S3 Ep10 WINTERSONG: Gratitude + dreaming

Here we are completing another circle around the sun. We have clambered across the fabric of another year, stitched together adventures, stories, and memories, darned some holes as neatly as we could, knotted threads of new colour into our lives, and we are now here at the edge looking back across all we have woven in the past twelve months. 

This is a wonderful time to focus on gratitude, to reflect on the year gone by, choose what to leave behind in this year, do some gentle dreaming for the year ahead and cross the threshold of the year together, with hope, dreams and a steaming cup of tea.

This episode includes: 

• Tips for dreaming and scheming for the year ahead
• An exclusive excerpt from my new book Kokoro: Japanese wisdom for a life well lived (out April 2024)
• New Year traditions from around the world (from lovely listeners!)
• A craft project for gratitude
• Our nature corner
• A writing prompt
• Some lovely words to ease you into the new year
• PLUS A lovely giveaway (enter on my Instagram @bethkempton)

·      With inspiration from: @SimpleThingsMag, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Emily Thomas and James Weston Lewis, Lindsey Harrad @livemoreplantfully, Brenda Wells, Emily Silva @soulsadventures, Max Ehrmann

Handy links:

·      Sky View app

·      StarWalk 2 app

·      Thompson-Morgan gardening newsletter

·      My Book Proposal Masterclass course (next class runs live from Jan 29)

·      The Way of the Fearless Writer: Ancient Eastern wisdom for a flourishing writing life  by Beth Kempton (Piatkus) – just 99p on Kindle on Amazon UK throughout January

This week’s giveaway

·      Chance to win a lovely journal and a personalized signed copy of my book Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year over on @bethkempton on Instagram

Click here for all show notes including featured books.

Wishing you a very happy new year, friend.
Beth Xx

Transcript

So much can happen in a year, in a life time, in a day. Even after all this contemplation of time—linear time, seasonal time, Dо̄gen’s time—it is still a strange, unfathomable thing. Time expands and shrinks depending on the intensity of our activity, and seems to be suspended completely in moments of devastation and in moments of bliss. But mostly the world keeps turning, the sun and moon keep rising, and life goes on, while our sorrow and joy and hope and memories live on too. 

Our grief goes on. The alchemising of our grief goes on. Our unfolding, unbecoming, returning, goes on. I’m not done shedding ash, slowing, listening. This is also kokoro work. Part of my life’s work. And tending to it is the ultimate self-care. 

The past year hasn’t made me stronger, it has just made me realise that I was already stronger than I knew. The taller I stood in my vulnerability, the longer the shadow of strength that fell behind me.

We have agency, but we are not in control. We have to take risks, and love deeply, and soak up the sweetness of life wherever we can because we never know how long we have. The only thing we know for sure, in any given moment, is this:

We are here. We are alive. We are the lucky ones. 

Each morning we wake up we have the chance to remind ourselves, ‘I get to have this day.’ We don’t know how many more times we will get to do this. Maybe thousands, maybe just hundreds, maybe only a few more times. 

Doing-time or being-time. Wasting time or making time. We get to choose.

I know what I’m choosing. More love. More laughter. More life lived in the awareness of the wildness and magnificence of all of it, right here, right now. How about you?

Welcome to the Calm Christmas Podcast, Series 3, Episode 10: WINTERSONG – Gratitude and reflection. I am your host Beth Kempton and those were a few words there from my new book Kokoro: Japanese wisdom for a life well lived, which will be published on April 4, 2024. You can pre-order it now, just sayin’.

Here we are just completing another circle around the sun. We have clambered across the fabric of another year, stitched together adventures, stories, and memories, darned some holes as neatly as we could, knotted threads of new colour into our lives, and we are now here at the edge looking back across all we have woven in the past twelve months. 

This is a wonderful time to focus on gratitude, to reflect on the year gone by, choose what to leave behind in this year and cross the threshold of the year together, with hope, dreams and a steaming cup of tea.

Today I thought I’d share some tips from my book Wabi Sabi: Japanese wisdom for a perfectly imperfect life, to help you with your dreaming and scheming:

 Accepting that everything is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete is not an 
 excuse to throw caution to the wind and avoid any kind of planning. For me, the 
 opposite is true. Smart scheduling can help us prioritise what really matters, 
 make more space in our lives for experiencing beauty and ensure we are making 
 the most of our lives. 

