🦋 Envisioning your year ahead with a feel-first approach

[0:29] Hi there, welcome to a new episode of Inner Impact. I’m so glad you’re here and we are about to spend some time together to have this conversation. And here’s what we are going to explore today. We are going to talk about envisioning your upcoming months, your new year, whatever you may feel compelled to envision at the moment.

[0:54] And why this topic? Well, because I have been feeling a bit confused in the past few weeks and I’ve been, you know, writing in my journal over and over again. I would like to, you know, feel more reconnected to a direction, to reconnect with an overall sense of direction, if it makes sense to you.

[1:20] And I wasn’t clear about how to do that. And then working with the client reminded me of the tool that I could have used to clarify my direction, which is a tool that she used right after our last session together, because she told me, well, now I want right after we, you know, close the call, I want to play and create a vision board. And she sent it to me and it was very, very inspiring. And that also reminded me that another client a few weeks ago told me, you know, I think that I’m feeling very disconnected from my vision and very confused about my direction because I’m so focused on the details that I lost track of the bigger picture. And that made really sense to me. That resonated with me a lot. So I decided to do something similar to what my client did.

[2:31] But at first, I felt some kind of resistance because in the past couple of years, I have not done this kind of envisioning work at the end of the year in winter because I feel like that I feel some kind of disconnect in terms of seasonal energy and the fact that you are trying to envision something starting in January, which to me is the middle of winter and doesn’t align with the idea of renewal, a new beginning. So for me, renewal, a new beginning comes in late February when we are moving towards spring.

[3:20] Nevertheless, I decided to challenge my own resistance and try and enjoy the process because I was really needing to clarify, what am I doing here? It feels like I don’t know what I’m doing. Even though some of the things that I’m doing are cool, I’m enjoying them, are impactful, I am missing the bigger picture. And so I decided to dedicate some time to this kind of envisioning work which I’m going to tell you about and I’m going to tell you about my own process and then I am going to recap it so you can use it as your own process of course because as you know I’m here to help you have a conversation with yourself so you can build more trust in your inner guidance system and bring your impactful work to life with more care, joy, and alignment. So I decided to do something slightly different from what I usually do when I do the envisioning work.

[4:33] I usually use a mind first approach, if it makes sense to you, meaning that I tend to do some kind of review to, you know, assess what went well during the past months, what didn’t went as I hoped. And so go from there and, you know, gain insight from there and see where I want to go moving forward. This time I wanted something different. I wanted to do something with a feel first approach, meaning that I wanted to actually feel the energy of this vision and leave the part when the mind comes into the picture for the last part of the process.

[5:29] So here’s what I did. I created a creative constraint for myself. So if I didn’t want my mind to drive the process, I needed not to search for images because I decided to go with images because I wanted to use my view as a sense to help me feel the energy of the vision that I want to create next year. So if I cannot search images, I thought I need to have a place where I can browse images online. And because I don’t have magazines at home, I didn’t want to do that in a physical way. I wanted to do digitally. And so I used the homepage of Unsplash, the website where you can get royalty-free images. And what I did was scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and picking every image I felt drawn to, not from a mental, a logical place, if you know what I mean, but more from, I mean, I like this. I’m curious about this. I feel compelled to click on this image.

[6:55] And every picture I picked, I put on a Canva board. And I can assure you that doing that without actually thinking was really challenging and a bit tiring, but it was an interesting process and creative constraint. Then I picked, I think, about 30 images. I think there were 27. And while I was picking them, I created some kind of collage.

[7:26] At some point in this process of, you know, picking the image, copying the image, spacing the image, some sort of sentence which felt like a mantra or maybe an invitation came to mind. So I wrote it down and I put it on the board, on the Canva board. Then when I felt I was done with picking the images, I just said with the image, with the whole collage, right? Collage. And I looked at it and I tried to feel it. And then I let my mind come into play and do her work.

[8:12] So I started listing words or concepts, ideas, or themes that I was noticing while looking at my board. I listed what images felt recurring or similar and what themes were coming up for me.

[8:34] And then I jotted down the vibe. So this is what this was a mind-body collaboration to help me notice the vibe of the board and so I noticed I you know start to notice where I felt in the body and then I start to write down the words that were about that feelings and the vibes.

[9:07] And finally, since I noticed that I picked a lot of animals and a lot of flowers, I looked them up and I looked for information about symbolism or mythology with those kind of flowers or animals. And I started to jot down the themes that came up with those mythology, symbolism, etc. And so at the end, I created a refined list of themes. When I felt like I was done with this process, I started to ask myself a few questions to further clarify and define how to move forward. So clarify the vision, what I was envisioning, and some other aspects. I will tell you more about that in the reflection prompts, of course.

[10:08] Now I am going to share with you what came up for me. If you’re curious to hear it, I mean, I would be glad if you did. But if you’re not curious about that, you can skip ahead a few minutes and get into the process because I’m about to guide you into the process. So you can create your vision board or something completely different. But still you can start envisioning your new year. Okay, so what came up for me is that first of all, there are a lot of outdoors images and a lot of nature-based images. A lot of animals, a lot of trees, bodies of water, flowers. I think there’s just two indoors pictures, but most of them yeah almost all of them are outdoors and some of them look like portals and a vibe that I can feel is you know playfulness but also there are some darker images but there’s also a lot of light.

