43: 5 Tools to Ring in The New Year with Momentum, Clarity and Authenticity

Ready to design a year that actually feels like you? We celebrate our one-year milestone by swapping shame-fueled resolutions for a kinder, more effective blueprint: reflection, intention, small daily shifts, and boundaries that hold. Midlife isn’t a crisis to survive—it’s an invitation to remember who we are, curate what matters, and build rhythms that last.

We start with a compassionate year-in-review and a reverse bucket list to honor wins you’ve forgotten to count. Then we map the eight pillars of a happy life—health, wealth, family, friends, purpose, mind, body, spirit—so you can see where you stand and choose one to three moves to raise each score. You’ll learn the “big rocks” method to protect priorities on your calendar, plus the “little less, little more” list to turn intentions into tiny, durable habits. We add a weekly wins jar to capture progress in real time, because proof beats pep talks.

From there, we set clean boundaries with personal “rules of the road” that end people-pleasing and restore energy for what matters. You’ll hear how to record a vision in your own voice and use it as a daily cue to act like the person you’re becoming. And we bring back the creative excursion—a simple, monthly block of time for curiosity and renewal that changes how the rest of your life feels. Along the way, we share favorite resources, practical prompts, and a closing parable that nudges you to choose a different street this year.

If you’re craving clarity, momentum, and a gentler way forward, press play and pick one practice to start today. If this sparked something, subscribe, share with a friend who needs a fresh start, and leave a review to help others find the show. Your next chapter is calling—let’s make it delicious.

Transcript

Welcome And One-Year Milestone

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Hey beautiful friend, welcome back to Life is Delicious. First, before we get started, I know that it is a great big noisy world out there. And the fact that you have carved out a little bit of time for yourself to be here with me, it is truly an honor. And if you're new here, welcome to the Life is Delicious Family. I can't believe it, but it is the one-year anniversary of the Life is Delicious podcast. I can't believe it's already been a full 12 months. I've had some incredible guests and I've learned a ton about podcasting. And I also just wanted to say thank you for you being here with me along this journey wherever you happen to fall into the podcast. Or maybe somebody shared it with you, and that's awesome too. But just knowing that you guys are out there when I step behind the mic makes it all worthwhile and it makes it so much more fun to know that we're changing our lives together, which is cool. And the nicest part is we don't have to do it alone. We get to share ideas and work on ourselves and just find more ways to bring joy into our daily round. Welcome to this episode of Life is Delicious. I'm Marnie Martin, and I'm so glad you're here. And if this is your first time here, welcome to the Life is Delicious Family. This podcast isn't about surviving midlife, it's about crafting your next chapter life, overflowing with purpose, joy, and delicious possibilities. Listen, midlife doesn't have to be a crisis. It can be a beautiful invitation to remember who we are, to rediscover a new version of ourselves, or to completely reinvent our life to reflect who we are becoming now. So if you're tired of being exhausted, living life on autopilot and putting everyone else first, then you are in the right place. Each week we'll bring you thought-provoking ideas and practical strategies as well as inspiration to help you prioritize yourself again. It's time to take back your joie de vive. So grab a notebook and pen and pop in those earbuds and let's go get it. I want to start today's episode with an excerpt from a book that I absolutely love. It's called Simple Abundance by Sarah Bon Brethnack. And I have been carrying this book around with me for decades. Let's get started. New Year's Day, a fresh start, a new chapter in life waiting to be written, new questions to be asked, embraced, and loved, answers to be discovered, and then lived in this transformative year of delight and self-discovery. Today, carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, a pen in hand, only dreams that give birth to change. What are your hopes for the future as you reflect on the years that have passed? Gradually, as you become the curator of your own contentment, you will learn to embrace the gentle yearnings of your heart. But this year, instead of resolutions, write down your most private aspirations. Those longings you have kept tucked away until the time seems right. Trust that now is the time. Ask the questions. The simple abundance path brings confidence that the answers will come, and we will discover day by day how to live them. Take a leap of faith and begin this wondrous new year by believing. Believe in yourself, and believe that there is a loving source, a sower of dreams, just waiting to be asked to help you make your dreams come true. Isn't that awesome? I must have been about 22 when I came across this book, and I had just had my very first Little Mini Human. And I fell in love with this book. I'm not even sure who gave it to me to be truthful or if I bought it for myself. I don't remember that. It's a day book, so it starts with January 1, and every day there's these little mini essays that kind of walk you through being a woman in the world and how to carve your own path and excavate your own inner authenticity. I loved this book so much that I think maybe I was 23 or 24, and I think I might have had my second child by then. But I actually bought 10 copies of this book and I gave a copy to every one of my girlfriends for Mother's Day. It touched me on a really deep cellular level, and I knew even like 30 some years ago that excavating my authentic self was something that was going to be a part of my life forever. And that's kind of what led me here. So the cool thing is is as I went through the next 