 How to plan for more perfect moments
A well-lived life is a constant dance between dreaming and doing. The important 
thing here is not to obsess about perfect planning. You cannot know what is 
around the corner, so overplanning can lead to unnecessary stress when things 
change. It’s about making a few key decisions so you don’t lose your days to the 
whims of others.

 Part A: the brain dump
You will need: sticky notes, several large sheets of paper and a pen.
1. Gather every single notebook/diary/list/note/reminder that is currently 
active as a way of reminding you to do things.
2. On several large sheets of paper, write a heading for each of the key areas 
of your life: Family, Work, Hobbies, Health, Friends, Finances, Home, etc.
3. Go through each of your to-do lists/reminders/diary/notebooks in turn 
and write one item you need 'to do' on one sticky note, then stick it under 
the most relevant area. Repeat this for every single item on every single 
one of your to-do lists/reminders, writing down any and every task that 
requires time and attention from you. This may take a while.
4. When you've finished, make some notes about which areas of your life 
have the most 'to-do' items. What does that tell you? Are there any 
surprises?

 Part B: the possibilities
Now imagine your life five years from now, at a point where you feel content and 
inspired. (We cannot know the timeline of any of our dreams, but this exercise can help make important decisions to take you in their direction.) Make notes 
using the following prompts:
· How old are you?
· Where are you living?
· What are you doing?
· What do you look forward to each day?
· When things are going really well, how do you feel?
· What are you grateful for?
 
 

Part C: the shift
In order to make that dream a possibility, change is inevitable. Use the questions 
below to help you identify what kind of changes might be involved:
· What needs to be different by this time next year in order for that dream 
to be even a remote possibility several years from now?
· How would you like to describe yourself a year from now?
· How would you like to describe your home a year from now?
· How would you like to describe your work life a year from now?
· How would you like to describe your finances a year from now?
· What would you like to have created a year from now?
 
 

Part D: the prioritizing 
In my experience, the single-most important shift you can make to soulfully 
simplify your schedule is to think in terms of projects, not tasks. A project is 
something that has a defined beginning and end. An example might be ‘Career 
Change Project’, ‘Write My Book Project’ or ‘Wedding Project’. It is a way of 
focusing your attention on something that really matters to you. Choose a 
maximum of five projects that you want to bring to life in the next twelve months. 
You don’t have to start them all at the same time, and they can be spread over the 
twelve months. 

 Part E: the realignment 
Now get five fresh pieces of paper, and write each of your projects as the heading 
this time. Go back to your sticky notes and reallocate them onto your project 
sheets. You may be shocked at how many sticky notes you have left unassigned, 
showing just how committed you are to things that have nothing to do with the 
life you want to be living. 

 Part F: a new way of planning 
Make a plan to finish, delegate or forget about any of the to-do items that do not 
fit with your principal projects. For ongoing household chores and other such 
responsibilities, it can help to bundle them and then go through them all at once. 
For example, in my house we deal with all our household finances twice a month.
Then revise your weekly schedule to ensure that you are spending a significant 
amount of your time working on the projects that really matter to you. Instead of 
trying to squeeze your dreams in around the edges, diarise your projects first, 
and plan everything else around that.

I hope you will approach your planning gently, knowing that we are still deep in winter, in hibernation mode, and you don’t have to DO all the things your plan requires now. That is what spring is for. Enjoy luxuriating in the idea of it for now. And while you do that, why not make a ‘could do’ list for these slower days?

This is inspired by the regular feature in the gorgeous Simple Things Magazine. Here’s an example from an old winter issue:

Have a baking day and fill your biscuit tin with homemade treats.

Pull on some thick wool socks and go for a welly walk with toasty toes.

Spend an afternoon listening to a talking book and remember the joy of a grown-up reading you a story.

Claim an early night and retire to bed with a big cup of tea and the radio, before 9pm.

I wonder what might be on your list?

Craft

-       I have two craft suggestions for you this week – firstly why not make a Gratitude board – like a reverse visionboard. Capture your year on a board and take some time to be thankful for it.

