect, let’s add one more step to working with feeling…
Remember to include surrender…freeing yourself from outcomes, endings, results.
The art of surrender is a true craft. That which is desired, wanted, needed, as we believe and crave and wish it to be, isn’t always what will serve our highest good.
There’s a delicate balance needed when working with your thoughts and senses, and surrender, in order to plan efficiently (mind and body) and effectively (spiritually…because it’s all spirit, really…this life is a gift from God!).
Ways to engage your senses to help you plan…
Sight…vision board creation for year-round goal connection and action inspiration
Sound…music, dancing for mood enhancement
Touch…shop, feeling textures, shapes to build your list of desires
Smell…essential oils, perfumes, flowers for spiritual, inward connection and memory activation
Taste…a culturally inspiring meal for vacation planning
New Year Planning Prep…a mini session
Step ONE: Centering & Connecting Meditation
Clear your headspace here…then let’s do this!
Before you proceed…
Find yourself in a quiet, calm, still place…perhaps sitting in your favorite spot at home or laying on your yoga mat…
Have something to write with and on to capture your thoughts, feelings, needs, wants, desires, dreams, goals (you get it!).
Take a few centering, grounding, calming breaths.
Picture yourself quietly, calmly, peacefully moving through this holiday season that’s upon you now.
All the parties, get togethers, activities, travels, shopping.
In all of this activity, you are the epitome of serenity, grace…lovely…taking it all in…basking in the memories being made throughout the season. Wearing all the clothes you desire, the things that make you feel beautiful, full of life, free.
Moving forward just a bit…find yourself on New Year’s Eve. What are you wearing now, where are you, who are you with, what are you doing? No matter how you answer these questions, know, in your body…at your core and heart center…you are happy, you are settled, you are content, you are filled with joy. You are at peace and will be crossing the threshold of the old year into the New Year, centered, grounded, expansive, and free…to do what you need, want, and desire to do.
When you picture and feel yourself in the New Year, what are you seeing, doing…who are you, month by month, season to season…
Winter: January, February.
Spring: March, April, May.
Summer: June, July, August.
Fall: September, October, November.
Winter again…December…
Allow yourself to sense, feel the primary, desirable emotion you’d like to hold daily as you cross over into the New Year…
Take a few full, deep breaths…inhaling, exhaling…
Step TWO: Write it all down without censoring
Make some quick notes…
What do you need?
What do you want?
What do you desire?
Do you have the tools you need to hit the ground running in a forward-acting, sustainable manner to reach your short-term and long-term goals in the coming year?
What are those goals? And are your goals backed by the habits that will allow you to achieve them with grace, peace, and success?
Step THREE: Work with your senses
Let me share my favorite tools for each of the senses so you have a reference point for your sensory work!
My favorite VISUAL tools are tarot and oracle cards! For me, they work like the Rorschach or stained glass windows…filled with symbols and wisdom that allow you to tap into your unconscious…connecting you to what you need, want, and desire, and the knowledge and means to act to attract those things.
My favorite TACTILE tool is writing…especially on blank journal paper, but also on my phone in Notes or laptop in a Word document.
My favorite way to use SCENT is through essential oils and flowers. I can’t ever pass a rose bush without pausing for a deep inhale of her magical scents! And the oils, which come right from the plants of the earth, can connect you to your past, present, and future with just one whiff. (There’s scientific research on scent and memory if you care to dive into that rabbit hole!)
My favorite ways to work with SOUND are 1) sit in silence and 2) is to turn on the music…classical when I need to calm, center, or enjoy myself (this is what I usually listen to in the car), Christmas music when I want to “get into the spirit of the season” for shopping, wrapping, and painting Christmas cards, or Taylor when I want to access fun, free, creative focus!
My favorite use of TASTE is a nice, warm beverage…coffee! Or a beautiful Indian meal…inspiring the senses, connecting me to other worlds and new possibilities.
Step FOUR: Surrender
Out of the whole system of yoga, the first two of the eight limbs are so important, life-changing, and are never discussed. The system of yoga rests on the foundations (called yamas and niyamas) which include compassion, truthfulness, non-grasping, balance, letting go, pureness, discipline, contentment, self-study, and SURRENDER.
Surrender can be tricky business, but it doesn’t need to be. It can be just like breathing…something that you just do automatically. But like most things in life…it takes practice and time (it takes surrender!).
This is an art I’ve eased into over the years.
I’d say it all began back in the mid-90’s with reading Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. I remember first reading about surrender there…the letting go of holding strongly to desires and outcomes.
Then I learned more about surrender as one of the 10 foundations of yoga during my teacher trainings. Not resting solely on its own, but pairing it with the other nine concepts (listed above), surrender becomes easier to work with and master.
When you strongly desire something, you clench, grasp, hold tightly. You want it so badly, you crave, you control…I have done, and still do to some extent, these very same things.
But, when we can desire something and then set free that desire to take shape on its own (in God’s time)…that’s where the magic happens.
We become lighter, happier, more peaceful. That’s when our needs, wants, and desires become the things, people, moments, environments, trips, gifs that fill our daily lives.
Learn this little catch phrase as you begin to work on your needs, wants, and desires with feeling and the art of surrender…
“…t h i s…
or something better.”
Final thoughts…
Let’s Work Together!
This month I have space for 3 clients…for 1:1 work to help you get into planning mode for 2025.
Our session will include gentle, seated movement and breath work, a centering meditation, engagement of the senses, and writing, crafting on paper, your needs, wants, and desires for the New Year.
Also in the works, a live and recorded group workshop for New Year’s Planning!
Stay tuned for all the details!
Please know…25% of all paid registration fees will go to Manna Foodbank in Asheville, NC to help feed those in need, those left in dire circumstances from Hurricane Helene.
Until next week…sending you much love and warm, blissful joy with your family and friends!
xoxo Michelle