A Warm, Welcoming Hug from 2025
Releasing 2024 and stepping into the new year refreshed and renewed.
Hey, we did it! We made it to 2025, in one piece, with a part of our hearts still shiny and excited, having walked through all of 2024. We felt brave and strong and bold. We felt scared and anxious, too. We faced challenge after challenge, and we walked through those fires, wiser and more emotionally mature.
I hope that 2025 grants us the same kind of compassion and love that we felt in 2024.
With that in mind, for the very first post of the year, I wanted to accompany you in some dream-fueled planning, in the form of three different mood boards. My hope is that by looking at these mood boards, you might feel something. An “aha” moment, a zing of inspiration, or at the very least, some kind of seed that is planted in your imagination for later (if you can see it, you can be it, right?).
Let us begin!
Board #1: Creativity Inspo
Creativity isn’t silly or frivolous; it is necessary. It is an outlet, a pathway for personal expression. Creativity and art can help heal us. It can bring us back to life. Even in our darkest night of the soul, it can be a place for our shadow selves to go, a safe place for our psyche to run around and finally be seen.
When we are creative, we often don’t know or can’t control the outcome. So the very act of creativity is a risk. It is in practicing this risk taking that we grow stronger. If you ever get stuck, feel uninspired, or feel burned out, one of the best remedies is to go back to your creativity.
You might say, “but I’m not a creative, I work in finance,” or “I used to be creative but I just don’t feel that way anymore.” Everyone is creative. It’s part of being human. It is imagination and thinking of solutions and figuring stuff out. You can be creative in an Excel spreadsheet. You can be creative in plotting which subway to take home. It’s how you react to surprising situations, and how you adapt.
Here are three questions to ask yourself:
What kind of creative are you? For example, are you a writer, a scrapbooker, a painter, a visual artist, a graphic designer, a photographer, a director, a screenwriter, an illustrator? Describe it in detail. You don’t have to be a great (or even good) artist to claim this title. You just have to decide that you want to do it, and then start doing it, and get better, little by little, over time.
What kind of art did you love to do as a kid? Why? What was it like to be immersed in that?
Who are the creatives that you admire? Who are your favorite writers, songwriters, storytellers, directors? Why?
Which of the photos do you relate to, if any? If you were to make your own creativity mood board, what would it look like? What would you be doing, what would you be holding in your hands?
Board #2: Home Inspo
Because where you do stuff matters! Where you create matters. Your environment matters. There’s a certain energy to the place, and this is one of the things you can actually control. You don’t need a huge budget or a lot of space to make a little corner of your house (or office, or studio) yours. We’re really just talking about vibes. This year, what do you want your space to say? Do you want it to be cozy or ultra modern or traditional? What colors do you want on the walls? What old prints or vintage art do you want to hang?
Do you want your walls to be pink or neutral? Do you like do spend time in crowded, chatty places, or do you want to be in complete silence? Think about what environments you like, where you feel at peace, where you feel alive.
Board #3: Exercise Inspo
Don’t exercise just because people tell you to, or because you think you should. Find a type of exercise that feels good to you, while you’re doing it and during recovery afterwards. Well, even if recovery is rough that’s okay, as long as you can recover and get a little better at it over time. If you’re a bit older, like me, you have to find an exercise that is sustainable and won’t hurt you. I absolutely love running on the treadmill, I love how it makes me feel, the sweat coming down, zoning out, how lean my legs get — but it destroys my body. I didn’t realize it was destroying it because it happened silently and I really wanted to run. Pretty soon though, I had a weird hip issue and a sore knee and an ankle wobble, and then I’m just limping around like a grandma.
I realized I couldn’t run anymore, and that all of that pounding wasn’t so good for me physically, so I had to find something else. Once you figure out how you want to move your body, then things will click and fall into place. It might not be what you think, either. For a long time, I was convinced that it would be yoga: I even took a yoga practitioner training and got certified. There was one year where I did yoga three time a week consistently, and I thought it was my thing. But I was always looking at the clock, and had a lot of wrist pain and holding the poses just hurt.
Now I’ve found my way into Crossfit, and miraculously, even after six months of consistently going, I haven’t gotten hurt once. I think it’s building muscle in a way that is helping me stay strong and resilient. Also, there is enough intensity during the workouts that I never get bored. I think I may have finally found something I can stick with for longer, something that matches my energy, and that I enjoy.
So what’s yours? Do you want to cycle indoors in the dark to pop music? Do you want to wake up early and take a quiet hike through a misty forest? Or, does doing a meditative yoga sound good to you? Start with what kind of environment you like, and then find a place that you enjoy doing it (you might need to try a few different yoga studios, for example, before you find one that suits you).
I hope that this helps!!
Thank you so much for reading, and happy new year!
xoxo
Mandy aka Career Coach Mandy