Soft Start, Strong Year

The first week buzz fades, the checklists get loud, and that old pressure creeps back in. We hit pause and flip the script: what if softening created more momentum than pushing ever did? We unpack why self-imposed urgency quietly drains your energy and how presence, clarity, and tiny steps can carry you further than any 30-day sprint.

We start by separating your voice from the world’s shoulds, tracing each resolution to the emotion underneath it—peace, pride, belonging, freedom. When you can feel a slice of that state now, your nervous system stops bracing and starts cooperating. From there, we redesign your habits to be friction-light and sustainable: ten minutes of stretching instead of a 5 a.m. overhaul, five minutes of writing to seed a bigger creative practice, a simple evening walk that nourishes connection and health. These small, honest moves compound into durable change because they are aligned with what you truly value.

Softening is not quitting; it’s clearing the static so real guidance can surface. We explore how to release goals that never belonged to you, listen for what’s genuinely tugging at your attention, and allow ease to become a strategy instead of a reward you keep postponing. Along the way, we offer practical prompts to clarify what you want this year and why, helping you shift from performance to presence and from comparison to choice.

If you’re tired of white-knuckling your way into burnout, this conversation gives you permission—and a plan—to try softer, move smaller, and go farther. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a gentler reset, and leave a review to tell us which tiny action you’ll take this week.

If you are looking for personalized support you can book an Alignment Mapping Session with me. https://jess-hook.kit.com/products/alignment-mapping-session

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Chapters

• 0:00 New Year Without The Rush
• 4:13 Why Pressure Backfires
• 6:43 Presence Over Comparison
• 9:08 Clarifying Values And True Goals
• 12:08 Is The Goal Yours Or Theirs
• 14:43 Releasing Self-Induced Pressure
• 17:28 Tiny Actions That Remove Friction
• 20:33 Feel It Now Without Forcing
• 23:23 Softening As A Path To Healing
• 26:33 Let Ease Guide Sustainable Change
• 29:53 Closing Reflections And Intentions

