The Working Mums Podcast

Ep #47 - The Year ahead (2025)

• Nicky Bevan

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Have you ever wondered if starting the year with a single word could transform your entire outlook? Join me as we embrace 2025 with the power of intention, moving away from the pressure of immediate goal-setting. Instead of diving headfirst into resolutions, let's use January as a time for reflection, recentering, and empowerment. 

I share my personal journey of choosing "expansion" as my guiding word for the year, symbolizing growth in my personal and professional life. Whether your word is courage, love, or growth, this practice can set the tone for a year filled with possibilities.

Explore the magic of vision boards and living visions as I recount how these tools have manifested surprising events in my life, like a dream trip to Egypt. 

Discover the science behind visualization and learn how crafting a "living vision" can clarify your intentions and visualize success. 

In this episode, I offer strategies to approach goal-setting with patience and empowerment, whether it means waiting for your personal 'spring' or using creative tools like vision boards. 

Let’s welcome the new year with love, light, and peace, ready to embrace the expansion and transformation it promises.

You can also watch this episode on YouTube with Captions - https://www.youtube.com/@TheWorkingMumsLifeCoach

If you'd like to have a chat about how I can help you further, please don't hesitate to click here & book a time with me, I'd love to meet you.

You can also follow me on IG @NickyBevan_LifeCoach

Speaker 1:

Welcome to 2025. We made it, we are here and whether 2024 was good for you or bad for you, it's now gone. It's in the past and we cannot change, go back or alter what happened in the past, for the good and for the bad. What you do have a choice over is the here and now, today, this moment, and moving forward and moving forward and I don't know about you, but a lot of people they New Year. It's kind of like New Year, new you. Let's set goals, let's set intentions, let's make this year the year. And I've got to be honest with you, that's not what I do.

Speaker 1:

I have realised over the past few years that I love taking January as a time to reflect, as a time to continue to hibernate and a time to just kind of kind of recenter myself and just consider what I want for the following year. For me, it doesn't feel like the right time to set goals, and this is just me personally. If you resonate with that, brilliant. If you don't resonate with that you love setting goals please go on and do what you do you, whatever works for you, but please do that from an empowered place, not a should play. I should set a goal because there is no should, there is no right or wrong, there is just whatever. Whatever works for you and and we are all different and we are all different. So, even though this doesn't feel the time of year for me to kind of do that sort of goal setting, that for me feels like a more springtime exercise there are a couple of things that I do like to do this year or this time of year, and I do like to set a bit of an intention, um, and an intention for me is slightly different to a goal, in the sense that it's more of a. This is what I'd kind of like to happen this year, so, as an example. So let me let me get a bit clear on what I mean by an intention, and there are different ways of doing this.

Speaker 1:

Um, one of the things that I hear a lot of people talking about is word of the year, like choosing a word that you're going to kind of live by when you go about your day-to-day life and business, and this word should be something that enhances your life. This is not like a punishing shitty thing like I should be better, that feels crap. This is a word that maybe expands you, which, ironically, is going to be my word for 2025, expansion. So I'm setting an intention to expand in 2025. And for me, that goes across all the different levels of my life and business. So expanding my client base, expanding my ability to feel my emotions without responding to them, my expanding my capacity to love. Expanding my audiences that I present to the workshops that I hold, expanding my capacity to receive. So, when I look at the word expansion, that really fits nicely with what I want to do as a human in this world, as a mum and as a businesswoman Expansion. But for you, it might be something like courage, it might be love, it might be growth. Like you, you will have a bit of an intuitive hit, like in 2025, what would I love to achieve? So not I'm going to make X amount of money. That's a goal and there is a place for that and if that works for you, brilliant. I'll be doing that more in the spring, but I do like to kind of reflect and go right. What do I want this year to be? And so my word of the year I'm choosing expansion. So have a little think like what do you want to create for yourself in 2025?

Speaker 1:

And then a couple of other really beautiful exercises to do for yourself are vision boards and then writing out your kind of. My coach calls it a living vision. So let me explain the two of these and you may already be familiar with them. But a vision board is if you're going to set goals, is like looking at the images that resonate with you, and I did this. I did this once in January when I went on a new year retreat, and I did this. I did this once in January when I went on a new year retreat, and I did it again in September. But the one that I did in January I if you're watching me on YouTube, you can see me looking up because I have it in front of me on my board and last year was all about growth and I definitely feel like I grew last year from a, from a very personal perspective.