Speaking of gratitude I would like to take a moment to thank you not just for listening, but for getting in touch after listening and sharing what this podcast has meant for you. I have received so much love in DMs, emails and even in the post, and it has been a real joy. If you have left a review or a rating THANK YOU, it really helps other discover the podcast. And if you haven’t done that yet, please do. Five starry stars would be nice. I appreciate it so much.

-       And then the second project is to decorate a notebook to hold your dreams for the year ahead.

I don’t know about you but I am a lot less about the parties these days. I prefer to get an early night on New Year’s Eve and wake early, welcoming the year with a candle, my notebook and a crisp walk as the sun rises.

I do love bells though. And I love these words from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem Ring Out, Wild Bells, which you can find in Favorite Poems for Christmas: A Child’s Collection.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Oh yes, ring out the false, ring in the true. Absolutely. Let’s take a look at some of our traditions for New Year from around the world.

When I was little we used to go outside on New Year’s Eve carrying saucepans and wooden spoons and bang them together on the stroke of midnight. I grew up in the port town of Southampton, where the Titanic left from, and we would always hear the fog horn of the QE2 or other cruise ships docked in the port, blasting through the sky as the year turned. There was something about the ships’ calling that felt like a call to adventure, the promise of a big wide world out there beyond the sea.

Here are a couple of traditions lovely listeners have shared.

Michele Devries @devriesmies We used to live in Peru when I was little and since then we’ve held on to the tradition of eating twelve grapes at midnight on New Year’s Eve - each of them representing one of the months to come and bringing good luck. 
 Even now with my own (adult) kids we still hold on to this lovely and funny tradition (cause, try to get 12 grapes in quickly at Midnight to start off the New Year!) 

@victoriaverses I grew up in the North West of England. One of my favourite traditions was actually a New Year one that I learnt from my grandparents one memorable year when we stayed with them. It was so exciting, our parents were out at a party and we got to sleepover and stay up til midnight. When we got to the big moment, Grandma got us all togged up in our warm clothes and sent us out the back door. We were carrying salt, bread and coal as good omens for the New Year. Grandad in his flat cap led us up the garden and out of the back gate. We walked round the estate to come out at the front of the house. We knocked on the door as the clock chimed midnight and Grandma welcomed us back in with kisses and treats. There's a photo of us all standing on the doorstep and it's absolutely gorgeous. The joy on our faces as we looked at Grandma and wished her Happy New Year! I've since learnt that in Scotland this ritual is called "first footing", and that the salt is to bring flavour, bread so we'll never be hungry, and coal so we'll always be warm. I insist we do this every single year now, and I send my husband out, grumbling, into the night. My son will be seven this year and I'm hoping he makes it to midnight so I can take that same photo.

Nature corner

It’s time for our nature corner. Your invitation this week is stargazing. This is a time of dark skies, bright stars, shining moon, and because the air holds less moisture in the cold winter than in summer here in the northern hemisphere, skies are often clearer. 

According to The Wild Handbook by Emily Thomas and James Weston Lewis (Studio Press) “The sky is a kind of doorway to infinite Space and, contemplating this, we start to feel humbled. Each of us is important individually, of course, but we are also all part of a vast universe. Remembering this, as we turn our faces up to the sky, reminds us that we are part of the collective human race, each of us bringing something unique to life on earth. For a brief time, we can let go of the need to control what happens in our lives. Stargazing encourages acceptance and a community spirit – it quite literally helps us see the bigger picture.” 

I am obsessed with astro apps like Sky View and StarWalk 2. You can just point your phone at the sky and it draws a picture of which constellation you are seeing, as well as pointing out planets. If you point your phone at the ground it tells you what constellations are in the sky on the other side of the world, just amazing.

Prepare yourselves with warm clothes, hot drink, a fully charged phone and perhaps some stories for a magical evening outdoors!

And for your garden… Here are some tips from the Thompson-Morgan gardening newsletter

Plant tulips and daffodils as late as the end of January! This way, they’ll develop roots through the spring, and bloom later than usual. 

Keep in mind that bulbs planted in late January may have smaller blooms. On the other hand, planting bulbs in the winter can have a protective effect on bulbs. The ground will freeze faster after planting, which protects bulbs from hungry squirrels! 

Tips to Planting Bulbs in Winter 

Here are some things to keep in mind if you’re planting bulbs in late winter or early spring. 

