Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlyn

Childress. I'm a life and parenting coach. And today on the

podcast, I wanna talk a little bit about new year's

resolutions or goals or vision planning

and talk about my process that I've gone through to prepare

myself for 2025, and then invite you to

take part and do some inner work for yourself so that

you feel really clear about where you're going in 2025

and what you wanna work on. And I wanna take a slightly

different approach to goal

setting this year and invite us to think

about our life from a place

of fullness, from a place of wholeness,

from health, from complete, from

great, from excellent, from not perfect, but,

like, good enough. And approach

our goals from a place of, like,

I could change nothing, and it would be just

fine. Like, I think that a lot of times goal

setting is really fueled

from, like, that there's something wrong. And I was even thinking

about the word resolution. And if you break it down,

it's like resolution. And that

inherently means that there's a problem that you're solving. So we come

to the next year as like, oh, this year was such a

disaster, and I've gotta do better, be better, get more, have

more, improve, change.

And that isn't necessarily the

place that we wanna be coming from in order to

achieve the, like, the most love for

ourselves, really. And if we come to

our goals and to our life from a place of not

being enough or not being good enough and we're mean to ourselves and we let

our critic, our inner critic, tell us what to do and

dictate our dreams and visions, then that is going

to feel really negative and mean. And

so I wanna invite you to think about your

life from a place of gratitude and having

perspective of of hope and satisfaction

and contentment. Now even if you have things that are really

hard and really you've struggled with and you're struggling with now,

we aren't gonna ignore those things. But I want you to spend

time thinking about where things have gone right.

Now the process that I use this year to set my goals

is a little bit new for me. This past year on the podcast,

I invited Amelia Knott, who's an art therapist, to

come talk to us about bringing more art and creativity into our

life. And I loved that interview so

much, and I joined her group. Like, she has

a coaching group program called the anti hustle

art studio. And I really have just enjoyed learning from her,

and she put together a really beautiful

guide called let me get it right. Reimagining

resolutions, using creativity to envision the year

ahead without the hustle. I asked Amelia if she

would give our community access

to this beautiful workbook, And she said, yes.

And so if you are part of my email list, you

would have gotten that in your email when this episode came out. So go check

that out. And if not, there'll be a link in the podcast show notes,

or you can just reach out to me on Instagram, and I'll make sure you

get a copy of this. But if this is a lot of this that I

did that I'm gonna talk about in this episode is from Amelia's

workbook. So I highly recommend you get your copy of it. The

question in Amelia's workbook, reimagining

resolutions, that really stopped me in my tracks,

that really forced me to

spend time to think about my visioning

and goal setting for 2025 from a different perspective

was this. She asked, what about your life

doesn't need to improve or change?

And I opened up the workbook, and that was the first question. She has

some opening lines in it, but then that was the first kind of journal prompt

question to answer. And immediately,

I was, like, dumbfounded.

I realized I don't come to my goals from

a place of of, like, what I talked about in the beginning of the episode,

like, from this place of enoughness.

I usually come from where are the gaps, where's the problems, where's the things that

are going wrong, what it needs to be fixed, fix it, change it, stop it,

solve it. I I come from, like, a, kind of a

manager type of place where it's like, let's find out all the

problems in this in this system, and let's, you know, address

those problems. And instead, I was forced

to question what about my life doesn't need to improve

or change. And to be honest, it took me a couple of

days to get back to this question. I kind

of read it, and then I felt myself

push against it. I was like, oh, I don't wanna think about that. I wanna

think about, like, oh, the improvement plan, the 10

step improvement plan, and all the things I'm gonna do to fix it and get

better. And instead, I'm being invited,

and I'm inviting you to think about where in your life

is okay. What is going well?

She goes on to talk about in the book in the workbook, you know,

what are you proud of from this past year? What challenged

you? What did you overcome? What was fun? What felt

easy? What was boring? Maybe that can give you an

insight to maybe what you wanna change. Was there conflict? Was there

connection? And I went through this process

and really found a lot of

hope and healing from reflecting on my

year in a positive way. When I was asked what about

my life doesn't need to improve or change, I then went in and did

some categories of where my life is going well. And I thought

about my health, and I know I've talked about on this podcast a lot about

my body dysmorphia and struggles

around eating and and taking care of my body. And I actually

looked at my health as a as a thing of itself,

not necessarily my physical body and what it looked like, but, like, my actual

systems in my in my inside of my body, not the outside of my body,

but inside. And I realized that I'm really strong and I'm really healthy and

that I've done a good job this past couple of years of

focusing on my health and going to the doctor and taking care

of things that are, quote, unquote, wrong or that need improvement. I got a foot

surgery. You know, I've taken care of my hormones as I've aged.