30 years of my life, I deliberately would anytime I was anywhere near a used bookstore, I would go in and I would see if there was a copy of this book. And I always had at least one or two in my home so that if I happened to meet somebody that needed this message, I would give them a copy. It was timeless. Twenty years later, twenty five years later, I could still open any page of this book. And with a totally different space and stage of life where I was, this book seemed to know exactly what I needed to hear that day. So Sarah Bon Brethnack, one day I hope to have you on this podcast because you have inspired me in a deep and profound way. So this episode is really about starting your new year with intention, clarity, and joy. And I have about 10, 11 ideas. Some of them are more of an exercise, and some of them are just concepts. I like to look at the new year as kind of that line in the sand, that clean slate. And I like to kind of unpack the new year with not really the resolution side of things. I personally find that resolutions tend to focus on taking away, cutting back, restriction. And often focus more on the negative behaviors that we've done in the past. So like quitting smoking or drinking too much, or maybe we need to lose some weight. And I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. I'm just saying that sometimes a gentler approach can be better. So everybody has their different ways of stepping into the new year. And I'd just like to give you a couple of ideas, and maybe if even one or two of these resonate with you and it changes the way you feel about the year, then that is awesome. I'd like to think that we can maybe approach January as our transition month into our new behaviors with some slow, gradual changes that maybe we can learn to implement and actually have them stick. So the first thing we're gonna do is exercise one, which is what I call like to call a year in review. And this exercise is not at all about beating yourself up about things you didn't get to, things you did wrong. It's not like that at all. I want all of these exercises to be approached with a sense of curiosity and a sense of what could I do better? That's the whole point. We want to evaluate what we did last year that was really awesome, that worked, whether we stuck to our plan for where we wanted to go. And then maybe looking at the things that we fell short on, but instead of looking at from a place of, you know, oh I'm such a loser or I didn't get that right, and it's imperative to be kind to ourselves. And to be able to think about what actually makes us happy. I think a lot of people never stop to actually even ask themselves that question. So let's start with the year in review. Again, this might take you ten or fifteen minutes, maybe a little bit longer, but just get a piece of paper and a pen and write that 2024. And you can even take this a step further. If there are some things that you're frustrated about or didn't work well for you, you can write like a love letter to last year and say all the things you want to let go of that just didn't work and you want a new start on. And you can even take that and burn it in a fireplace or in a fire pit and just let that energy go. That's the whole point of this exercise. Here's another exercise that you can do any time of the year. You certainly don't have to do it at the new year, but it seems kind of timely, so I thought I would bring it up. And I like to call this the reverse bucket list. So this isn't like looking forward into the future and going, wow, what do I want to do that I haven't accomplished yet? The reverse bucket list is about looking back at you in your twenties and your thirties and your forties and your fifties. I don't know where you're at in your life span right now, but looking at the things you absolutely crushed, the things you got right, challenges that you've overcome, the things that you navigated through that were hard, and how you've changed as a human being because you went through those hard things. This is an amazing exercise in gratitude. It's looking back at who you were and who you've become, and how you've navigated challenges that you didn't even think you were capable of. That is something that will give you fuel and grace as you navigate hard things in the future. And it's just a lovely benchmark to put on at the end of the year or at the beginning of a new year where you can really look at how far you've actually come. And again, you can do this reverse bucket list more than one time. It's a super powerful tool. One of the things I love to do is have a look at what I like to call the eight pillars of a happy life. So this exercise is it's pretty simple, but you start with the eight major areas of your life. We're looking at health, wealth, family, friends, purpose, mind, body, and spirit. So all eight of those I'd like you to just write down on a piece of paper, and beside that put a little blank space. And what I would like you to do is to rate yourself from one to ten, one being as little as possible, ten being the best, of course, and just figure out right now, here today, where are you in every area of your life? You might surprise yourself, actually. I mean, maybe your health is at a five, and maybe your wealth is at a nine, maybe your family is at a four, and you would like it to be at a nine. Whatever that is for you, it's just important to sit down and and this is the line in the sand. This is this is where I am today. This is how I feel about every area of my life today. And then on the next sheet of paper, I would love you to put those same categories down, and we're gonna write one to three things that we could do to improve our score in each area. And what's really great about this exercise is there's some things that will actually bleed into more than one category. So maybe you want to take up yoga. Well, maybe that's gonna be in your mind category and your body category. You know, maybe you want to spend more time outside. Maybe that's for your spirit, and maybe that's also for your mind. So there's lots and lots of different ways to slice this, and there's no way to get it wrong. It's