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:23

Hello, hello, happy new year, welcome back. I hope you all had the exact holiday that you needed to have, and I trust that it was. I love that I am getting to this first episode of the year more than a week in because this is the time that the proverbial wheels start to come off of our New Year's goals, our resolutions, our intentions. And this couldn't be the better, a better episode to listen to, if that's where you are right now. To be quite honest. And really, no matter where you are, whether you are like going full steam ahead on your goals and resolutions and intentions this year, beautiful, wonderful. Whether you're like, oh my gosh, I haven't even started them. I haven't been motivated. I haven't gotten into doing the things that I've wanted to, beautiful, wonderful, right? Whether you are, you've started and stopped, whether, you know, wherever you are, wherever you are, you are okay. You are in the right spot. That is, that is like, let's just start there and take a deep breath. Like there, there is, there is no race to be won here, folks. Okay. And this whole episode, we are really diving into why in the hell we think that putting so much pressure on ourselves is the thing that we think is going to put some fire under our butt and get us into action. Because I don't know about you, but that has never worked for me. For years and years, I have tried to, you know, January 1, I'm gonna be suddenly become the best version of myself without even understanding what that means, right? On January 1st, I'm gonna get back on track, right? Like all this, these like stupid words and phrases that when you slow down and think about them long enough, they make absolutely no sense whatsoever. And they don't matter. So we're just gonna like dive into all of that, and then we're gonna talk about what actually supports you, what actually changes the game on how you are able to show up consistently in a way that feels sustainable, in a way that feels like it's actually nourishing to you and not going to completely overwhelm and deplete you, because those are the things that matter. Those are the things that last. Because when we think about, especially if we have habits that we want to adopt, right? Those are the things, the daily and consistent small things that you do are going to compound over time. All right. Okay, we'll get into that more later. We we don't need to jump right in there. But let's just start, let's just take a breath because I feel like that's like what I want to do. So just yeah, just take a breath. Take two if you need. Again, just remembering that wherever you are in your journey in this moment is exactly where you need to be. Remembering that coming back into presence, into our own resonance, into our own coherence, right? That is more powerful than anything you push through or exude so much force and effort in trying to do. Okay, that presence wins every time. Okay, so wherever you are, it's your journey and it's okay, right? We can let go of the pressure of comparing our journey to anyone else's, right? We don't know what they have come here to this human experience to learn, right? To create, to do. We don't know the path that is unfolding for them. We don't even know the path that is unfolding for us. So let's stop comparing and just start accepting and being with what is. And that really is the energy that I hope you bring to this year. And ironically, what you will be delighted and surprised to find and experience and witness for yourself is that through softening, through letting go of some of this pressure, through giving yourself permission to really slow down and ask, is this what I really want? Is this what nourishes me? Why am I doing this? Why do I even have this goal? Right? Getting really clear on your own values, what you want, the path you want to walk. In doing that, you light a spark inside of you. And I say light, and then it's like not quite quite the right word because that light is always there. It's like, it's like you you have to stoke it a little bit, right? It's it's dwindled a little bit, but it never completely goes out. But in holding space and allowing for some breath and some you know air to stoke that flame, something new is re-ignited within you, and that will sustain you in a way that you have never experienced before, and that is the magic. That is the magic, like end of story, no doubt. Okay. So let's just start with getting really thoughtful and intentional about what are your goals this year, right? What are the intentions that you have? What are the resolutions that you've set? Okay. And what is the energy that you're coming into this year with, right? Is it an energy of, I need to get this done. I need to make this happen, right? If I don't lose those 20 pounds, blah, blah, blah. Right? Like get really honest with yourself. Like now is the time to do it, right? It doesn't matter where you are in again, where you are in your journey of this goal, resolution, et cetera. Okay. Now is the time to get really clear about what it is that you actually want. The energy with the current transits that are happening. This is not a transit episode, an astrological transit episode. So I'm not going to go super deep into it. But this is the energy of really allowing what wants to come up. Okay. We're going to move into some really fiery energy, but that fiery energy that is to come is really in support of your highest path forward. And all of this is related to that. Okay. So get really clear. Do you let's just I love using weight loss as an example. I know I talk about it all the time. I feel like it's just easy to resonate with. And I think it's like where my own personal journey started with all this. So again, it's relatable for me. But it's like, do you want to lose five pounds, 10 pounds, 20 pounds because like you actually want to? Or do you feel like if you lose that weight, any amount