Make Space for Your Future Self This Winter

Winter offers a pause between the end of one year and the beginning of another. With its long, still night, the winter solstice offers us a moment to reset and reflect before the rush of "new year, new me" begins. This season of quiet preparation invites us to make small, intentional shifts that can create lasting change—a perfect time to take inventory and prepare our spaces and ourselves for the positive transformations we want to make.

Letting Go

Winter is the perfect month to declutter and delete everything that is devaluing your daily life, goals, or human experience. Use this new season as your project: you’re turning in for winter, spending more time at home, using your office for big goals, or creating a cozy corner to write your first book. Maybe you’re starting a floral essence garden or growing food to live on. Whatever your aspirations for this year, use this season to overhaul your environment. Get hyper-aware of the valuable space your 2025 self needs, and make room for growth. You don’t have to turn it into your whole personality, but you can clean, donate, and repurpose to get things right in your environment.

For example:

• Health goals: Go through your pantry, deep clean cupboards, and maintain or upgrade your equipment.
• Work goals: Tidy your desk, organize drawers, set up a filing system, refresh calendars, and clean up hardware and software.
• Creative pursuits: Organize tools, tidy shelves, minimize distractions, keep inspiration available, set time boundaries, and create a station to work in.

Micro-Upgrades

This is the perfect time of year to look at small upgrades you can make to your life. They can be free or not, little or not, but making this investment is a big part of feeling good in your day-to-day life before you start making goals and intentions. It’s hard to feel hopeful, magical, magnetic, or creative when your time, energy, and attention are slowly siphoned off. If your tools are falling apart, you haven’t replaced a hairbrush in years, or your previously crisp white tees are dingy—it’s time for some micro upgrades.

Free upgrades you can make:

• Rename your bank accounts with affirmations (e.g., change “Taxes” to “I’m Responsible”).
• Clean up your desktop. (Searching for things when I could be creating is my personal pet peeve)
• Rotate your closet so only the things you feel great in are in prime spots.
• Go through your bathroom cabinet and get rid of expired products, testers, and samples.
• Create a tech charging station outside the bedroom.
• Start a new journal.
• Hang art, deep clean floors and windows.
• Light a candle in any room you enter.
• “Get ready” each day with whatever that looks like for you—hair, makeup, outfits, perfume, etc. Think above the bare minimum.
• Repair that one drawer that sticks, mend the button on your favorite coat, season your pans, and condition cutting boards. (or whatever issue causes you frustration).
• Clean your shoes, condition handbags, or polish jewelry.
• Rotate your plants from one room to another.

Paid upgrades you can make:

• Get a haircut.
• Increase storage on devices.
• Invest in better supplies for your hobby: tools that make life easier, hardbound books, quality ingredients, etc.
• Replace or upgrade your most-worn clothing: jeans, sweats, and basic tees.
• Decorate as your 2025 self.
• Get new bedding that makes sleeping a dream.
• Order better bath or kitchen towels.
• Invest in quality everyday jewelry (new or vintage).
• Update your tech stack: phone, computer, or software.
• Buy a fresh pair of shoes or slippers.
• Pre-purchase a car wash subscription, doggy daycare, or cleaning service.

Important areas to think about upgrades: commutes, closets, cooking, fitness, hobbies, and work routines. I know there’s something you can gift your future self.

Anti-Goals

Positive thinking doesn’t come naturally for many of us. While I believe in the magnetism of quality goals and intentions, sometimes you need to start with what you don’t want to uncover what you do. Complaints are a great way to reach your anti-goals. If you can picture a less-than-ideal day and list what it looks like (e.g., too many meetings, running late, not finding what you need, spending time with the wrong people), you can create anti-goals:

• Boundaries around time in the morning to simply be.
• A minimum of 20 minutes to cook meals.
• Declining plans you know you'll end up canceling later.
• Flexible working hours that align with when you function best.
• Boundaries around tech or social media.
• A tidy home or restful bedroom.

Anti-goals are a mirror to the ways we can shift our day-to-day for the positive. They aren’t the only solution if you want to stick to the positive, but having control over where your time, energy, and focus go can bring clarity and help you reclaim unnecessary energy waste.

Rest

Just like your rooms and workspaces need a tidy-up to make space, so do your body and mind. Quality rest is like giving a room a clear-out and a fresh coat of paint. When busy, distracted, scattered, or drained, it’s hard to welcome creativity, inspiration, hope, and ideas.

While sleep is a great answer, it’s not always helpful for everyone. So prioritize a leisurely kind of rest: time away from screens, time in nature, time with a fiction book, long walks, doing absolutely nothing, baths, comforting foods, card games, guided meditations, basic house chores, baking, mindless TV, journaling, or 10 minutes in the sun with a silly playlist. However you rest, do it often and for longer periods over the next few weeks.

Ready to Turn Reflection into Action?

If you’re craving a mindful, intentional way to plan your year, the Intention Guidebook is your perfect companion. This beautifully designed workbook & planner will help you disconnect, reflect, and create space for what truly matters—without the pressure of resolutions.

✨ What’s Inside:

• Prompts for self-reflection and clarity
• Space to map out your goals, dreams, and intentions
• Encouragement to slow down, tune in, and reconnect

Gift yourself the tools to move into 2025 with purpose and ease.

[Explore the Guidebook Here →]

Getting Clear

I love a goal. I love a deadline. I love milestones. It’s probably the most toxic thing about me—how much I like to achieve above all else. It just so happens that I am also the laziest person I know. I want to get things done without all the drama. I want to win, but only if my skills and gifts collide. I want a shortcut or the simplest way. I am ambitious and also tired. I will accomplish what I set out to do, but I’ll do it in the slowest, most “me” way possible.

With this unique take on ambition, I have a shortcut for goals: make them as clear and focused as possible.

Your brain (and the universe, for that matter) doesn’t know what to do with goals like “health,” “abundance,” or “peace.” These are too abstract, and the million questions it takes to decipher what you actually want is already demotivating.

What do you actually want?

• To run up the stairs without worrying about your heart health?
• To wake up excited to work at your dream job?
• To sign your first commissioned art piece?
• To have a savings account so large you feel confident traveling the world for months?

None of these goals are worth hiding behind vague, whimsical words. The milestones will give you the dopamine you need to keep going and the clarity for them to be delivered to you.

This winter, reflect, prep, and rest. Gift your future self the clarity and space to grow into the person you want to be. Winter may be quiet, but it’s powerful—a season of intention, small shifts, and deep restoration.