Dreaming of a Boring Year…And Why That’s Okay
The holidays are a whole lot of things, but one thing that they always invoke is an awareness that the calendar year is about to shift. For years now, I’ve treated the space between December 26th and December 31st as a time to reflect on the previous year, dream about the year to come, think through adjustments that need to be made to our routines, and create my vision board for the next year.
Social media will be full of people announcing their word for 2026. Hundreds of thousands of people will decide that this year is the year that I’m going to ________.
Typically, I really look forward to this scheduled pause. I love to dream. I love the processes of a vision coming to life. I love to analyze a problem and figure out what needs to shift, what needs to go, and what needs to be added. I love the satisfaction I get when I solve a problem.
This year, I feel overwhelmed by it.
I bought a goal planner at Target a few weeks back. It focuses on 3 goals and breaking them down into manageable steps that you schedule into your daily life. This is my jam. And yet, I can’t even open the cover of it. Every time I do, I freeze.
How do I pick one area of life when my whole life feels like it’s at the final stages of falling completely apart? That sentence might be a tad bit dramatic, but truly, 2025 nearly did me in.
I wonder if you’ve ever felt like this?
I don’t need 2026 to be the year I climb Mount Everest…I need 2026 to be boring. Completely and utterly boring. By the end of the year, I want to have exactly zero life updates for you.
Will that happen?
No. But a girl can dream.
Even as I dream of a boring year, I know that I can’t stay frozen here. I know that health doesn’t just “happen”. I know that creating a life that you’re proud of at 80 takes intentionality. I know that I have to put my right foot in front of my left foot, one step at a time, until my life returns to some semblance of normal. And, here’s the good news, I know a thing or two about getting unstuck! I’ve collected tools to help with this feeling…
I run on the premise that if I’m experiencing something, then somebody else is too. So, if you’re like me, feeling bogged down by the weight of life… let’s work through this.
Come January, we’re going to talk about making small changes consistently over time, and how that can change your life. But, today, I want to talk about how to pick which direction to go in.
We’re going to do this in 3 steps:
Prioritizing your nervous system
Objective Assessment by Category
Determine what’s in your control
Ready?
Prioritizing Your Nervous System
The first thing that we do is regulate our nervous system. If there’s a particular emotion that's hijacking your nervous system, instead of fighting it off, we’re going to welcome it. If your stress hormones are through the roof, we’ve got to lower them first before we can do anything else. Go for a walk. Go for a run. Sit by some water. Sit in the sun. Create space for your nervous system to regulate. We can’t do anything until our nervous system is back on track.
Objectively Assess Your Life by Category
The next thing that we’re going to do is simplify the categories of life that could possibly be going awry. Harvard is currently conducting a robust study called the Global Flourishing Study, where they measure human flourishing in these categories: happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial and material stability. If you could rate each category from 1-10, how would you rate them? What’s most important right now? What’s easiest right now? What feels the most unattainable? What’s going well? Looking at your life with curiosity almost always makes it less overwhelming. Even just writing this out is reducing my overwhelm. Because I’m looking at this list and thinking, “Oh! Every category isn’t suffering… close social relationships? Doing great. Character and virtue… nailing it.”
Alternatively, you could look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and filter your life through the pyramid. Are your needs being met in the most basic of categories? Here’s the thing… so often, in foster and adoptive families, that answer is no, and that’s what throws everything else off. But, the bottom of that pyramid is just survival… we can’t live there. The bottom levels are: physiological needs (food, water, rest, shelter, clothing), safety and security (health, employment, property, family and social ability), love and belonging (friendship, family, intimacy, sense of connection). What do you need in order to fill any gaps you’re experiencing in any of those categories?
What is in Your Control?
Next, and this is maybe the most important step of them all… determine what’s in your control. If you’re like me, when I asked the question “what do you need in order to fill any gaps?” your brain went to something out of your control. Mine did this, “For safety and security, I need my family to stop getting sick, my dog to not have a medical crisis, my house to not be a complete disaster…” and on and on the list goes.
Here’s the thing. I can’t do anything about a family member having a medical crisis. What I can do is support my nervous system through it. I can’t do anything about my dog almost dying on Thanksgiving. What I can do, though, is analyze the situation that got us there and fix the major players. Does that make sense? We can’t control many things… but the beautiful thing is, we can control a whole lot of things. Mainly, ourselves.
Next week, we’re going to talk about our pace as we move towards health. I’ll give you a little hint… it’s slower and simpler than you might think.