Overwhelm is Optional

Easing End-of-Year Overwhelm: Gentle Practices to Create Space and Joy

• Heidi Marke • Season 1 • Episode 213

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🎙️ Feeling overwhelmed as the year wraps up? You're not alone. In this episode, I acknowledge the unique end-of-year pressures and share 3 gently rebellious practices to help you find space, ease, and joy amidst the chaos.

Discover how small shifts like The Morning Promise, Neutral Noticing, and Gently Rebellious Gratitude can ease overwhelm and reconnect you with yourself.

✨ Ready to create space for joy, even in the busiest times? Tune in and explore how to end the year feeling lighter and more aligned.

đź’Ś Sign up for The One Minute Marke and the Gently Rebellious Read for extra inspiration!

If you enjoy this episode, please share it with a friend or leave a review—it helps more gently rebellious souls find this podcast.

Want the fastest most effective way to turn your overwhelm into the joy, satisfaction and ease you're working so hard for? Book a Curiosity Call and discover what it's like to be coached by me. I look forward to meeting you.

🎙️ Welcome to Overwhelm is Optional

This podcast was created to help big-hearted, driven professionals break free from overwhelm and experience more clarity, ease, and joy.

But here’s the exciting news… I’ve moved beyond overwhelm.

If you’ve been listening and resonating with this message, you’ll love what comes next.

I’ve created a new podcast: Deep Heartfelt Success—because success should feel as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.

🎙 Join me there → Search "Deep Heartfelt Success" on your favourite podcast platform and subscribe.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Gentle Rebellion where overwhelm is optional. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to this week's episode. So this week I want to acknowledge and support you and myself in gently preparing for 2025 without adding to your end of year overwhelm. In fact, much more than that I want to acknowledge the crazy end of year overwhelm while also acknowledging that, sitting behind all of that, there's so much to do, there's so much to get done, there's work to finish, there's Christmas to prepare for all of the things, often with low energy or winter snuffles, certainly not enough light, with all of that going on. Apologies there for our lovely, lovely listeners on the other side of the world who have the opposite light situation. I'm so happy for you that you have daylight at the moment.

Speaker 1:

The days do feel rather short here, although I keep reminding myself at this time of year. This is when the sunrise and the sunset is brought to you on a plate. You don't have to get up at four in the morning to see the sunrise, or stay up late at night. It's here at four o'clock in the afternoon and it's often very beautiful. It's just I'm not ready for it because there's stuff I want to do. Anyway, back to this week's theme. So I want to acknowledge the crazy end of year overwhelm while also acknowledging that all of that will be over pretty quickly and hopefully not over, but enjoyed. Not just survived, but on top of that, the back of our minds or certainly the back of mine, and I know my clients too, several of whom are going through big career transitions.

Speaker 1:

January the 1st holds this background sway over us, because we always want more. We want less stress and overwhelm so that we can thoroughly enjoy our lives. We want more energy so we can do the things. We always want more. We want less stress and overwhelm so that we can thoroughly enjoy our lives. We want more energy so we can do the things we long to do. We want work that really satisfies us, and the problem is that's just adding to the end of your overwhelm, isn't it? So let's dive in.

Speaker 1:

I'm recording this on oh, my goodness, I don't even know what the date is. I'm recording it the Tuesday before I'm releasing it and I'm releasing it on Sunday, the first Sunday of December. I really must put the calendar back in front of my desk. It's over the other side of the room and I can't quite see the date. Oh, who cares what date it is.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, it's late November and if you're anything like me, your to-do list is growing as the holidays approach. Hello to my lovely American, I'm going to call you. I'm going to call you all cousins, just because I have American cousins, but my lovely, lovely American listeners, who also have Thanksgiving to prepare for or to enjoy, or both, there's just a lot to wrap up, isn't there? There's a lot to wrap up before the end of the year Christmas presents, work, projects, there's all the socialising, and then there's the hidden craziness of family visits, where you long to have this connection and this peace and love and joy, and it's always far more complex than we wish it was, isn't it? Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to spending time with my family this Christmas. My granddaughter is here. We go again me not knowing how old she is. She was born in August, so she's just over a year. She's just started walking, so that's going to be interesting with the Christmas tree, so that's going to be lovely. So there's lots to look forward to.