I've gone to the dermatologist. Like, I've done a few things

that are really helpful to get make sure that my systems are

all working well. I've gone to the dentist, and I've gone to the eye

doctor, and I, you know, do do all of these things and I take care

of my body. I I exercise most days, and I really

am strong and healthy. That alone was so

powerful for me to look at what is going well

and find that my body is going well. Because usually, I'm like, oh, I gotta

lose £10. I gotta get stronger. I gotta go to the gym more. I gotta

not eat sugar. I gotta and not eat flour, blah blah blah, all the rules.

And when I thought about what is okay, what's going well,

and I discovered that I'm really healthy and strong and that I've been

taking really excellent care of myself, it made me really happy.

Other areas that usually I kind of look at as problems,

like my business. Right? This this thing that I do, this,

program that I teach, the Calm Mama coaching program, it's

very easy for me to wish it was bigger, to expand it, to reach

more people, to grow, to have more influence,

not for me, but for the community, right, to have a

bigger impact on the world. And I can look at where

I'm at compared to where I think the potential is,

And I can get really discouraged and think, oh, I'm so far from where I

wanna be, and I can get upset. But instead, I force myself

to look at what's going well in this business, what's going

well in this program that I teach. And I realized that the CommMama Club

is amazing, and I worked at it a lot this past year

and made it a really wonderful program. And the women that

are in that program are getting so much out of it. And

it made me really happy. I think about this podcast and how many of you

listen to episodes and share episodes and go back to

episodes. And that some of you, this is one of your coping strategies is

listening to different episodes and getting advice and getting ideas

and getting hope and getting soothed and all of those things.

I made some changes to my business at the beginning of the year that really

helped create a better life balance for me, work life

balance, and that took some time. And so instead of

looking at the problem, I'm looking at where I am in a solution

already. Same for my home, looking at my home

and and finding it to be beautiful and wonderful and really

satisfied, like, the different spaces that I've created in our

family, in our in our home to for for sleep, for

play, for art, for connection, for community. And I just was

like, wow. I love my home. These are

areas like my clothes, my marriage, my friendships,

like my business, my body. These are areas that usually

I feel frustrated about. And asking myself,

what about my life doesn't need to improve or change

gave me this insight into where things are so going so well.

And then asking myself, what am I proud of? And I had

this beautiful list of things that I navigated this past

year that I am really proud of. This past year was kind of

a big deal. My youngest son graduated from high school and I launched

both kids into college. They live away and I became

so somewhat of a empty nester. Right? A roomier nester.

That was a big deal. My husband navigated

almost 9 months of being unemployed this past year. I didn't

talk about it because it's not something I would normally share on the

podcast, but it was a challenging year for him in his

career and a lot of uncertainty. And

we navigated that as a couple really beautifully. And as as a

family, going to Paris with Sawyer obviously was a huge

fun thing that we did. Like I said, what challenged me, some of

these changes is uncertainty.

Then another question that Amelia has in her worst workbook is what was

fun? What was fun this year? Think about what what did you

do that was great? What did you love? What

was easy? What was fun and easy?

And I really tried to give myself specific moments of

time that were, like, really little, almost

vignettes of fun and joy and ease that I

experienced this past year and invited myself to reflect on

those and to think about them. And that was really, really

fun. And then what was boring or what was there where

was there conflict? Looking at that and then kind of going, oh, okay. So some

of these parts of my life maybe I might wanna improve or not. I don't

know. I don't have to. I just taking a look at where am

I feeling unsettled or where am I feeling a little bit of disconnection

or where is there some conflict in my life, making decisions from

that place. In her workbook, I'm just kinda walking you through

this part of it. It she has you then go into

a lot of kindness, self kindness, self compassion. So

you do this reflection. That's where you start. You start in this

reflective place, but looking at where things went well from

the positive space of reflection, then

going into sell saying something kind to yourself and being

kind to yourself and finding out, like, what

brings you joy, making a quick list of 10 things that bring you

joy. So think about it. What are things that

bring you joy in your life? I have hiking,

completing a workout, reading, learning something new,

talking to a friend, baking something new, working

on a puzzle, coaching moms, getting lost in a TV show or a

movie, being at the beach, and planning a trip. I like

being on vacation, but I also like thinking about vacation. I like thinking

about places that I'm gonna go and imagining being there.