really all about you. It's very personal. So take your time with this and just kind of figure out where you're at. Think of those things that we've just written down as our big rocks. I don't know if you've ever heard this story, but it's um, it's kind of a famous, I think it's a professor in a university, and he did this exercise with his students where he had these two inch rocks and a really big jar on his desk. And he put all of these big rocks into his jar, right to the very top, and he said to his class, he said, Is this jar full? And they said, Well, yeah, it's full. Then he pulled out a cupful of pebbles that were smaller, more like gravel, and he poured them into the jar and shook the jar and all of the little pebbles kind of went in between where the big rocks are. And he said, Now is my jar full? And they said, Well, yeah, now it's full for sure. And then he came up with a cup full of sand, and he poured that in over top of the pebbles and over top of the rocks. And all of a sudden the jar was even more full. And they were so surprised. And so he said, Now is the jar full? And they said, Well, I don't think it could get any fuller. Yes, it's full. And then he pulled out a cup of water and he poured it into the jar, and it went in between the sand and the pebbles and the rocks. And the metaphor for this is that the big jar is your life. So if he had done it the other way around and put the sand in first, there would have been no room for the big rocks. If you had put the water in first or the pebbles, there would have been no room for the big rocks. So those big rocks are the things you just identified were important to you in every area of your life. What matters to you this year that you want to spend your time on, that you want to give your energy to, that you want to be intentional about, those are your big rocks. So we want to be really sure to put our big rocks into our jar first. Because if we spend all of our time on all of these little unimportant details, we run out of time to work on the things that really matter. I hope you'll play with this. It's really actually quite fun. And actually, sometimes it's a little bit surprising. You don't even realize that something is super important to you until you sit down and reflect and have a look at these things, and then you go, wow, like I didn't know that mattered so much to me, but it actually does, and it allows you to be more intentional with the way you start off your year. Stay tuned for a quick word from our sponsor. More than 50 million Americans have sleep disorders. And according to the National Institute of Health, insufficient sleep is estimated to have a negative annual impact on the economy of more than 400 billion. When you're not sleeping, everything else in your life suffers. Let's face it, when you're not sleeping right, everything else in your life is affected. 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Okay, so just to recap, so far we've done our year in review, we've done our reverse bucket list, and then we've written down our eight pillars of a happy life and the things that matter most to us. And then we have put our big rocks into the jar. So now this next exercise is actually kind of fun as well. It's called a little less and a little more. Or 1% less, 1% more, however you want to look at it. And this one we're gonna actually do the same thing. We're gonna get a big piece of paper and we're gonna draw a line right down the middle, and on the left hand side, we're gonna put a little less, and on the right hand side, a little more. So this is where we actually get to examine our behaviors and the things that may be just little tiny tweaks that we want to change. So I'll give you some examples. So maybe we want to do a little less alcohol and a little more water. Maybe we want to do a little less sitting and a little more movement. Maybe we want to do a little less sugar and a little more self-care. Maybe we want to do a little less swearing and a little bit more singing. Maybe it's just a little less worrying and a little more gratitude. Maybe it's a little less takeout food and a little more home cooked meals. You see where I'm going with this. There's so many ways we can add to this. Maybe it's a little bit less mindless scrolling and a little more solitude. You could go on for days with this. Maybe it's a little less smoking, you know? It doesn't mean you necessarily are going to quit today, but maybe a little less smoking would still be a good thing for your health. Maybe a little bit more fresh air, more walking, maybe a little less screen time, and a little bit more sleep. That is a big one. I think that's a something we could probably all use. Anyway, for you, you can put in whatever it is that you need. Maybe it's a little more time with your family or a little less work and a little bit more play. Just have fun with this. It can be a really fun exercise. And then just, you know, you can't do it all. So pick a few things. Pick maybe three top things that you really want to be intentional about. And then put them into your notes on your phone and look at them regularly so you can remind yourself that you just need to do a little bit less and a little bit more. And it's kind of amazing when you think about doing something consistently every single day, how much impact it can have on your life. I mean, look at your dental care. You wouldn't save all of your dental care up until Sunday and then brush your teeth for a half an hour. That would be ridiculous. But when you take care of your dental health every single day, it has a massive impact over the course of your life, right? So here's a fun exercise that my girlfriend just reminded me about, actually, which I think is super fun. So you get yourself a jar, not for your big rocks, but put it on your desk, something pretty, maybe it's a vase, maybe it's a box that you love, whatever that is. And get yourself some beautiful pieces of paper or some sticky notes. And once a week, write down something amazing that happened to you. Something that lit you up, that made you grateful, something that surprised you, or something you overcame that