Speaker 1:

But in the back of my, in the back of my mind and I know my clients' minds are but what about the new year? What about the new year? I want more for 2025. And by more I mean more energy, more vitality, more actually acting on the things that I'm inspired to do. I want better health. I want to be fitter, always because I'm getting older and I just want to get older with grace and flexibility and energy and health. So I'm always looking at ways to tweak my very rebellious and gentle exercise routine.

Speaker 1:

There's always more, isn't there? Basically, there's always more joy to be had. That's what I mean. Ultimately, it's all about joy. How can we have more joy? Well, mainly, that requires making space for it. Actually, it's not about doing more, and that is the heart of the gentle rebellion, isn't it I'm rebelling against is the heart of the gentle rebellion, isn't it? I'm rebelling against having to do more and push myself harder in order to have more joy, knowing that that doesn't work, but also, with self-compassion, knowing that that is still my default way of doing things.

Speaker 1:

Oh well, if I do more, I'll achieve more. It doesn't work. It really doesn't work for me, because I end up clogged and overwhelmed and working incredibly inefficiently and then just losing my energy, and that's not how I want to work. So that's my constant discovery is how can I achieve more? By doing less, by working more effectively and mainly in a more focused way. So really acknowledging what matters to me, what is most important here In the end, it's what's the one thing that's going to bring the most joy, what's the one thing that's going to move that project on in the best possible way? There's always one thing that's more important, but I don't know about you, but I cannot see the wood for the trees.

Speaker 1:

When I'm exhausted and overwhelmed, everything's important then, and clearly that's just not true. And that's the trick, right, the stabilizing of the mind by acknowledging it gets overwhelmed and then doesn't work that well or it doesn't work as well at all. It actually doesn't work that well. When it's overloaded and overwhelmed, it just doesn't work as well at all. It actually doesn't work that well. When it's overloaded and overwhelmed, it just doesn't work. Everything's important, everything's an emergency. My nervous system goes into high alert and then I start getting exhausted. I'm not available for that.

Speaker 1:

So in this episode I want to talk about easing some of that end of year pressure, instead of piling more onto a plate in the effort to get everything done. So let's look at some gentler ways to make the end of the year feel lighter, feel lighter and then, starting 2025, feeling more aligned, more in tune with yourself. Are you ready? Ruby Roo's ready. She's just turned up with a squirrel to get in her squirrel miles. That's how she keeps fit. Anyway, it's not a real squirrel, obviously. Yesterday she destroyed one of the nutmeg. So how old's nutmeg, nutmeg seven. And when she had her first Christmas, she got Christmas squirrels. And last night Ruby Roo took the guts out of the Christmas squirrel, the little squeaky bit. So that's gone, that's died. Anyway, back to you, back to you and your gentle rebellion.

Speaker 1:

So let's start by just acknowledging what this time of year usually feels like. Just acknowledging, just neutrally noticing. Oh yeah, here I am again. It always feels like this the days are getting shorter and shorter, unless they're getting longer and longer. Hello, new Zealand and Australia. But the days feel like they're crazy. Right, this just feels like I'm running out of time. It's nearly the end of the year.

Speaker 1:

There's all these things I need to finish before this date so that I can have some time off, or even not because you're having time off, but just because that's the way the business you're in or the organization you're in works. And there is just this really hard deadline, a hard deadline and a hard deadline, a difficult deadline. There are things that have to be completed before a certain date. It's dark. There's added socialising, which can be lovely, but also another pressure. It could be hard to sleep because of the pressure and yet it's really dark. So you kind of feel like you should be hibernating, getting extra sleep.

Speaker 1:

There's just so much to do, so much to wrap up. It's not just no pun intended. My partner would love this. He loves puns. Wrap up Christmas presents, wrap up travel plans, wrap up work projects Everything is about wrapping stuff up all of a sudden. It's just crazy.

Speaker 1:

So is it surprising if you're feeling completely stretched? Is it surprising? Not really. So I just invite you to acknowledge that I'm acknowledging it for you. So I just invite you to acknowledge that I'm acknowledging it for you. I see you. I see you as a reflection of my own madness of doing that when I used to do it that way.

