Create Harmony

Capture And Release: Knowing What Belongs

• Sally

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When winter narrows the light and the world feels loud, we explore a simple, soulful approach to Winter Wellbeing. Think of it as a reset you can feel in your calendar, your space, and your breath.

We start by reframing winter as a teacher. Nature shows us how to let go of excess and hold what sustains—rest, nourishment, quiet. From there, we map out practical ways to live that wisdom: monthly and quarterly journal check-ins to notice what’s working and honest reviews to spot recurring patterns. Prefer visual tools? We share a playful take on vision boarding using a bingo-style grid that turns intention into small wins.

The conversation stays grounded and actionable. Along the way, we talk about choosing words like respite to shape the year, building cozy cues that invite rest, and listening for the themes that keep surfacing in your life. By the end, you’ll have a clear path to create margin, welcome gratitude, and feel tucked in through the darker months.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a quiet reset, and leave a quick review so others can find it. Your notes and stories help us shape future Winter Wellbeing guides—what will you keep and what will you release this season?

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to the Create Harmony Podcast, and you have found a place for settling into an intentional rhythm. And this is the kind of rhythm that helps us savor life's blessings, and we like to use our imagination as a way of listening to God. So if you are longing for bringing a little bit more stillness and a whole lot more gratitude into your everyday life, you're gonna find a lot here that you love. And if you enjoy being creative and having a little fun, there's a place for you here as well. In each episode, we'll take a few minutes to celebrate those everyday joys and just to remind ourselves to notice the goodness that's all around us. So this is episode 54, and I'm your host, Sally Burlington. So today we are continuing through the series that we do every winter. What we do in the wintertime here at Create Harmony is called Winter Well Being. And it's a series about supporting ourselves during this quieter, darker time of year. We really focus on nurturing our bodies. We try to tend to our inner lives, and we really find steadiness throughout our rhythms when the world feels loud and chaotic and conflict-oriented. So I've told you before, winter is not my best season. Life seems more sharp, and my focus tends to go to darker, more scary places in the winter. So if you have that same issue, then join us. Together, we will look for ways to feel tucked up and sheltered during these more harsh months. So our focus is going to be on things that are pleasant as well as things that are really restable and restorative. We want to reframe winter as a teacher, not an obstacle. So our first discussion today revolves around what I call capture and release. So we're going to tend to our inner lives a little bit today by reflecting on the things that we want to capture in our lives, what we want to hold on to and nurture and love, and the things that we need to release, things that do not serve us anymore, that are not important. We just let those go. Just like we see in nature, nature's released a lot of stuff for wintertime. Trees have lost their leaves, plants are dormant, the animals are less active. Even all of your senses are a little bit more subdued in the winter. You don't have bright colors, the colors are less vibrant, there's not a lot of things to smell, like you don't have blossoms blooming things in the to smell in the winter. So all those things have been released, yet winter also captures everything that nature needs to reboot and reset for spring growth. These are things like rest, things like nourishment. And that is exactly what the rhythm that we are trying to emulate. Winter captures those. So let's think about this concept for ourselves. Figuring out what we want to capture and release is it's a process. It's not like setting resolutions or getting new productivity goals going. This is more holistic. It's asking yourself what still belongs, but the yet also what needs to be let go. So I'm a big time self-reflection person. I like to journal. I have lots of different journals. I love nothing more than writing something down on a piece of paper in a journal. I keep my calendar in a digital format, but I have like planners and I use the word planner roughly, but it's more of a journal that is in a planner format. And they're pretty elaborate. This is a pretty elaborate process, but I this is my jam. I really love this kind of thing. At the end of one year, when we're trans transitioning from one year to the next, I really set aside time for reflection, for my setting my intentions for the new year, to consider what's working for me, what's no longer relevant. So I'm going to describe a little bit of my process in case any of that resonates with you. Now you may want, before I do that, I'm going to say you may want something much more simplistic, or maybe you just pick up on one idea and carry it into your own life. But I'm going to describe it for you and see if anything is helpful. So I've tried lots of different journals over the years, but what is currently working for me, the rhythm that currently works for me, is like a quarterly and monthly check-in. I have a journal that allows you to check in each month. And the