of weight, you will somehow fit into some like view that society has on you, right? You will somehow be more liked. You will somehow be prettier. And being prettier, maybe is more liked, more desired, right? Like, I mean, these examples can be so layered and so nuanced. And I don't mean this to overwhelm you, but I really want you to spend the time getting crystal clear on what you want, because the whole thing about softening and surrendering to the flow of life and allowing yourself to slow down is really truly to allow whatever wants to come to the surface to be seen so that it can be released, so that you can move forward in a way that feels much truer to you, right? Because when we put all of these expectations on ourselves to, again, whatever these resolutions are that you have, are they true? Like so frankly and honestly, are they true for you? Or are they still to fit some outside expectation that you have now put the pressure on yourself to try to achieve, right? That never works. I I just it it might hurt to hear that, but it really just doesn't. It it doesn't work. And it's also part of whatever you're here to learn and experience through, right? And and you will do that in your own timing. But if you want to like pass through some of the timing, spend the time now to get really crystal clear on what you actually want and why you want it. Okay. Maybe you don't know what you actually want yet, but there's something that you want now. Do you actually want it? Why do you want it? What is like the deeper things coming up around that? Okay. And then start to question it all, right? Oh, I get to choose, right? I get to choose the things that I want, not because the media, Instagram, uh, friends, social networks, et cetera, et cetera, tell me that this is who I need to be. This is what I need to look like. This is what I should do. 2026 is the year that we are moving beyond that crap. Okay. Because you're not here to live a life that looks good to someone else. No one else is living that life for you. You are. Okay. So again, getting really clear on if none of that mattered, if I actually felt good enough in my own skin, in my own body, in my own life, in my own relationships, in my own whatever it may be, how am I then moving from that place? That is where I want you to be. Because from that place, the pressure releases, right? And we realize that okay, now I'm already someone who loves my body. I am already someone who loves myself, right? From that place, there's not the pressure to perform, right? I don't need to lose an additional 10 pounds, 20 pounds, whatever it may be. But from that place, I show up for myself in a way that feels good and nourishing to me. And there's this, I think there's this fear that exists where, oh my gosh, if there, if I'm not putting this pressure on myself, then I'm not gonna do it. And that's just, it's such a lie. It's such a lie. Because I know in my own experience, time and time again, around a gazillion different examples, when I put pressure on myself, I it exhausts me. It completely exhausts me and overwhelms me. And I and I just I can't show up, right? I can't show up under that pressure, right? Pressure is good and pressure works when we are in a situation where we're like, oh crap, I need to like get into action, right? I love this story. My my great-grandparents, they they had a house that caught fire, and they had one of those huge, like deep freezers. You know, they lived in the rural mountains of West Virginia, and so that was their livelihood. That was the meat that they hunted. Um, they had a small farm, so I'm sure it was meat from animals on their farm, fish they had caught, right? There was a lot of work that they had put into getting the food in that deep freezer. Their life depended on it. There wasn't a grocery store five minutes down the road that they could just go to. Also, they were super poor, they couldn't afford to. So these two people during this fire lifted the deep freezer and carried it out of their home. When the firefighters arrived, they put out the fire and they went to lift this deep freeze. They could not do it. They could not understand how two people lifted this deep freezer out of their house. That is where pressure kicks in and it's like gives us superpowers in a different way. But most of us aren't living with that amount of pressure, right? If we are, or if we think we are, or if we feel like we are, it is self-induced. And self-induced pressure is very different. Self-induced pressure is like that background noise, that's like this slow burn. It's so heavy, it's exhausting, it's overwhelming, it doesn't stop. And unfortunately, we have all, it's like that tiny voice, like that inner critic, right? And we have all been living with this pressure that we have put on ourselves for so long that we don't even realize we're doing it anymore. We don't realize how like intrinsic and sneaky it shows up in our day because we've been doing it for far too long. It just becomes normal. Okay. And it feels really scary to try something different, right? Like it feels really scary to listen to what I'm saying and trust that maybe if you take the pressure off, you actually will achieve your goals. Like that feels really scary, and I get it. So you can start small, right? Like, don't listen to what I'm saying. Try it on for yourself. I kind of learned this by accident, right? Like I just, I don't know, kind of fell into it. Um, sometimes it gets so bad that you surrender and there's nothing else you can do except take the pressure off, right? Like there's all these different ways to get there, and you'll get there when you get there. And maybe it'll be now after you hear this. I don't know. Again, your timing and there's no judgment there, right? So once you quiet that background noise and you take the pressure off, you're no longer exhausted and overwhelmed. And like I it's like you've created room to actually do the thing that