Starting Strong Can Be a Gentle First Move

Last night, at my Start Strong workshop, we talked about what it really takes to begin a change well. And as person after person spoke, I heard the same thing underneath their different words. They are tired. Not just busy, but carrying a great deal, and the thought of one more push, one more effort to fix everything at once, feels like too much.

Somewhere in that conversation, something simple became clear. Starting strong does not always look the way we think it does.

By November, we are running on empty

Think about everything that has filled your year since January. Work that never quite lets up. Family to look after. Parents who need more help than they used to, children or grandchildren to show up for. Appointments, bills, a house to keep running. For some of us, this year also held a loss, an illness, or a change we did not choose. For others, it held good things that still asked a lot.

And underneath all of that, the quieter list. The project you meant to start. The friend you keep meaning to call. The rest you promised yourself months ago and never took. The idea that has been sitting at the back of your mind all year, waiting for a clear week that never came.

Most of us never get a moment to stop and take stock of any of it. We keep going, a little more tired each month. Then December fills up with the holidays, and January arrives, asking us to set goals and begin again, as if we were starting from rested, when most of us are starting from tired.

Making room comes first

You cannot pour a new year into a full cup. Before any beginning, there is a quieter first move, and it is the one we most often skip: making room.

Making room does not ask you to fix your life in a day. It asks for a pause. Time to slow down and listen within. Time to be honest, and kind with yourself, about where you actually are.

I learned this in my own life, in the years after my husband died, when beginning again asked everything of me. What helped was never force. It was space, and good company, and one honest step at a time.

A gentle start is not a weak start. A beginning that comes from rest and clarity, from who you truly are, will carry you much further than one begun in pressure and exhaustion.

A day to make room

That is why I hold my Soul Excursion days, and it is the heart of the next one, Making Room for What Matters, at my home on Rigaud Mountain on Sunday, December 6.

It is a small day, and a simple one. We spend it in guided reflection and meaningful conversation, with quiet time to journal and think, a light lunch shared together, and time outside on the land. There is nothing to keep up with and nothing to perform. You are welcome to arrive with a question, a possibility, or simply a desire to pause.

My hope is that you leave more connected to yourself, clearer about what matters now, and with one practical step toward making room for it. One woman who came to an earlier gathering wrote to me afterwards that her heart was still singing. That is the feeling I hope everyone takes home.

The question I am carrying

As this year draws toward its close, this is the question I am sitting with, the same one I carried home from Peru earlier this fall: what would I love to make more room for in my life, and what would a gentle first step toward it look like?

Perhaps it is a question worth sitting with for you, too, before the busyness of the Christmas season, and before the new year begins.

If you would like to spend a day with it, in good company, I would love to welcome you here.

Lianne