kinds of things that you're asking yourselves are what's good that happened over the last month. It's gratitude. And also, what are the things on my mind? What's coming up next? What do I need to be looking forward to or planning for? And it does have some goal setting, some plans. Also with the quarterly check-ins, you set some intentions at the beginning of the year, and then quarterly you maybe look back and say, What did I want this year to be about? And am I holding to that? Am I aligning my and organizing my life in a way that makes sense with those types of intentions? So I do that throughout the months and the quarters. And I also have a daily journal that I write in more frequently. I can't do that. But listen, this is a place that I get more granular about my thoughts and my wishes, but I do not write in it every day. Sometimes days will go by, a week will go by. I won't write in it at all. And I don't worry about it at all. I just have found for myself that I like to have the format of being able to do a little longer writing or a little more um snapshot of each day writing throughout the year. And so this format gives me that option. I make it available to myself when it does make sense for me to use it. And I do not try to carry the guilt when I do not write in it. It's fine. I just move on. So that's my main process for capture and release. Another thing I do is sometimes I go back through sections of those journals briefly and review what I've written, particularly going back through the daily one, because sometimes when I'm writing in it day to day to day, I might not have picked up on a theme or an idea that's coming up routinely. And maybe I've missed that detail. And when I go back through them, I see, oh, okay, you know, this is something that keeps coming up for me. And I maybe I need to pay a little more special attention for that. Maybe the Holy Spirit's trying to tell me something through this daily journaling. And so I pay attention when I review back through. Again, that may not work for you, but maybe try one of one or two of those things and see what the what you think. If you think that might be too big of an idea for you, then what what about creating a vision board? This is a not a new idea. People have been doing it for years. It's I I usually teach a work of a vision board workshop at the beginning of the year. It's basically the way that I like to describe a vision board is not you're not gonna put a you know Ferrari on there and the next week you're gonna get a Ferrari. That's not how that works. What you're gonna do is put on the vision board things that you want to go toward. And it's just a visual reminder for your brain. This is what I want more of in my life, and I'm gonna put my focus on that. In the past couple of years, we've been doing a little bit of a different style of vision boarding. It's called vision board bingo, and you create like a grid, like a bingo grid on the on the card. I'm gonna be teaching a vision board bingo workshop at the end of January. But if you are not local and can't attend the workshop, then you could create one for yourself. I've been posting some examples on social media and we'll continue to do that. You just create a grid and you put in the grid things that you want to do, you know, read five books or run a 5k or whatever it is, something that it can be something that's not related to a five that you put on your bingo grid and then throughout the year you color in that box or check off that box. And this kind of works well. If you're a list person, if you like to check things off the list, you might try vision board bingo. So if all of that seems outside your box or overwhelming, you want a much simpler option. Just pick a word of the year, just pick one word that sort of aligns with what you want your intentions to be like for the year. Maybe write it on a post-it note and stick it on your mirror. Remind yourself, put a calendar reminder in June that this was the word you chose back in January, and that will, you know, maybe help you say, Oh yeah, that's what I wanted more of. Am I doing that? Let me check in with that and see. So last year, my words were cultivate and imagine. I couldn't choose just one, so I chose two. And cultivate was chosen because they were I wanted to be really consistent about the things that I was tending to or what I wanted to cultivate, habits that I wanted to cultivate in my life. And then imagine was there because I wanted to see more possibilities. And we were designing some things, imagining some things. We were designing our subscription boxes, we were building a pool, we reimagined our garden in the back. So I needed that creative energy of imagine so that it would um inspire me throughout the year. So this this year, my word is very different. My word for this year is respite. And the reason I chose respite is is because I've I'm releasing some things that I've been carrying and I need to rest and restore for myself. As well as I like to think about respite when I'm creating resources for other people. I want this podcast, the things that come in my newsletter, there's stuff that's in the subscription boxes, and even we're gonna be doing some mini retreats for local clergy. I want all of those spaces to create respite for others. So that word has a dual meaning for me for this year. But listen, you can customize this to your own life. Maybe you want a phrase, maybe you want a couple words, maybe you want a scripture verse that you want to align with throughout your year. Just