[11:25] There’s a sense of flow, of renewal of transformation and, There’s a sense of adventure too. And that mantra slash invitation that came up for me that I was telling you earlier is embrace the unknown, trust your energy, it will be fun. And I mean, tell my anxiety, but that’s okay. This is what came up for me and I want to trust it and trust my energy and my process. Overall, what I can feel and sense from the whole board, because this is the collage that gives me the vibe, not the single pictures, is some kind of adventurous, spontaneous situation. And that gave me a theme for my 2026 that is confident spontaneity.

[12:29] And I know that I really treasure spontaneity overall, but I tend not to be very confident in doing spontaneous things, if it makes sense. So this is probably both an intention, an invitation, and an encouragement for my own self. Working through the reflection prompts the questions helped me set a few pillars if you want so first of all i realized that the vibe that i want 2026 to have is adventurous creative spontaneous playful challenging because you know the darker images yet placid because there there There is a sense of, yeah, this feels, you know, embracing the unknown feels risky, but there’s some kind of everything will be okay feeling underlying. And then I realized that I will need a lot of organic messiness, just as nature, with a pinch of structure to, you know, preserve my mental health.

[13:49] And then I realized what I decided to call, because at first I was going for success measures, but then I decided to call them personal and professional well-being indicators.

[14:05] Longer, but it feels more aligned with me, with my core self.

[14:12] And so my indicators for well-being are that I want to feel creatively challenged. I want to feel emotion in a meaningful way. I want to feel regulated and supported. And I want to be the best coach I can be for current and future clients. And from there, I was wondering, okay, what can I do to have those things that I want to have next year? And what is the image telling me about the things that I can do, right? And so I listed a few behaviors and actions that are embracing the unknown, trusting my energy, connecting with nature, nurturing relationships, setting and maintaining healthy boundaries, and fostering playfulness. Because there’s a lot of playfulness in the picture. That’s an amazing squirrel and a hooded crow and a lot of things that feel playful. And finally, I ask myself, okay, those are my needs, my wants, and the behaviors and actions that I want to do.

[15:36] What are some things that I can do to support myself in doing them? And so I thought about reminders. So reminders of my vision and direction. So I created a sticky note and put it on my desk. I created a desktop widget on my laptop with the board image. And I’m not sure probably I will come up with some other reminders but reminders are always helpful above all because of what we were talking about earlier that thing that you end up focusing on the details and losing the bigger picture losing track of the bigger picture.

[16:23] And then I jotted down a few questions to use on Monday morning on a thing that I called the first day of work week ritual. So I said Monday, but I don’t always start my work week on a Monday because of various reasons. And so this is something that I plan to do when I come back to work after a break, any kind of break, a weekend or something else.

[16:54] And why I chose this moment, because I know that in those moments, what I do is sitting down and trying to refocus and regroup and understand what I’m here to do and what I want to do moving forward. So I created a template with a few questions I can ask myself about the thing that I mentioned earlier. So for example, I can ask myself if I have felt creatively challenged and how so, or if I have been the best coach I can and how so. Or I can set intentions asking myself, for example, how will I embrace the unknown this week? Or how will I foster playfulness this week? You know, I think you get the drill. So I created those two things, the reminders and the template for the first day of work week ritual, because I prefer ritual to routine. It resonates more.

[18:02] And I’m open to see how they will evolve or transform or how I will find new things that I can add here to support myself in moving forward towards that vision. Now, enough about me.

[18:21] Let’s talk about how you can craft your envisioning process. And feel free to pause to jot down notes or, you know, if you want to use this second section of the podcast as a mini workshop, just do that, please. Okay, so the first step that you need is finding your way to envision the upcoming months with a feel-first approach. So I use images. I use the visual approach because images work well for me. They work well in evoking feelings and other ideas and things like that. But if images don’t work for you, what about the other senses? What about here? So what about listening to musics or to songs or to sounds and picking some of them, the ones that you feel drawn to? What about the sense of touch? Touching textures, touching fabrics or feeling temperatures or sensations and then listen to them and, you know, noticing what they are telling you. Or what about the sense of smell?

[19:46] Perfumes, fragrances, some of them may come to mind or some of them you can go and research.

[19:56] You may smell flowers or go to a perfume shop or something like that and then notice what those things are telling you about the feelings that you want to evoke next year. And finally, the sense of taste. And of course, it is about food and drinks. Maybe you want to make some kind of recipe or make a cocktail or, I don’t know, a herbal tea or something like that. And what do the skin tell you about what you envision for yourself next year? What does the sense that you choose and the elements you choose are telling you? What words or concepts come to mind? what feelings are evoked, and what is the overall vibe. And then when you are done with this, you know, more exploratory phase, take some time to sit with the words, the concepts, the feelings, and the vibes that came up for you, and let them guide you while you reflect on some prompts that I am going to tell you. Okay, here are the five prompts that I used. What vibe or kind of energy do you want 2026 to have? What will you need?

[21:26] What do you want? What do you want to be? What do you want to do? How do you want to feel? What behaviors and actions will support you in honoring your needs and wants? And finally, what practices, systems, or tools will support you in this process? I am curious to hear what came up for you. I really would love to hear about, you know, your vibes, your themes and the words and the visions. So please feel free to email me or send me a SpeakPipe message, voice note through SpeakPipe. You will find the links in the show notes. And then if you want to further clarify your vision and your next steps, and you want to build trust in your inner guidance system to make aligned decisions and take action with confidence.

[22:28] Please reach out. I have new one-on-one coaching openings in January and I really would love to support you. So go ahead, check the show notes and book a call. We can have a complimentary clarity session together where you can explore how my coaching feels to you and see if that’s the right journey for you. Well, that’s it for today. That was a long one, right? Thank you so much for listening until this point. I’m looking forward to hearing from you. And in any case, we will talk soon. Bye.