Last week, I felt overwhelmed, and, if I’m honest, a little irritated by the flood of emails about goal setting, resolutions, and all the right ways to start the year.
It was too much.
Too loud.
Too rushed.
My honest thought was: I’m not ready for this yet.
This year doesn’t feel like one that wants to be forced into neat plans or tidy declarations. It feels like a year that asks for listening. For space. For discernment.
I need time to figure out what I truly want, what my heart actually desires. I don’t want to strive toward a goal just to cross it off a list. I want to find a feeling, enjoy it, and explore it organically.
Because when I look back, everything that has come relatively easily into my life has arrived because I followed a feeling.
When I wanted to leave the city and find a home in the suburbs, we searched and struggled. Nothing fit. Nothing clicked. Until I stopped focusing on what the house should be and instead focused on how I wanted to feel living there. I made a vision board centered on that feeling.
Two weeks later, we toured and bought the house we now live in.
What still amazes me is how many of the images from that board have quietly come to life here. It’s uncanny. And honestly? It’s kind of magical.
Miraculous things tend to happen when we move from the heart instead of the head.
That truth was reinforced again for me this weekend while watching Chef’s Table, a series I love because it gives us access to the minds and hearts of true geniuses, world-renowned chefs who are the Mozarts of cooking.
One episode followed Alain Passard, a three–Michelin-star chef. In the culinary world, three stars are legendary, an honor held by just over a hundred chefs worldwide. Passard earned his stars mastering what he called “carnivorous cuisine.”
So when he stepped away to re-inspire himself and returned with a radical decision, to turn his iconic, meat-centric restaurant entirely vegetarian, many believed it would be professional suicide.
But it wasn’t.
He kept all three stars.
He kept his reputation because he chose creativity over convention, joy over expectation. He wanted to amuse himself again. He followed his bliss.
In the show, you see him fully alive: savoring a peach in his garden, his hands dancing over dough, his face lit up as he tastes a dish he created that very day.
“My only ambition is to love what I do more each day,” he says.
“My gardens saved my life.”
This, to me, is manifestation at its most powerful.
When you feel into what you love, you attract more of what you love.
Like energy attracts like energy.
So instead of asking yourself what goal you should set right now, I invite you to ask something different.
What fills your heart with joy?
What inspires you?
What gives you energy instead of draining it?
If this is the year you want to call in something new in your career, how do you want to feel as you work? More appreciated? More valued? More alive? Where in your life do you already feel those things?
If this is the year you want to be in relationship, what makes you feel loved? What opens your heart? What helps your body relax into connection?
This is how you gently train your body, mind, and spirit to feel safe receiving what you desire and how you begin to attract it naturally.
And, for those of you who have been asking if I will be doing my Vision Board Course again…. I am feeling like it might be time again, after we all have had a chance to rest and ponder what we really want. More to come on this;)
Until then, simply notice what touches your heart and gives you energy.
That’s the first step.
And it’s more than enough to begin.
So much love and joy,