you want to do. And you know, it's kind of like almost hard to describe because again, I know for myself for years and years and years, it was like January 1st. I was always gonna like, you know, start having this workout routine. I was gonna work out 30 minutes every day and I was gonna eat, blah, blah, blah. Like, and it just never worked because I was exhausted before I even started. Right. I didn't want to do it. It sounded like a chore. And who wants to do chores? I sure as heck don't. Right. So we have to like trick ourselves into having more fun. And the way we trick ourselves into having more fun is by just taking the pressure off, right? And again, the pressure, the pressure gets taken off when we we start to understand that we were the only ones putting it on ourselves in the first place. We realize, like, oh, I can actually have what I want now. So let's move into that part because having what we want now gets very confusing. And if we if we don't get this, we'll we'll miss the whole point. So there's a lot of this talk in manifestation about, you know, like live like you have what you want now. And that's really confusing for people because, you know, they're like, well, I don't have, I don't know, the house that I want now. I don't have the job that I want now, right? It's not the thinking that you have the thing that you want, right? That's it's too concrete and your brain's not gonna get there. There's something below what it is that you think you want, right? So you think it's the house or the job or the different body, right? But what is below that? It's different for all of us, but below that is going to be an emotion, right? It's gonna be, I'm gonna feel at peace, I'm gonna feel um like I belong, I'm gonna feel like I made it, like all of these things, whatever that looks like for you. And then I want you to go a little bit deeper because even that can be hard to get to, right? If you've never felt proud of yourself, it's gonna be really hard to start to pretend that you're proud of yourself. If you've never felt enough, it's gonna be really hard to pretend that you feel enough. Okay, you you understand where I'm going here. So this is then then the the third piece, and this is where I think it actually gets really easy, which is what I love, is below all of that, right? You have everything that you want, you feel the way you want to feel. Now, what's left, right? The pressure has left. Okay, there's no more pressure to try to do something or have something because you're already that, right? You've already done all the things. There, there's like this release of like, oh, I don't have to like force it so much anymore. That's where I want you to get to, right? And and we can get to that spot because we can simply say, I trust how things are unfolding. I trust where things are going. I'm showing up in a way that feels really nourishing. I'm allowing myself to be connected to the flow of life. Again, don't take my word for it. Try it on. For yourself, right? And there are super easy ways to do this, right? Say you have had a weight loss or health fitness goal this year, right? It feels really daunting, or it can feel really daunting to be like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna get up at five and I'm gonna do this like 30-minute workout and yada yada, right? And you're like, oh my God, I already feel exhausted. I already know I don't want to get up at five, right? So how could you take the pressure off a little bit? Maybe you just stop with the the 5 a.m., right? Say, I'm gonna get up 10 minutes before I would normally get up, and I'm gonna do three push-ups. I'm gonna stretch. I'm going to do five sit-ups, right? Like, think of literally the smallest thing you can do. Or maybe for you, even that feels like too much pressure or like there's some background noise of pressure. So maybe for you, you just like forget that altogether. Maybe you sit and you're like, what actually feels like the most nourishing thing for me when there's no longer this pressure to even work out, right? Or even change my body. Like if I'm already just so healthy and so happy and so in love with myself, like what feels good to me in the morning, right? Maybe it's like getting up a little bit early to sit on your couch and enjoy your tea in quiet and maybe read a book a little bit or journal. Maybe that actually feels more nourishing and there's no pressure around that. Do that thing, right? Maybe it's, you know what, what feels best for me is actually gonna be going for a walk after dinner with my family. Do that thing. Okay. So you can experiment with this in different ways because what happens is your body no longer is like gonna sabotage you because it feels really scary to like do this new thing that they do that your body doesn't want to do anyway, right? So the second you take the pressure off, it's like the body can get on board with it. And the second your nervous system gets on board with what you want to create, that's when things start to happen, right? So now it's the next day and your alarm goes off 10 minutes before you would normally get up. Don't even get your workout clothes on. Just say, you know what? I'm just gonna roll out of bed, I'm gonna sit on my yoga mat, and I'm gonna stretch, right? Maybe that will lead to something else. Maybe that will lead to, you know what, this stretching feels really good. Let me do a few crunches, let me do a few push-ups, right? It's so easy once you're already doing the thing. All right. And again, this can look a million different ways for you in whatever goal you have, right? Maybe you have a writing goal, right? Whether you want to write a book or you want to start a blog this year or whatever it is. You don't have to do it all right now. Say I'm gonna do something for five minutes. Sit down and do it. Maybe you don't even have an idea. Who cares? Just punch the the letters on the keypad, right? And it's like the act of doing