Speaker 1:

How am I feeling now, a few years into my gentle rebellion? I can see the pressure. It's like having distance between me and it. I can sit back from it and look at it and say, oh, there's some pressure there to finish. That Is it real, particularly as I'm now my own boss, so a lot of the pressure is self-imposed. But yeah, there's a lot I want to complete. I mean, if I okay, I will.

Speaker 1:

I was going to say if I showed you my to-do list this isn't a written down one, because I have really good systems for keeping this out of my head but if I just share with you some of what I'm trying to do before the end of the year, maybe you'll see that it's not just you. It's not that I want less. That's really important. This isn't about wanting less and having less. There are two books. There's actually four books, but I've realistically changed it to two books. That I wish to have done before Christmas, but there were actually four books.

Speaker 1:

So some of you may remember, if you've been listening that long, that a year ago I was writing a book that would be the Gentle Rebel's Guide to the Ear, a journal with gently rebellious practices and reminders in it and space for you, and it didn't get completed. I did, however, gift it to the members of the Gentle Rebel community and I also used it myself, and it was also used for the basis of a very powerful workshop that I gave within the community at the beginning of the year, which helped review the previous year and dig deep about what you really wanted and access those heartfelt those genuinely heartfelt priorities for the year. And then everybody had a word for the year and I know that it had a really powerful effect on the people who were there and I had to accept at the time that it wasn't going to be published. I just ran out of time. So I relieved the pressure by not finishing that project, which has to happen at times. Also, it did actually feel like it needed to be tested first, but I really wanted to publish it so more people could test it. Right, I'd have given it to everybody just to test, but I ran out of time. I don't have those kind of skills to get it published that fast.

Speaker 1:

A journal is different than my book. I learned how to publish a book. I haven't yet learned how to format a journal and I don't like putting half-hearted stuff into the world. I was going to say I was going to get trapped into the mind trick of doing a half-assed job, which over here in the Gentle Rebel community means doing something that's of really high standard but that you think's not good enough and being brave enough to release it into the world. It literally wasn't ready in time and there is a deadline with the journal, isn't there? However, this year I've taken that journal completely. It's going to be 10 times better. I mean, I'm really proud of what I'm currently creating, but there's a deadline there, right? I've also decided and I did mention it a few episodes ago about creating a workshop.

Speaker 1:

I used to do what I called a turn of the year pause. It started as three workshops, so it was reviewing the year, dreaming up the next year and then planning, but I actually prefer to do it in one go now, just because I personally find it quite exhausting when there's three workshops and something I sign up to. I just want to do it in one go, and we did successfully do it in one go within the community last January. So I'm going to be offering that for free. I was thinking of charging a small amount for it, but, um, why am I not? Because I just want to do it free. So I'm going to there you go, and that will be an opportunity for you to start the year with me, if you would like to. So keep that in mind. There'll be more details coming. Anyway, that needs planning right and because I take time off at Christmas, it needs to be planned. I won't have two working weeks before the workshop and I also need to get the journal done.

Speaker 1:

These things really matter to me. These are really important. Imagine if you had time with me at the beginning of the year to start your year in the best way possible for you. Imagine if you had that journal, which then supported you in those commitments you made yourself, all those insights. You got all that connection to yourself, living in a way that works more for you. Imagine the effect on people.

Speaker 1:

I'm desperate to get this message out to more people to say you can live your life your way, in a way that works for you, and stop pushing against yourself, because I know the damage and I also know the joy seeing people light up. I know for myself the difference it makes when I just let myself off the hook and said yeah, heidi, there's a different way, let's find it, it's just so. That brings me joy. That's my deeply satisfying work. So I want to do these things. Do I have to do these things? No, but that's ridiculous, because it feels like I have to do them as in my heart is bursting. My mind is overflowing with ideas that I really want to do that. I don't want to miss another year because it's timely, right. This time of year does matter. It does matter how you start the year. Now we can argue, and we do, because we're always going to rebel against anything that the mind's doing is like a tyranny thing on us. Oh, you missed the beginning of the year. Now it's too late. You have to wait till January. That's true. You can start your year whenever you want. You can restart it all the time, and we do. However, there is something beautiful about an intentional start and it's just an opportunity to grab and I want it, so I'm going for it. So there's that pressure on top of all the other things I'm doing. I can't remember what I'm doing. Now. I'm growing my YouTube channel. I'm.