I like being there, of course, but the anticipation is often more

satisfying to me and more fun and more joyful than the

actual being there, which, you know, both are

great. Then another question is what are easy, fun, and

pleasurable pleasurable experiences you would like to have this

year? Maybe you've already had them. Maybe you already have them in your life

regularly. That's fine. Do you wanna do more of that or keep doing

it? Not even more. Just keep doing it. So I wrote that I wanted to

have weekend getaways with girlfriends. I wanna have a weekend getaway

with Kevin. I wanna do do a summer trip with my kids,

do a puzzle a month, do a new piece of watercolor or

art a month, hike with

a new friend, go out on dinners, a couple dates, like dates

with other people, go on the trip of a lifetime. We are doing

that. We're going on a safari in

September, doing hard workouts, and

then the experience of not buying. So this is, one of my

personal goals this year. My theme for this year

is consume less, create more.

So I'm embarking on a year of buying less.

And when I buy something, it's going to be intentional

and with the goal of only buying it one time,

like buy once or buy for life. So

really researching and making a decision

not based on something that I can get quick and easy and

cheap, but instead thinking about what will last. If I

was only gonna buy this thing, like this couch or this pillow or this

new jacket or outdoor furniture

or a notebook, I don't know. Some of those things are consumable. But if I

was only gonna buy it one time for the rest of my life,

what would I purchase? So really being thoughtful and thinking

about what I'm buying and trying to be as sustainable

as possible and not just get stuff

that's trendy or fashionable, like in your home or your clothing

or makeup colors or any of those things. I just kind of wanna move away

from consumeristic lifestyle and become more of

a creator of my life instead of a consumer of

things. So that's my theme. There's no reason for it to be

yours at all. But it is nice for you to

start thinking about who you are becoming

and what your values are and whether your

goals reflect your values. What is it that you're

chasing this year? So another question

is to brainstorm words or phrases that

describe how you would like to feel in 2025.

That's another prompt from Amelia's workbook. How do

you want to feel? What's a word or a phrase?

So when I did that exercise,

I came up with free,

full, fun, satisfied,

joy, peace, and content. So these were some of the words

that I was chasing or these phrases and these feelings

that I'm chasing this year. Kind of exploring,

you know, how do I know when I'm feeling free? How do I know when

I'm feeling full? How do I know when I'm feeling

joy? And trying to picture what

that feeling feels like in my body or what usually is happening in

my surroundings or who am I with or what are the

circumstances that help facilitate those feelings

of freedom, be feeling full full, like, as in

contentment and feeling joy. And I wrote, I

know I'm feeling joy when my cheeks hurt, when my body feels

light, when I'm energized, when my chest feels

radiant. I know I'm feeling full when I have a

fullness in my belly deep within and my brain is

silent and still. I know I'm

feeling free when I'm not overthinking, overplanning, overlearning,

over researching, overconsuming. And then I decided just

to take the word over out and realized I know I'm

feeling free when I'm not thinking, planning, learning,

researching, restricting,

and purchasing. So

these are some of the things that you are

invited to reflect on before you set

up your goals. I think of all of these as,

like, you know, creating like, before you garden, before you plant

any seeds, how you have to go and address the soil, how you have to

amend it, if you make sure there's enough ingredients in the in the

soil. I don't know anything about gardening really, but, like, you know, the soil is

good and that you have enough space to grow what you wanna grow, that

you're got a plan for your garden a little bit, that you're ready for

it. And that's what I'm thinking about when I'm thinking about

going back and reflecting on 2024 from a positive

place. What's going well, what it feels good, what

worked, what do you want more of? What did you

love about this year? How can you create even more experiences

like that? That is sort of the

the soil that I want you to be looking

at this year from. Then when you get

into the kind of visioning

or goal setting, I then switched

gears personally and I started to use my Danielle

Laporte. She has a planner. She used to do

it. It's called the heart centered planner. And I bought it for years, and

then she stopped making it. And then she made it again this year. So I

was really excited because I love this planner. I'll link it in the show notes.

What I love about this planner is there's a lot of places in the

planner for the it's like a weekly planner that you can plan your life out

and make your to do lists and all that stuff on it. But what I

like about it is that there's also places for reflection, for meditation,

for thinking, for reevaluating and reflecting.

So she has a way to set a

vision or way to create goals based on life

areas. So what I did was I looked at her life areas. I'm

gonna walk you through them. And thought to

myself, first, is this a life area I wanna focus on this year

or right now in my life? Because I believe deeply

that we don't need to be working on everything, all the things all at once.