Speaker 1:

But there are images that I put on on my vision board that didn't that really resonated with me but didn't mean anything. So I've also got pictures of Egypt. I ended up going to Egypt. I've got pictures of a car that I wanted and food that I wanted to eat and things like that. But I also had some images that just really resonated with me, but it didn't mean anything, and one of them is this barn. And then I went to a party where I knew no one at this party except for the host, and it was in a very similar barn. I'm like, oh, that's a bit spooky because that's on my vision board and I had no idea what it meant. I also have this other picture of a beauty salon and a table, and then a friend of mine treated me to a spa evening and it wasn't until afterwards I was looking at my vision board. I'm like, oh my God, that is weird because that is Looking at my vision board. I'm like, oh my God, that is weird, because that is, that could be the room that I was in a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 1:

So when you're, when you're doing a vision board, it's picking out images or words or pictures that resonate with you, that you want to work towards. Because when your eyes see something consistently and regularly, the brain goes about believing that it's already happened and then co-creating with the universe or god to make it happen. So there's science behind this. It's not, does it doesn't just sound? Woo it. There's actual science behind it. There's a I've got a picture of me presenting in front of thousands of people that hasn't happened yet. And it's not to say that what's gonna happen on your vision board will happen in that year, but if you don't give up on that vision, it will happen at some point.

Speaker 1:

And oh, who's the author? Oh, there's a book and he talks about. I think it might be. I think it might be Dan Sullivan talks about.

Speaker 1:

He created vision boards and there was this one particular vision board of a house that he just this house that he loved, and it was all packed away in a box and forgotten about, was all packed away in a box and forgotten about. And then, like 10 years later, he he had moved into this new house with his new, with his family and his child his son was about five or six and they were. There was this there were boxes that they had opened, they had moved and moved and he hadn't opened and looked at and his son came into his office and was like, oh, dad, what's in this box? And he said I think that's my vision boards, let's have a look at it and say he opened it up and he saw this vision board of this house and he realized he was now living in that house, even though he had actually forgot about it. He was now living in that house that he put on his vision board, like 10 years earlier. So it's quite incredible, it's really incredible.

Speaker 1:

And when I did my vision board and 10 years earlier, so it's quite incredible, it's really incredible. And when I did my vision board and I put Egypt on there, that was a point where my husband didn't even want to go all inclusive and and yet we did it in September. And when I put it on my vision board, it was kind of like that would be a really nice thing to do and I forgot about it, and yet we did it in September. So, so that is one way to kind of create an intention for, for, for 2025 or whatever year you're listening to this in the future, whatever year you're listening to this in the future. Um, and another thing that's really lovely to do if you like writing and if you like journaling um, sometimes my brain is a little bit resistant to this, but the times I have done it has have been really lovely, and that's writing out your living, like your vision for the year, as if it's done, and what I mean by that is going to like January 2026 and you're looking back at 2025 and you're explaining it in the present tense, so or past tense. So it was incredible too dot dot, dot. I loved that I was able to dot dot dot.

Speaker 1:

This part of the year was particularly challenging, but I overcame it. Dot, you know, and talking, writing out your year as if you've already lived it, setting your intentions on how you want to experience this coming year, and you can do this for really small events. I really enjoy doing this for like, if I really enjoy doing this for like, if I'm going to an event or if I'm going to, um, you know, if I'm going on holiday or something that I want to experience, and if I don't get a chance to write it out beforehand, I will visualize it ahead of time. So, oh my gosh, I felt really nervous. Um, I was a bit. I didn't really sleep very well because I was nervous about waking up late, so, but that was fine because I got the sleep I wanted and I woke up refreshed and excited. And then I I did this in the like. I went and had my shower and I got my head on and it was all done very calmly and I I went and got the bus and I it was beautiful timing to then catch the train and I was able to sit and relax on the train and I just kind kind of imagine the process ahead of time.

Speaker 1:

So you can do this for your year and it's a really lovely. It's a really kind of lovely way to put your intention out into the universe as to what you want your year to be, because we do actually have a choice. We do actually have a choice, and I'm not saying that that choice should always be happy, joyous and positive. You know, sometimes we want to feel sad, sometimes we want to feel disappointed. They are very appropriate emotions. Shit things happen in life. But you're, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you're starting to build the resilience and the skills to see those hard things through um. So that's my kind of suggestion for New Year If you're not a goal setter, you don't have to set goals.

Speaker 1:

These are some beautiful options. Or just give yourself permission to sit and reflect until you feel ready to go right. This is now what I am going to set these goals, and for me that feels more like a spring, like going to set these goals, and for me that feels more like a spring and, if you are right, it's january and it lights you up to set a goal. Then do that as well and use the method, use the word of the year, the vision board and the living vision to make that goal happen. I hope it helps and let's have a chat if you want to talk about this more. Have the most wonderful week. Happy New Year, sending you lots of love, light and peace and empowerment for 2025. Let's make it a year of expansion. Love you so much. Bye, bye.