Speaker 1:

What's the other book? Oh, the other book is a gently rebellious approach to travel using the Pacific Northwest. So it's a cross between a guidebook to the Pacific Northwest, but not your normal ones, because they really annoy me. I read a lot of guidebooks and they just added to my overwhelm. They just seem like lists, overwhelming lists of things to think about and things to do, and, oh my goodness, I couldn't read them, it was just doing my head in. So I wanted to create something just inspiring and uplifting. And yeah, you can do it. Of course you can do it. And this is why you might want to, because look at this, or in wonder, or in wonder, or in wonder, do it. Go on, but do it your way. It's that kind of travel book. So it's not just a travel book, it's an inspiring through travel for you to do things your way.

Speaker 1:

I don't think I'm explaining it very well. Anyway, that's because it's not finished yet and I know that as I write it I will be able to explain it better, because that's one of the joys of writing. But writing takes time. It takes for me, it takes digging deep, it takes reflection, it takes a capturing of those insights and thoughts I get and those funny stories and then collating it all. So two books at the moment. Now, the travel book the Pacific Northwest, gently rebellious thing doesn't need to be published for Christmas, there's just no. So I'm not going to do that, because I want it to be better than it would be if I did it for Christmas. So I'm okay with that. But that's already adding to January's project list. So I can see that. So I've shifted something, but it's still. I'm still writing it now and I'm loving it.

Speaker 1:

I was writing it the weekend. It was great fun, partly because I get to revisit all those memories. So even if nobody ever read the book which I'm sure they will but even if nobody did for me, it's good because it's making me reflect. The other day, simon got some photos done. You know how, like all photos are digital so you can look at them, but it's not the same. I used to love it when you you've got them printed, even if you've been, half them will never look at them. I did something different about holding a photo, so he just got some quite random ones done. Oh, my goodness, I was just overwhelmed the good kind of overwhelm, overwhelmed with joy and gratitude that he and I decided to gift ourselves this adventure. We really had an amazing time. It was life-changing, as in I don't know, just a connection to that, a connection to all that is possible when you make space for it. It was just so good, so good. I'm really grateful.

Speaker 1:

So what else am I up to? I can't remember. I'm terrible at this. I didn't mean to start offloading my to-do list onto you. But anyway, I have a lot of stuff going on and that's just some of the big projects that are currently on my mind while I'm recording this and sharing some of it, and I've just thought of something funny that gets me off the hook for not remembering the rest of it. The reason I can't tell you the rest of it is because I have a system where I don't keep stuff in my head. I know this partly drives my partner mad because he'll say have you done this? I'm like I don't know, but I can check my system. I don't know because that's not in my head. Can you tell me this? No, but it's in my system. I don't hold stuff in my head anymore. I just don't.

Speaker 1:

If you don't know about GTD, there are episodes on it, I think from two years ago. Oh, really good thing which I didn't realize. So my podcast platform, buzzsprout, who posts it all out simultaneously to Apple and Spotify and everywhere. Really cool, love Buzzsprout. They've created an updated web page for everybody's podcast and what's really cool about it and was driving me mad before, is it has a search button so you can put in GTD or something, or getting organized. Something should come up. The episode that might be helpful was with Myles Seekeren. I'm always worried I say that wrong, sorry, myles because he was the coach I had for GTD who helped me set up my systems, improve my systems, to free my mind. So that's worth checking out if you're interested.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, where are we? Let's focus back on you so I get you. I see you this kind of stuff going on at this time of year. This kind of pressure does feel uniquely seasonal the wish to finish things at the same time as the darker period of year, the days for this half of the globe getting shorter rapidly. Winter sniffles are very popular. Now they're popping up all over the place.