I don't it's not possible, and it's not actually respectful of

your nervous system or your brain or your thoughts or anything like

that. I think it's helpful to think about 1 or 2 areas of your

life and kinda double down on those. Last

year, my theme was internalized security.

So I was really working on my mind and my emotions

because my goal was to get rid

of anxiety, like, ruminating

anxiety, the ways that I overthink and overplan and

overprocess. I realized that I did that because

I didn't feel safe inside of myself.

So this past year, I worked a lot on creating

internalized security, internalized safety so

that I didn't have to work so hard to get back to

calm, to, like, work through my anxious thoughts. I tried

to get rid of them in the 1st place, which is not possible for

the record. But the more kind I was to

myself and the slower I was when I was feeling anxious, and I just

stopped and, like, reassured myself that I'm safe, that things are

okay, that I can figure it out. I didn't have to go

into my strategies of coping. I

could kinda settle settle the ship a

little bit faster, which was great. So

the life area of mind and emotions

is your thoughts, your speech, your actions, and your

feelings. So my pattern for my life

had been to feel anxious about

something because I didn't I couldn't control it because it

was uncertain. For example, Kevin not working, something

like that. That would make me feel really anxious. So

then I would start to over control,

over plan, over organize in another area of my life

in order to cope or soothe with that insecurity.

So, like, if I have financial insecurity that I can't really do

anything about or, you know, my brain says I can't,

then I feel really anxious so I can't solve that. So I go over, I

create a new problem, and then I, try to solve that problem.

Like, oh my gosh. I have to get rid of sugar because

my joints hurt and then, like, I create a whole plan of control and

restriction and all of that in one area of my life.

I that's my pattern. I'm not saying that those behaviors

are necessarily wrong, but what I was trying to learn for

myself is what if I didn't use

those strategies? What if I didn't have to go

create rules and restriction and new plans and over

productivity and over managing in one area of my

life to soothe another area of my life? What if I didn't have to do

those actions to calm my emotions?

That's what I explored last year. So mind and emotions is something

that maybe you want to explore this year. Maybe you wanna

think about how you how you think

and feel and act. That's a lot about

what life coaching is and what it's for, and that's I'm here for that.

I'm here to help you with your mind and your emotions. It's one of the

main things I do in my work. So

you can think about if you want to work on that life area. Some of

the other life areas are spirit, which

is really your prayers, your rituals, breath work,

meditation, journaling, reflection, kind of that inner work

of feeling safe and connected

to either to something spiritual for

you. 3rd area, body, like

nutrition, movement, rest, supplements, medicine,

sex, sensuality, healing modalities. Maybe you

wanna take this year and focus on your body and focus on your

nutrition or your rest or your you know, a

couple years ago, I really focused on my hormones and really took took a

lot of interest and intention around getting

a handle on what was going on with my body as I'm

aging. And I'm really glad I did that. I'm really glad

I, you know, spent time doing that. For me,

most of the years of my life, my body has been a

focus, especially in the new year. But it always

comes from a place of fear and it and self

loathing and negativity. I'd love for you to

come to your body from a place of what's working well, where are you

strong, where are you feeling good, and then what would you like

to, improve? Would you like to improve your nutrition?

Would you like to improve your movement? And be really gentle with

your goals and with your thoughts about it. Instead of thinking, what

can I lose? I'd love for you to think about what can I

gain? I can gain healthier habits. I can gain

more movement. I can create more health.

So instead of thinking about what you can lose, what can you gain?

Relationships. That's the 4th area. That could be relationship

with yourself, with your inner child, your marriage,

your parenting, extended family,

animals, work, community, service,

the world, thinking about how can you do you want to

work on relationships? Is this the year that you wanna focus on your marriage? Is

this the year you wanna focus on your parenting? If it is, join the

Com Mama Club. This is the year for you that you wanna actually

work on yourself so that you don't show up as a mean mom or

stressed parent or anxious mom or, you know, overwhelmed.

Your kid's behavior is overwhelming for you. If that if this is the year

you wanna work on your mind and your emotions and your parenting,

that's great. That's a life area that I have worked on for

years years. That's, you know, not something present for me

right now because I did that work and I feel good about

where what I did in the past. And I did commit

to working on it. I was thinking about the word resolution.

It's like resolution or resolute, like

a commitment when you're when you're resolved to

finally address something and get it done. And that requires

commitment. It requires resolve. So if this is the year

you were like, I'm done yelling at my kids. I'm done being permissive.

