Hey there, I’ve missed you! I was wondering if it would be weird for me to wish you a happy new year given it’s now the end of January, but since we’ve just welcomed in the new Chinese year of the Fire Rooster, I might just ride those coat cock tails and wish you a happy new year any way!

I’ve been absent for a month during this holiday period as I’ve immersed myself in a lovely staycation that was bursting at the seams with twice daily swims, long walks, deep contemplations and soulful reflections about my life.

I don’t usually buy into the whole concept of new years resolutions as for the last decade, I’ve always focused on a 40 day practice to help me on my journey, but in recent years, its evolved a little more beyond that..

These days, I’m less about the goal and more about the feeling, and given that my multi faceted personality can’t be limited to embodying just one emotion for an entire year, lately I’ve started the habit of checking in with myself every quarter -and I usually do this by aligning with the solstices and the equinoxes.

Around the time of my last newsletter to you during the summer solstice of last year, I started feeling into what I wanted the next 3 months to represent for me.

Up until this year, I’d only do this with my personal goals, but I’ve since been guided to do this with my business goals and so far, it’s really working well!

At one point, I was contemplating writing a blog post titled ‘2016 – it wasn’t really that bad, was it?’

While 2017 adds to a 1: 2+0+1+7 = 10 and then its reduced to a single digit -> 1 and many have written about it being synonymous with new beginnings, this isn’t necessarily the case for everyone, much like last year didn’t necessary mean that it was a year of endings for you either.

In addition to aligning with the solstice energy, I also like to harmonise with the energy of my own personal year. I’ve written about this previously, but I’m actually going to direct you to my dear friend Tameera, a hot blonde whizz bang numerologist / astrologist extraordinaire who has summed it all beautifully in this post right here.

Being a March baby means that for me personally, the first quarter of the new year is actually the last quarter of my own personal year.

While I sat and contemplated and thought I wanted ease, what my team and I actually discovered is that while some aspects of my business run like a well-oiled machine, yet so many other parts were a massive shit show.

Who needs 7500 photos of their twin niece and nephew on their iPhone? Apparently I did. 

Along with a gazillion recordings of classes, notes, scattered files and a computer whose software had not been updated for almost as long as the files that had been dumped in the 3 different folders titled ‘Organise 1’ ‘Organise 2’ and unimaginatively, ‘Organise 3’.

So if ease was the goal, then a massive decluttering and re-structure was going to have to take place first. And for the first time in my life, I allowed the entire month of January to be defined by a concept which I coined ‘admin lockdown’.

My close friends and sister in law inherited half my wardrobe, the many manuals for courses I’d taken up to 11 years ago were finally thrown out and the ease at which I can shut my filing cabinet almost matches the gleam of my new folders that are no longer brimming at the seams and triumphantly match the updated colour scheme in my office space.

For those of you who noticed my absence on social media and in your inbox, thanks for reaching out to me with your lovely messages of concern.

No need to worry, nothing’s wrong, I’ve simply needed to rest and be present with the delicious simplicity of my time out as I recharged my batteries. When I’m in my workflow, being active on social media is an effortless extension of my daily tasks.

But I noticed that when I switch off to recharge, tapping into that work frequency can feel forced, and ultimately depleting.

It gave me the space to observe that in my quest to keep my life ‘simple’, I had missed the very important fact that my team and business had been morphing into something new for a while now, and I had been inadvertently (and perhaps subconsciously) sabotaging this growth.

I had some sessions with my own healer who uncovered that my adrenal burnout of several years ago meant that I was actually scared of becoming ‘busy’ again in case I had another burnout, when in actual fact I was stopping the flow of new opportunities coming my way.

Decluttering – its like the cheapest form of therapy.. If you’re too busy juggling too many things, how will you receive the blessing of new opportunities coming your way?

So for me, it wasn’t about the goals for I know my inner focus can make them manifest into reality.. No. This time it was about creating the space for new things to land effortlessly.

In case you’re interested, these are the themes of how I’d like to feel that I’ve come up with so far..

• 1st quarter of the year – structure (last quarter of my personal year)
• 2nd quarter of the year – ease (1st quarter of my personal year)
• 3rd quarter of the year – expand (2nd quarter of my personal year)
• 4th quarter of the year – soar (3rd quarter of my personal year)

New Resolutions? Nah. I’m more about creating the space for things to land effortlessly. What about you? I’d love to hear about what’s in your heart for this year.