Speaker 1:

This unique pressure needs to be acknowledged. Needs to be acknowledged, just acknowledging it with self-compassion. Look at everything you're trying to do. Is it no wonder you feel pressured and overwhelmed? Is it no wonder you feel like there's no space for you? So I invite you to acknowledge it with me, to be held in that acknowledgement with love.

Speaker 1:

So this is the heart of the gentle rebellion this noticing for yourself, this giving yourself some permission to become aware of the need for more space for yourself, acknowledging how pressured you feel without having to do anything about it. So this is neutral noticing. Notice, completely neutrally, everything that's going on right now. Just acknowledge it. If it helps, you can write it all down and see. But if that adds to your overwhelm, maybe not. Whatever works for you, you have to feel into this for yourself, don't you? That's what the gentle rebellion is. It is finding your way. So you have to decide. The podcast is designed to inspire you to do that, not to tell you what to do ever.

Speaker 1:

So what if you could give yourself permission to slow down even a little, to create space for yourself amid the busyness, just moments, not necessarily even getting to the layer of saying no to things, that's. That's another layer, right, but just starting with the acknowledgement that you are feeling pressure, that there is no space for you or it feels like there's no space for you, notice how that feels. Then notice any judgment about that. See if you can let go of the judgment or at least just notice it. Acknowledge the self-judgment, the self-pressure, the internal pressure. The conversations in your head, the thoughts, the feelings about the musts and the shoulds and the ought. Pressure the conversations in your head, the thoughts, the feelings about the musts and the shoulds, and the oughts and the having to get things done with this deadline, just acknowledging all of that and notice how that feels, and then noticing how would it feel if you could find space, if you could give yourself permission to slow down for moments where you just reconnect yourself. Now, by this I mean once you've done the acknowledge and the first step is definitely the neutral noticing, because you need to start where you are, and that can create in and of itself, that can be profound the next step would be okay. So I want some more space for me. How do I create it? Well, I don't want to risk upsetting anybody or anything. So therefore, the smallest, most effective thing is to change how you move through your day. So that would involve things like the one minute mark practice.

Speaker 1:

If you haven't got that audio yet, there's a link in the show notes or just go to my website, heidimarkcouk. Or even without an audio, the audio is good because it gets you into it and then you can stop listening to it if you don't want to listen to it. But the walking differently. So, for example, every time you get up for your desk and you walk to get something, or you walk to get a drink or go to the loo, or walking between things, walking to meetings, walking outside, anything like transition times, moments. Really feel your feet on the ground, maybe allow the belly to soften, maybe allowing the shoulders to move away from the ears between meetings. So if you're not walking, if you'll just have transitions. Thank you, that's. That's Ruby, that noise, I do apologize if you can hear it. Anyway, transitions between meetings just allowing the belly to soften, allowing the shoulders to move away from the ears, maybe allowing space between the teeth, just allowing space.

Speaker 1:

So imagine it this way the normal way of doing things is to push on through and work really, really hard in order to create more space for joy, in order to create more ease, more calm, get everything under control. But then we get stuck in push on through mode and it's really, really hard to switch off and feel the space and the joy and the calm that we've worked so hard for. It still exists. What if it exists regardless? So if you think about it this way, deep within inside you is all the ease, calm and joy that you work so hard externally, for when we slow down and allow the nervous system to reset, we start to get glimpses of that, we start to reconnect with ourselves. Deep within you is this place of connection, this natural sense of being, this natural sense of being at home with yourself. It exists. I believe it exists inside everyone. I have no evidence for this, I haven't asked everyone, but everybody I've worked with has found it.

Speaker 1:

So what if the overwhelm and the ease coexist, the pressure and the freedom from pressure coexist, the chaos and the calm coexist? And by moving your attention from the chaos to the calm within, from the overwhelm in the mind to the ease within, from the external pressure to the space deep inside you where the joy bursts from and spontaneously burst from more and more when we reconnect with that more childlike, less pressured, adult sense of ourselves. So if that's already there, you don't need to work hard for it, it's already existing. That doesn't mean it's not worth working hard. That doesn't mean it's not worth working hard. But if we work hard in order to feel something that we already have and it's not working well, maybe it's time to gently rebel against that nonsense. Maybe it's time to do things differently. Maybe it's time to find a way to live your life your way. Time to find a way to live your life your way.