was awesome. Write it down on a piece of paper and put it into the jar. And next year on New Year's Eve, or New Year's Day, I should say, pull out the jar and enjoy looking at all of the small wins you had through the entire year. It can be a super powerful gratitude exercise that'll set next year up with some pretty awesome feelings. A few years back, I started to do this exercise project. Probably about five. And this one I like to call Rules of the Road. And the reason I came up with this exercise is because for most of my life I have been a chronic people pleaser. And it took me till a few years ago to really realize that not only was people pleasing not serving me, but it actually wasn't serving others either, because I was overgiving, I was depleted, I wasn't happy, I was resentful. So that piece of my life I had to really start to work on. And once I actually began to set healthy boundaries in place, this is when I implemented the rules of the road. And this is the rules of the road according to me. Not according to my mom or my spouse or my children or my boss. It's the rules of the road according to me. And these are just little sentences, little mantras, little reminders of what matters and how we stay grounded in our authenticity and who we want to show up as in the world. So I'll give you an example of the ones that I had, I think, last year. So this is my last year list. Number one was what other people think of me is none of my business. Number two is it's better to get forgiveness than permission. Number three is never leave fun to find fun. That's one of my favorites. Number four is everything is always working out for me. Number five, be impeccable with my word. Number six, I teach people how to treat me. Number seven, there's always room at my table for good humans. Number eight, I live in a benevolent universe. Number nine, I am a spiritual being having a human experience. Number ten, moderation is the order of the day. Number 11. My body's natural state is that of health and well-being. Number 12, movement is freedom and health is wealth. And I threw in a baker's dozen, and I'm gonna definitely take this one into my new year. And it is, if it's not a hell yes, it's a no or a not right now. I needed that for sure last year, and it's really helped me to clarify the things that I want to participate in. Instead of having that knee-jerk reaction of, hey, can you help me with this? Sure. Hey, would you do this for me? Sure. You know, I mean, I was very good at being a yes woman for many, many years. And it's not that I don't say yes to things now, but I just give myself the opportunity to reflect on whether I can do it happily for someone. And that has served me very well. The next one is actually one of my favorites. I actually implemented this last year, and it has been a game changer for me. And of course, I'm behind the microphone a lot, and I have recording gear and all the things. But what this one is, is to record your new life affirmation in your own voice. And what I mean by this is, is I want you to write down an entire vision of what you want this year to look like. You've already gotten some clarity on the things that are most important to you. In positive speak, I want you to talk about it like it's already happened and all the things that you're striving to have happen, that they've happened easily for you, and how great it was that it showed up for you. And it's a really powerful, powerful exercise. And when you record it in your own voice, you don't have to have fancy equipment to do this. You can certainly do it on the voice memo app on your iPhone. I don't have an Android, so I'm not sure, but I'm sure they have an equivalent there as well. There's so much amazing technology today that it's not a difficult thing to do, but it's a really powerful experience. And what I did last year is I actually put a reminder on my phone at 9 a.m. noon, 3 p.m., 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Now, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you for sure that I actually listened to my affirmation five times a day, but I tried to get two or three. Sometimes I wasn't able to stop and just switch gears, which is fine, but it's a really great reminder to just stop, take five minutes, and I now get up and actually go get a glass of water, because water is something I'm really working on this year. So now when my little alarm goes off, I get up, I get a glass of water, and I listen to my recording of what I want my year to look like. And I really allow myself to feel how good it feels to believe that that's possible for me or that that's already happened. It is amazing how that can transform you and help you to call in the things that matter most to you. Okay, so I know this is a lot of stuff to take in. So to recap, we did the year in review, we did the reverse bucket list, then we did the eight pillars of a happy life, which is mind, body, spirit, health, wealth, family, friends, and purpose. And then once we did those and gave ourselves a little score from one to ten, we sat down and figured out one to three things in each area of that part of our life that we want to work on this year. And then we put our big rocks into the jar. And then we talked about a little more and a little less. And then we got to the rules of the road, and that is something you can implement for yourself if it feels like a fit. So going back to the book I spoke about, Simple Abundance and Sarah Bon Brethnack, one of the things that she also talks about in that book, which I implemented early, early on in my life, and I've kind of actually gotten away from it, I would say, over the last few years because I've been caring for elderly parents and there's been other things going on. But I'm going to put it back in this year, and it's called the Creative Excursion. And the creative excursion is just it can be an hour if that's all you have in your life. But ideally, it would be maybe an afternoon that you can set aside for yourself. Maybe it's a Saturday morning, uh, maybe it's a Sunday night and you allow yourself to have a spa night. The creative excursion can be anything you