A Grace Period Might Be The Best Start To A New Year
At the end of the craziness that was 2020, I stumbled across an entrepreneur who proclaimed that she wasn’t starting the new year on the 1st but would, instead, be giving herself a grace period for the entire month of January.
It was precisely the permission slip I needed. 2020 had not only brought a worldwide pandemic, but it had also brought me into motherhood (with a kiddo born two weeks into lockdown) and into the realization that I was finally ready to journey into becoming a coach.
What the end of the year didn’t have me ready for was the one that was about to begin. I felt exhausted and discombobulated rather than refreshed and focused. Not exactly the energy I wanted to kick things off with.
So I borrowed that permission slip and wrote my own name down. I declared January 2021 a grace period.
And you know what?
It worked for me. I no longer felt the stress of trying to tidy up the year’s loose ends by December 31st. Or the pressure of a “new year, new me”. I no longer felt “behind” because I didn’t have the next year strategically planned to a T.
It felt good.
But I am a forgetter of things and it sometimes takes me a few tries to really internalize a lesson. A couple years later, I think I might have finally learned…
It’s time to actively declare another grace period.
“Liminal week” (that awkward, quiet space between Xmas and New Year) is always hard for me. I feel some combination of a little lonely and a lot bored, all wrapped up in a layer of sadness even in the best of times. And while I had every intention of not only getting through my end-of-year reflections but also my year-ahead planning, I just couldn’t get all the way there. My brain and my body were willing and able to look back on what went well and what I needed to let go of, but they weren’t ready to shift energy into creating something new. Plant little seeds of dreams? Yes. But create big, robust plans of action? That got a big fat “NOPE” from every fiber of my being.
At first I felt the old familiar feelings of shame rise up. The story I started to tell myself was that I didn’t have my sh*t together. But I recognized that the critical voice I was hearing was just fear that if I wasn’t as buttoned up as I wanted to be, I’d somehow already be behind by the time the calendar flipped.
I chose (and am choosing) a gentler way.
January will be a grace period. I will extend myself the grace of being in the transition before I move into the doing of the new year. I will go with the flow of the seasons — after all, we only just officially entered winter a few weeks ago — and I will honor the quiet energy that will still be here for a while. I’ll spend a bit more time dreaming before I move into fully-fledged drafting and I’ll trust that the shift and burst of creating energy will come just when they’re supposed to.
I may need the entire the month or maybe just a couple more weeks. I may find myself immediately energized by letting go of my own expectations or I may relish in the rest. Only time will tell.
What about you?
Are you feeling the pressure of getting the new year kicked off “just right” and being all buttoned up with a plan for new habits and big goals? What would be possible if you had an extra month to transition from all that you were and did last year before fully emerging into the year ahead?