Speaker 1:

And if that's true for you, then I invite you to use this particularly pressured time of year to notice, to notice the cost of constantly pushing yourself through pressure, to just notice it, to acknowledge it, to invite some self, to allow some self-compassion, to allow some love for yourself. Because what if actually, this was the perfect time of year to reflect and pause, to say yeah, I don't really like all this pressure and overwhelm and exhaustion, I'm done with it. Because there is that natural pause Often it's just after the Christmas madness has stopped. There's this pause between work restarting. Nobody really gets back into it until a few days into January. It doesn't even if you show up at work. There's this kind of there's this lack of momentum, things. The energy's different. There is a natural pause which I believe can be very, very valuable and I'm gonna invite you, as we approach that natural pause, to consider the ideas of the gentle rebellion for yourself, to think about how you want to do things differently next year, should you choose to accept my invitation.

Speaker 1:

And in the meantime, here's three gently rebellious practices to ease your end of year overwhelm the morning promise, starting your day with a tiny moment of stillness to connect to that place of ease, even on the days it's hidden. Just trust it's there. It's always there for you and to start your day with more intention. So what? All we do here it takes but a moment is drop your attention away from the impending chaos of your day. So pull your mind's attention away from all the things you have to do, all the rushing, just for a moment and feel your feet on the ground, or, if you do this in bed before you get up, feel the bed beneath you, the softness of the pillow, whatever brings your attention back to your body and to now, and then just say quietly to yourself or out loud if you want to I commit to myself first, to living my life my way, to living my life my way, and just feel into that each day, because each day it will be different. Now, what this does is the commitment yourself first is pulling your attention, your energy back to you, just pulling it all back to you, because it so easily can get caught up in the needs of other people.

Speaker 1:

And yet your first job is to look after yourself. This took me about 56 years to learn. My number one job is to look after myself properly, which means I have to commit to myself first. I'm useless actually to anyone else, or I'm very useful to other people, but in the end I get exhausted and burnt out and resentful. I'm better, I'm better used to other people when I look after myself first.

Speaker 1:

There's lots of reasons to do it. If you can't do it for yourself, do it because it will make you better at your job, at your family situation. Whoever you are, to anyone, it's it's, it's good can feel weird, though hey can feel selfish. I always think if you're, if you're asking the question, am I behaving selfishly? Then by definition you're probably not, because truly selfish people would never ask that question. It wouldn't occur to them. It wouldn't occur to them they might be letting somebody else down. So this will help you notice how you're feeling and prioritise yourself as you rush around doing all your things. Even if it doesn't change what you do, it will change how you do it because it refocuses back on yourself.

Speaker 1:

So the next one is neutral noticing, and this is a practice I use all of the time. So it's non-judgmental awareness. If you want to do it, starting with the audio, that's why you would get hold of the one minute mark. So neutral noticing is pausing for a moment and just noticing how you feel. And then noticing neutrally, because usually when we notice how we feel, there's tons of judgment, there's a whole layer of judgment, and catching the judgment as well is really helpful. But you don't have to do anything, you just notice.

Speaker 1:

And what's weird about this is it's profound. Obviously it's profound because it came out of my training with a Zen master, so it was always going to be profound. But I don't mean it like that. I mean it's profound because it's so simple. It's like is that all I have to do? This isn't going to do anything. I need to do.

Speaker 1:

So if you're used to doing things in order to create a change, it's bizarre because you're doing the opposite. You're not doing anything, you're just noticing and the mind's bound to get into some oh I'm not doing enough, but trusting that it's enough, and if you keep doing it, it's really way more than enough. It's magical, I promise you. We have to keep doing it. This is why there's all these practices of mindfulness and meditation, because when we can learn to, to watch what's going on, to become the observer, that gives us power. It gives us space between reacting so that we can respond or not. But I invite you not to do anything with it, not to try and make anything happen. It may make you feel calmer. It may not. It's not designed to do anything, it just is. It's a very, very basic practice which I and my clients find very helpful. I use it all the time and I forget all the time and then I return to it, but it can also help you feel basically grounded in the whirlwind leading up to Christmas and the end of the year. So I invite you to try that one.