that without the pressure of it needing to be anything other than what it is, is literally the thing that shifts everything. And again, try it on for yourself. Don't take my word for it. Okay, I want to move on to talk about softening in a way that supports healing. Because again, when we put the pressure on ourselves to perform and push through and force, and it clouds our like mental thinking, it clouds what needs to be experienced in this moment, and this is such an important piece, and it's really it they kind of work in tandem, and sometimes you have to give yourself permission to surrender and soften first, and then the release of the pressure comes because sometimes we don't see, or I should say we can't see, like we can't access what is creating the pressure until we allow ourselves to slow down a little bit and really in even here, not put pressure on ourselves or force ourselves to like understand like where are we blocked? What's you know, what's keeping us stuck, like all this language, right? Like there's even as I'm saying that, I'm hearing like the pressure that we can put on ourselves to figure things out and to fix things. But this act of consciously and intentionally and purposely choosing to slow down, to surrender, to soften, again, it creates the spaciousness for whatever needs to arise, for whatever needs to come up to support your own journey. Whether that looks like healing, whether that looks like just simply having a new level of awareness, whether that looks like um connecting to a deeper truth because you're seeing things with a fresh, with like a fresh lens, right? When we let go of the pressure that we've put on ourselves, we're quieting the noise, right? We're quieting the noise and we're allowing a deeper truth to be revealed. And in those deeper truths, there is so much wisdom and so much meaning. And at the end of the day, that is really what will propel you forward in a way that feels best for you. And as much as I agree and love and support with using manifestation tools to really support you with any goal, because really and truly they are or they will, there's a part of me that that just has to speak to you walking a truer path because I believe that that's what we're all here to do. Like in this moment in human history, I feel like we are being really called to step into something more meaningful and purposeful. And again, that looks different for each and every one of us, and and all the paths are right. Okay. So allowing this time to really slow down. And again, maybe when you take the pressure off of yourself for something that you think you need to do this year for whatever reason, you realize that that's actually not important to you anymore. It actually is not necessary. You actually don't even give a crap about it. And there's it's kind of like just a distraction keeping you from what's really nudging you forward and what's really like tugging on your heart right now. And I believe that those are the things that will change your life, and those are the things that are gonna change the world. So I would say give yourself this space and time, let yourself ease into this year, right? This doesn't mean you have to like go crazy. I think that's the other thing that people think of like, if I if I take the pressure off of myself, like I'm just gonna go eat like a sleeve of cookies. And that's actually not true, right? I found that it's actually the opposite. When we take the pressure off of ourselves, we're more gentle to ourselves, we're more loving to ourselves, we're not judging ourselves as much. And through that gentleness and through that nurture, we actually want to take care of ourselves even more. And through wanting to take care of ourselves, we choose seemingly effortlessly to make healthier and better decisions for ourselves. Right. It doesn't mean that you're never gonna have like a cup of ice cream, right? It's just like think about it for your own life, right? The second, you know, especially I got I feel like eating and it's just such an easy thing to come to, right? So many people emotionally eat, overeat, undereat, right? It's all contact connected to the emotion. So get to the root of the emotional stuff, and then the food, the external food stuff naturally shifts. It naturally changes. You naturally want to nourish and nurture yourself in a way that feels really good and harmonious for you because you are now different. You are now doing the work to support yourself instead of judging yourself, right? The second you judge yourself, you're like, oh, I'm just gonna eat the cookie and then be mad at myself and beat myself up over it, right? Just it doesn't work that way. Okay, so as this comes to a close, really get super clear with what you actually want this year. What feels good for you, what is nudging you, what experiences you want to have. And again, get really clear, like on a deeper level, right? Maybe you want to travel more. And that's your goal. What is it that you think getting to those places, experiencing those things will make you feel? And again, be brutally honest. Like sit down, make a list, and let yourself just like go with all the things. And then look at how can you experience some of those things now, right? How can you experience more freedom now, more relaxation, more whatever it is that you think it is, right? How can you connect to that now in this moment? Right? Without judging ourselves, without any of the other stuff. And let that feeling continue to guide you forward and let it be really easy and let it be really fun and let things unfold in a way that make them sustainable instead of forcing. Okay, I'm stopping there because I know I can ramble and I don't want to keep doing that. But thank you for being here. I'd love to hear from you. Let me know what your New Year's intentions, goals, resolutions are this year. And I hope that you can approach them with less pressure and more love. See you next time.