January is here. Have you listed your exercise and weight-loss goals, figured out your daily protein targets, and articulated your long-term vision?
The new year is a familiar threshold, arriving with a flood of lists — lists of questions meant to help us reflect, only to then generate more lists of intentions, goals, and dreams.
I like lists. Perhaps they offer the comfort that clarity can be reached through neatly numbered bullet points.
This year, I gathered many lists of thoughtful, beautiful, and smart questions to review over the holidays.
Here’s a list of the lists I gathered:
- A list of 10 fill-in-the-blanks, called Noticing Where You Are. For example:
A question I am sitting with is ____. - A list of 10 questions to reflect on 2025. For example:
What was something you discovered about yourself this past year? - A list of 10 questions to anticipate 2026. For example:
What will you give more energy to this year? - A list of 5 questions for the new year from Suleika Jaouad. For example:
What resources, skills, and practices can you rely on in the coming year? - A “mindfulness and engagement” card deck called Vertellis, with more questions than I cared to count. For example:
What will you do (or not do) to achieve your goals and dreams?
These questions promise transformation — if you sit with them long enough.
Except that…the lists I gathered sat quietly alone. I didn’t use any of them!
This year, reflection felt like another task on yet another list — my to-do list.
In our enthusiasm for growth, I think we sometimes forget that insight doesn’t respond well to pressure. The soul doesn’t bloom on command.
To be fully honest (I always am), I did lead a New Year’s cacao ceremony for a group of six friends that included — not a list — but two simple questions:
- What are you ready to clear?
- What feeling wants more room in you?
There’s a kind of wisdom that emerges when we stop asking ourselves to outline a five-year personal strategic plan and start asking what truly matters.
With cups of cacao warming our cupped hands, Beautiful Chorus music soothing us, and a fire crackling in front of us, we slowed down.
The answers we shared were far from pat, polished, or performative and, frankly, I don’t remember most of them. We didn’t rush to respond, and we certainly didn’t pull out a whiteboard to document and assign accountability.
What I do remember is how the ceremony let us soften together. Shoulders dropped. Breath naturally deepened.
With each exhale, we cleared what no longer served us.
With each inhale, we invited in possibility.
We literally oxygenated what wanted to grow.
Breath teaches this better than any list could.
Breath reminds us that growth isn’t only about adding more intentions, goals, or to-dos. It’s about creating space — and trusting our natural rhythm of release and renewal.
So this new year, I’m not offering my coaching clients or retreat participants a long list of questions.
I’ll be offering invitations to inhale and exhale.