want it to be. Ideally, it's a couple of hours at least of time that you carve out for just yourself to just recharge your batteries, to go somewhere maybe you've never gone before, to do something maybe you've never done before. It's really about curiosity and shifting gears from, say, work or caring for family or the other responsibilities that we have and just carving out a little bit of time for just you. And that can be anything. It could be lighting a candle in a room that you love and reading a good book. It could be, like I say, having a spa night with your favorite bath. It could be going to thrift shops for the afternoon and just being curious about what you might find. Maybe you go to the beach in the afternoon. One of the things I did a few years back, which I loved, is I got up extra early and I drove out to the beach near our home on the lake, and I would just plop my chair in the sand by the water and stick my feet in the water and bring a cup of coffee, good book, and I would sit there for a good hour or two before anybody ever showed up. And sometimes it was like, wow, I have this whole place to myself. It was amazing. And it just allowed me to really reconnect with myself and get centered again and grounded. And so that's the whole purpose of the creative excursion. And I'm so grateful that I read about that in Sarah's book so many years ago. So if you get the opportunity to implement that into your life this year, I promise it is a game changer and will make you just feel so much more connected to yourself. I love it, and I hope you'll try it too. So if some of this information is resonating with you and you've enjoyed today's episode, I have created a journal called Happy Is Not an Accident. There's a lot of these similar exercises in the book, but it's basically a guided journal, has a lot of awesome prompts to help you get massive clarity about where you're going, not necessarily just this year, but in life in general. It's just a great companion to kind of follow through on a lot of these exercises that we talked about today. So if that's something that, you know, speaks to you, I hope you'll check it out. Happy is not an accident. It's up on Amazon now. And I also wanted to let you know because it is the new year, I am a crazy paper girl. I need to write things down. I know that's really super old school, but I have planners, I guess calendars, that I keep all of my activities on. I keep my the amount of money I'm making. I write down every appointment, I keep track of passwords and financial goals and all kinds of things. And so it's something that I have done for years. In fact, I actually take these planners and I tuck them away with my taxes because it's like I know at any given moment, if I could open one of those journals, I can tell you exactly where I was, what I was doing, what I was working on, what goals I was, you know, tackling. And so I keep them because it's such a great reminder. And so I've created one called The Life is Delicious weekly and monthly planner. There's a lot of these similar exercises in the beginning of the planner. It starts off with the year in review, all kinds of awesome prompts to get you set up for the new year. And it has lots of blank pages at the back of the book as well. And then the rest of the planner is set up as a week at a glance and a month at a glance. And at the beginning of every month, it gives you the opportunity. There's a couple of pages for setting intentions for what you want to get out of this month. And then at the end of the month, there's actually a page to do an evaluation of whether you are on track or if you need to do something different. So it's a really powerful tool. Again, I created it for myself. And if you are one of those people who likes to write things down and see your week at a glance and know what you have going on, I hope you'll check it out. And I'm gonna leave you with this. I have followed Wayne Dyer for most of my life. And I remember seeing him on a seminar. And he had interviewed a friend of his called Portia Nelson, and she told him a story about how she had been gone to this seminar and they said, We want you to write the story of your life. This is what she wrote. Chapter one. I walk down the street and I see a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost and helpless. It isn't my fault, and it takes forever to get out. Chapter 2. I walk down the same street, and I see there's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place. It isn't my fault, and it still takes a long time to get out. Chapter 3. I walk down the same street, and there's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. My eyes are open. I fall in again. It's a habit. I know where I am. It is my fault. And I get out immediately. Chapter 4. I walk down the same street, and there's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there, and I navigate my way around it. Chapter 5. I walk down a different street. What street will you walk down this year? I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I hope it inspired you or motivated you in some way to keep going and to create your very best life. Wanna know what to do next? Share this episode with someone that you love who maybe just needs a little more delicious in their life. Join my free Facebook community over at Mindset Mastery for Midlife Women, where like-minded women come together to support and inspire each other, and where we get to hang out together. And I offer cool bonuses, videos, and some extra content. And lastly, don't forget to subscribe so that when new episodes drop, they'll be queued up and ready for you. And if you're ready to take a deeper dive into mastering your mindset, I invite you to come on over to lifeisdelicious.ca forward slash work with me, where I offer limited one-to-one coaching sessions, and you can sign up for a free discovery call with me. In case no one has told you today, there's not one person on this planet that is exactly like you. And the world is a better place because you're here. So thank you for being here. I'll be back next week, and I hope you'll join me right here on Life is Delicious.