choose one thing. Or maybe you want to choose a word every quarter or even every month. Whatever creates guardrails for how you want your life to feel, do that and and make it work for you. Another option for capture and release is spending some time this season doing some decluttering and some cleaning. Sometimes we like to think about spring cleaning. You know, that's the season that we open up our houses and we feel like we clear out the dust and the stagnant energy from the winter time. But for me, spring is a really busy season. So that's not really the time that it makes the most sense for me to do as much decluttering because I've got a lot of the other things going on. In the winter, when I'm inside a lot and not as much is going on, that really is the time that I want to release the things that no longer serve me. So you might consider doing some deeper dives into organization and decluttering your office, maybe your vanity where you keep your personal care items. Just think through some places you could organize. And I've I've given this tip before, but I always give this a tip for organizing that if you you might want to consider stocking up on just one item of everything you use regularly. And this is like your toothpaste, your deodorant, maybe a little cold medicine during cold and flu season. Just have one backup on hand so that if you're having a really crazy week, your kids have got the flu, you've got to go on a work trip, you don't then run out of deodorant and think, oh gosh, I got to go to the store too. You've got at least one backup. You don't need to go to a big box store and get, you know, 200 rolls of paper towels. You can do that if you want, but you don't need to do that. Just need to have one backup on hand. And then when you pull that backup and use it, then the next time you go to the store, you just add that to your list so that you've given yourself a little bit of margin. And so this is a good time of year to consider what are my things, you know. Do I need more trash bags? Do I need more laundry detergent, whatever it is, and have uh enough on hand so that you're not back against the wall on it on a busier day. So that will be those are some awesome good ideas of how you can capture what's important and then what could be released as we transition into our new year. So now, speaking of transition, we're gonna go to our closing and we're gonna have a mindful moment. We're gonna breathe together and really set some intentions for this winter season. So, as we always do when we transition to our mindful moment, we want to shift our energy, settle yourself down a little, get ready for a little moment of stillness. I try to remind you if you feel yourself holding any tension, you can release that right now. Sometimes just thinking about it, you realize, oh, I'm holding something there. I can go ahead and release that. And we're gonna breathe together. This is a breath of exercise. We will be taking three deep breaths. So all you have to do is follow my lead. So now you're gonna inhale, and as you do that, you're gonna say to yourself, I receive peace. And then when you exhale, you say, I let go of hurry. Now your second inhale, I welcome peace. And your exhale, I release guilt and shame. And now your third inhale, I embrace peace. And then exhale, I surrender restlessness. May it be so thanks so much for joining us for today's second installment of our current winter well-being series. Please come back next week to get a little bit more winter well-being going. Hopefully, you'll be tuning in to our whole series and lift your spirits in the winter. Now, before we go, speaking of lift your spirits, I want to remind you of something that's available right now, and that's our seasonal subscription boxes. This is a collaboration with Petal and Pink, our local mental wellness boutique. And we've created four boxes. They're quarterly. So right now, what's on sale is our winter box, which has the theme of cozy time. And if you get this box, let me tell you what you're gonna get in there. You're gonna get a link to five guided audio experiences. These are kind of like meditations, but it's a little bit more of an immersive experience where you are listening to my voice to calm your body and you're picturing yourself sitting beside the fire or drinking a cup of tea. And it's just very restorative and calming and makes you feel safe and secure and tucked up in your cozy layer. So that's in the box, five different ones. You have a link for that, as well as gift items or other mental wellness items that help reinforce the experience. So in our cozy time winter box, there's a really cute mug that you can use if you cup your hand down in it, and then a candle making kit that you can make a beautiful candle to enliven your senses. There's some cozy socks, just all sorts of neat things to restore your soul and settle your mind. Now, that I said earlier that's quarterly, so the cozy time one is for the winter, and then there'll be one in the spring all about refreshing your life, feeling spring energy, and then there's one in the summer and then one in the fall. So so much to look forward to. If that sounds interesting to you and you want to know more, you can go to mycreateharmony.com. And if you want to participate in the Vision 4 Bingo workshop in your local to North Carolina, also MycreateHarmony.com, you can check that out and register today. So thank you again for joining in. We hope you'll come back next week. Until next time, peace.

Contributor

Sally Burlington

Host