I'm done giving into them or feeling

overwhelmed by parenting every day, then commit

and connect with me. The other

the other relationships are livelihood. So that's your work,

your finances, your service, leadership,

education. Is this the year you wanna go back to work or focus

on your career? Go go back to school, work, use

your education for something. You don't have to. But if

it's inside of you, if it's a goal, you can have that. You can create

that. You can create meaning outside of your family and

have a purpose around your livelihood.

Play is the next one. Play. I really focused

the second half of the year on creativity,

hobbies, travel, interests, and I'm gonna bring more of that

into my life this year. That's why I invited Amelia

originally onto the podcast because I wanted to bring more art and creativity

into my life and into the your lives and offer that to you.

And so play, what does play mean to you? How

can you bring more of it into your life and thinking

about about that? Then the last area is

space and things. And so that can be your home,

your workspace, your material things, and your belongings.

I started to say something about this early on, but this is an area that

I am working on not so much as improving my

space. I feel like I have done

a lot to improve my space, and I have a lot of belongings.

And I wanna be satisfied with the belongings I

have. I wanna be satisfied with the space I have, with the

clothing I have, with what I currently

own, and be content with it and not

pursue consuming more. So my

relationship with space and things right now is consuming

less and appreciating

more of what I've already created,

what I've already consumed. And it's been an

interesting exploration for me. So this is an a big area of my life

this year that I'm exploring. And, I'm sure I'll bring it up

in the podcast over time. I wrote about this. I

said, I wanna change my relationship to stuff. I want to

purchase less, and I want to own things that are beautiful,

well made, purposeful, long lasting,

personally enriching, and thoughtful. I want to use what I

have and only add new things with intention,

research, and planning. I wanna get out of short term shopping and

impulse buying. I want to not use retail therapy for

soothing. So that's what I'm working on this year. These

are the things that I've decided. Then what I did after

I explored these life areas, see where it's working, where it's not,

then I made a little bit of an action steps for myself.

Like, what am I actually doing this year?

And, I don't know if I wanna share

them, but, you know, intent here's a couple. Intentionally choose

play every day. So that's consume less, create more,

be a thoughtful purchaser, take excellent care of my body with

with a balanced nutritious diet and daily movement with strengthening,

be kind and outgoing. One of my goals is to create a new friendship,

a new couple friend for my husband and I to hang out with that live

close to us. So that's something I'm like, I'm just waiting for that friend

to come. So I wanna be more open to that. I'm gonna enjoy the friends

I have, make room for new ones. And I've personally

decided I wanna meditate and visualize more this year to bring

that more of that spirit area into my life, picking a couple

of meditative group gurus or leaders or or thought

leaders that I want to spend time with this next year.

So that's where I'm at. Those are my goals. My

theme for this year is consume less, create more.

And I'm gonna be really gentle and loving with

myself and create more play, more rest,

more intentional intentionality around

work, around friendships. Yeah. Just kind

of explore a little bit more about who I am in

this period of my life with my kids away at college and

see what happens. And I want to invite you this

year to see what happens. You know, you don't have to come

at the new year from a place of,

you know, my life is a disaster, and my kids are a

mess, and my house is a mess, and my relationship with my husband or my

wife is a mess, and I'm, you know, so unhappy, and my parents

are sick, and I'm not a good daughter. And I like, yeah.

You don't have to do any of that. You can be like, I'm kicking

ass. I'm doing great. Here's all the

evidence of that. Find evidence. Write a list of what you're

proud of, what you've overcome,

what's going well, and then decide

how do you want to take excellent care of yourself this year

from the framework of I'm worthy, I'm lovable,

I'm deserving. What would you like

to create more of for yourself? Do

you want better relationships? Do you want more health? Do you want

more wealth? Do you want more peace? Do you want more

ease? Make those your goals and then

be resolute about it. Resolve to

prioritize yourself and create more of what you want and

what you love. If you need any help with any of this,

please reach out. You can. If you're on the email list, just reply to the

email that you received, and I can schedule a consultation

with you. If someone sent this to you, you can follow me

at Darlyn Childress on Instagram or go to

calm mama coaching.com. There's some free resources on

there and just connect with me and start, you know,

getting signed up to the weekly emails and learn

more. I wish you all just the most

beautiful 2025, and I thank you so much for

listening to this podcast and for being such a a huge

part of my life even though I don't get to see you or talk to

you, most of you. You mean a lot to me. And I think about you

all week long when I'm thinking about what episode I'm gonna record

and what you might need to hear. So I'm wishing you

just the most beautiful 2025, and I

will talk to you next time.