• Improve your chances of bulbs blooming early and robustly by covering them in plastic and chilling them in the refrigerator until they sprout. (This process can take up to three months.) These bulbs can be planted in late spring. 
• Don’t let snow scare you off from planting bulbs. You can brush the snow away and dig – the ground is only frozen on the surface. 
• Can’t plant your bulbs right away after buying them? Store them in a cool, dry place. Submerging them in water will prevent them from drying out.

I also wanted to share some ‘indoor plantspiration’ with you from the wonderful book Living Plantfully by Lindsey Harrad. Lindsey actually took my Book Proposal Masterclass a while back, so it was lovely to hold this book in my hands. Here is some inspiration from it:

And so we come towards the end of this final episode for the year. Let’s take in a lovely poem by Brenda Wells from her book Seasons of Poetry, called New Year’s Eve. I would like to dedicate this to my mum, for her advance help in preparing this season of the podcast for you. It must have been difficult for her to know that she would not be there to hear it, but what an absolute joy it has been to spend this time with her spirit and memory, and with you and the memories of your loved ones, as we approached this Christmas together. Here’s the poem:

And here are a few words from Sunrise Gratitude by Emily Silva, under the entry for December 31.

And on that note I offer you our final writing exercise of the year. 

Writing exercise

-       This is actually one of the exercises from my book The Way of the Fearless Writer, which is actually just 99p for the Kindle edition on Amazon UK for the whole of January, so be sure to get yourself a copy. 

-       It is a simple one from the beginning of the book, and invite you to respond to it as the person you are today, as the person you hope you are becoming, or as a fictional person, if you have dreams of writing a novel in the year ahead. Are you ready? Here it is.

Empty your pockets or your bag for me. Show me what you carry. Tell me a story about that.

Giveaway

GIVEAWAY! This week’s giveaway encourages a moment of quiet reflection as we move into a new year. I am giving away a lovely journal along with a personalized, signed copy of my book Wabi Sabi: Japanese wisdom for a perfectly imperfect life. You can enter over on Instagram @bethkempton. Good luck!

What’s coming up

Coming up:

-       Surprise! One more special episode of this season, Episode 11 FAREWELL WINTER. I realized that 2024 is a leap year, so we have a February 29, and on that day I am going to release a very special bonus episode to bid farewell to winter and welcome the spring. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to make sure it pops up when it is released.

-       You can join my free #tinywinterpoem poetry challenge coming up on Instagram @bethkempton in early January, and throughout January my book The Way of the Fearless Writer is just 99p for the Kindle edition on Amazon UK. It includes fifty original writing exercise, so that’s less than 2p each plus an entire book to help you become a fearless writer. Don’t miss that!

-       For those of you who have a dream of writing a book, which I know is many, I am offering a FREE mini workshop on How to Get a Book Deal this January. Go to dowhatyouloveforlife.com to sign up or click on the link in the show notes.

-       And if you have enjoyed the seasonality of this podcast, and our explorations into this unfolding adventure we call life, then be sure to come and subscribe to my Substack at bethkempton.substack.com where I will be sharing essays on the turning seasons, the writing life, and navigating transitions as we go through this human adventure. All of that is free over on bethkempton.substack.com.

If you have listened to previous seasons of the podcast you will know that one of my own new year traditions is to read aloud the Desiderata by Max Ehrmann ©1927. I wrote this out in my finest calligraphy when I was a teenager, and framed it and gave it to my parents for Christmas. It still hangs in my dad’s kitchen three decades later, and I think it is some of the most grounded, beautiful advice I have ever read. So let’s soak it in one more time, as we head towards the new year together.

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Wishing you joy, adventure, and unexpected blessings in the year ahead. I will see you again on February 29, for our leap year Farewell Winter special, but until then, take good care my friend. Thank you, for walking this path towards the year end with me. You have been such good company.

You have been listening to The Calm Christmas Podcast with me, Beth Kempton, produced by Untapped Talent. 

If you have enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe so you get notified when it returns.

In the meantime, come and find me on Instagram @bethkempton or on Substack @bethkempton.substack.com.

Stay warm and cosy my friend – this is the season of hibernation remember. Wishing you a happy new year, and all sorts of goodness in the year ahead.