About January
We all know what January means.
It’s time to get our acts together and prep for an amazing year ahead, right? Yes, usually a coach’s beginning-of-the-new-year message is all about the amazing work we might do together to help you achieve your very best this year.
But sometimes achieving and doing and striving and bettering just isn’t where everyone is. And that, my friends, is OKAY too. Oh January… sometimes we just don’t wanna.
Sure, we all know January as a time of renewed energy and goal-setting and planning for the coming year. There are pretty blank calendars to be filled in, new gym memberships to fulfill, and deliciously empty journal pages waiting to absorb a year’s worth of your deepest thoughts. Self-improvement programs are everywhere: cleanses, programs, and classes to show you how to make over your finances, your figure, your relationships. You name it, January is the month we’re told we should get busy achieving it.
But what if you’re just not in a build-your-best-life kinda place this January?
What if getting out of bed and putting your feet one-in-front-of-the-other all day long and mostly showing up to the barest minimum required takes every bit of energy you have? What if you spend all day long just getting by and the thought of planning 364 more of those kinds of days makes you want to get back into bed and never come out?
Being in an Un-January kinda place happens.
More than you know.
Sometimes January doesn’t feel like an empty canvas waiting to be joyfully filled. For some, it feels like a thing meant for others- for those who are more organized, more creative, more together. It’s been drilled into us that we need to make big January goals if we expect to get anywhere… and anything less feels totally pathetic.
If it feels like Un-January to you this year, what do you do then? What CAN you do?
Don’t DO. You can just BE.
Live in that “skipping all the New Year intentions” place, intentionally and with full presence. Nothing more. And definitely nothing less. Because it’s harder and more rewarding than it sounds.
But if you can find a way to simply exist with whatever struggle you’re in… and no, you don’t have to figure out what it means or what you should do about it… if you can just stay present without numbing your way through it, you’ll be on your way to learning more about how and where strength is born than most people ever will. Yeah, it’s hard. Do it anyway. And ask for help, even though you don’t want to. Because it helps to have help.
And don’t bother comparing yourself with all your January do-er friends. This year, be okay with your to-do list having one thing on it: “Just BE.” Next January, all those fancy planners and goal worksheets and self-improvement programs will still be there, waiting for a different you in a different year. And you just might be surprised at how much doing actually got done while you were simply being.