Speaker 1:

And then let's go for gently rebellious gratitude as our third practice of the week. So just shifting from I have so much to do to I have so much to do. Look at all the things I get to do, look at all the people I can think about buying a present for, look at everything I have in my life, look at what I've created, look at how amazing I am, look at how my feet walk along the pavement just like anything. And I would invite you to do it. So gently rebellious gratitude is different than the normal gratitude practice just because the normal gratitude practice and I do understand the gratitude practice so it's well-researched in positive psychology and it's really good. And many people have said to me oh, I love it.

Speaker 1:

In this journal I've got, I write down three things every day I'm grateful for. Yeah, it's really really good, I did it for years, and then what it did to me is it tuned into that very strict Christian upbringing of you should be grateful. You ought to be grateful. There are starving children in India Eat your cold gray. Or there are starving children in India eat your cold gray stew.

Speaker 1:

It wasn't good for me in the end to just focus on gratitude. There was something lacking for me because I became a little bit worthy martyry about it. I ought to be grateful that I have this job, even though it's killing me. Can you see? So gently rebellious gratitude would invite some humor, would invite some yeah, I'm really not grateful for that, but I'm grateful for this. So you can kind of relate it. You can watch yourself getting bogged down with the I ought to be grateful and just go yeah, but I'm not. I don't like that. I do like this, though, and then we can tune into that lovely playful energy, that childlike energy of but I want this. I'm grateful for this, but I really want this. I'm grateful for this, but I want an upgrade, like just play with it, have fun with it. So it's a practice of gratitude, but it's more playful, it's more rebellious. I ought to be grateful for.

Speaker 1:

This is not gratitude, it's rubbish. It's another pressure, it's another ought. Catch the oughts and the shoulds and the must. Dump those, because how are they working out for you? So there's three things I invite you to help make your end of the year more easeful. And then there are more details coming, but make sure you're ready as in, ready to sign up for this New Year's workshop, because I'd love to see you. I'm not sure how I'm going to do it, whether it's going to be a zoom where we all get to say hello, or whether I just do it where you don't have that. I have no idea how I'm going to. I haven't got that far, but I'm going to give you a sneak preview of what's in it so you can get excited and know that you, there is something good for you coming your way to nourish you and uplift you. So it will. The main purpose of it is to get you connected to yourself, so that and in a really calm way obviously not not. So you end up with this.

Speaker 1:

I want to change a million things about next year. Quite the opposite to get you aligned to yourself, to listening to your heart and just getting some clarity over what you're up to. What is all this rushing around for? Oh, I wanted this, I wanted to feel like this, this is what I really want, and then you can just focus on it. So it may result in you not changing anything at all. You might just keep everything looking the same same job, same house, same everything, but internal shifts.

Speaker 1:

Noticing more joy, making space for the things that really matter for you whether that's reading a book for 10 minutes and a nap in an afternoon, like small things, can make such a difference. Because as soon as you feel like you have choice, as soon as you feel like there is space for you, as soon as you acknowledge oh, this is what I want, this is who I am, this is what I'm up to, that creates the space, because the space is internal. It's a feeling you could have all the space in the world and then feel utterly lost because you'd lost your job. That wouldn't be what you want. So that's what we're looking at.

Speaker 1:

So the main purpose is to connect you to your own personal gender rebellion, to anchor you in the present moment, at the beginning of 2025.

Speaker 1:

So you can just think about you just for a while, just for a short hour to 90 minutes See, I don't even know how long this is yet, because I'm still planning it, I'm still getting excited about it. So more details coming about that over the next few weeks. If you're not yet signed up to my email list, so I would invite you to either or both actually email list. So I would invite you to either or both actually get hold of the one minute mark and sign up for a Gently, rebellious read where you get some Gently, rebellious nourishment. Quick read in your inbox every Sunday morning to set you up for the week and make you feel seen and heard and held and inspire you to gently rebel against the nonsense that you have to push through overwhelm and pressure into exhaustion and resentment and tears tears of despair and frustration to have the life you want. You don't. Overwhelm is optional. See you next week to help you gently rebel.

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