Episode 266: Four S’s of the New Year
My goal is that this episode will serve as somewhat of a guideline for you as you think about the years past and the year ahead.
This is an exercise that you can do at any time. You could do it quarterly, you could do it monthly, you could think about it week to week. I think it’s really helpful as a broad overview heading into a full year.
And of course, the decisions that we make can be flexible and unexpected. Circumstances do arise, causing a need for shift and flexibility and adaptability in our life. I have found that starting out with the best laid plan is a great way to point ourselves in the direction that we want to go. And at least then we are aiming toward a future that we like.
If the path gets shaken up or there’s things that fall down in our way, we can circumnavigate, we can take a detour and starting out with kind of an overview is very helpful.
Last week in episode 219, I went over reflecting and the process that I use of going month by month through my year with taking some notes, going through my phone, looking at my photo albums, looking at my calendar, just getting a good picture of where I am so that I know how to get to where I want to go next.
In this episode, I’m going to follow up on that with. You’ve reflected, you have a better idea of things you’ve gone through and maybe have some new self-awareness and how do we use that new self-awareness to then continue our progress to rest if we need rest, to gather up our skirts and pull on our boots and head off into this determined new future if we are ready for that.
I am going to invite you to think about yourself and your situation and your life as I go through and talk about these four S’s and how I’m thinking about them in my life. As an example, as I look forward to this new year of the podcast, I recognize that a few of my segments probably are gonna shift a little bit because some I’ve exhausted completely.
Odd Jobs, which is a super fun segment where I share about a weird job that I’ve had and some things I learned from it. I’ve pretty much exhausted those over the last four years of sharing them, every month or two. I don’t know that I have any jobs that I’ve missed, so until I get a new random job, I’m going to retire Odd Jobs, and I may introduce some new segments over the next couple months.
Today, however, to kick off this new year I’m gonna stick with an old favorite that’s called Pause for a Poem.
Pause for a Poem
Change came to the door and because it knocked, I opened it. Oh, change, I said. No, thanks none today. It tried to put its foot inside, but I was quick. I blocked it, sent it on its way.
Change came to the door with a bouquet of flowers and thrust them forward for me to take. There’s no occasion, I smiled, it’s not for me. I pushed them back while change nodded knowingly.
Change came to the door and I opened it. Change smiled and I frowned. I told you before, I said somewhat irritably, I have no need for what you bring. I do not wish to change a thing.
The door burst open with a ferocious blast and thunderous crack. The more I fought, the more it blew me back. It knocked me down, it brought me to my knees. Change was so insistent that I finally agreed.
Change came to my door. I heard the knock. I opened it slightly and peeked out. Oh, change, I said, my love. I embraced it and took it in. I held it. I made it mine. I married it became its wife.
All of change, I found, is nothing more than all of life.
Change by Joyce Snyder
Main Topic: The Four S’s
Let’s begin with the Four S exercise.
This has been called a few different things. Maybe you’ve heard it before–I’ve heard Stop, Start, Continue. I like having S’s because it makes it easier to remember and I also added a sneaky one that I haven’t seen before.
So we’re gonna talk about stopping, steadying, systematizing, and starting, and I think that they make sense in that order.
I’m going to begin with Stop. The reason I begin with Stop is the same reason that I always begin my decluttered course with a whole lesson about the value of pausing.
When we stop, we create space for understanding, for learning, for being able to reflect and examine, and literally when we stop doing something, we remove that activity from our calendar, from our obligations, we leave space for what we may prefer or for something new and interesting to come and join our lives.
The idea of the four S’s is, as an overview:
Take inventory of what’s happening in our lives and
Stopping things no longer serve us.
Steadying things that are going okay. And things we like.
Systematizing what things are going okay, but we could tweak them or adjust them into a system so that they make more sense and are accomplished more easily in our lives.
And then finally, starting. With all the space that we’ve created through stopping and systematizing, what do we want to begin? What do we want to do that’s new and different that we haven’t created space for in our lives before, and now’s the time?
We’ll circle back and begin with stopping.
First S: Stop
Are you currently invested in with time or money or energy, mental load or obligations on your calendar? Social obligations, relationships?
What are the things that, when you think of them, you feel a sense of dread, a heaviness? I’m sure that you have a couple of these things. I know most of us do. Some of them we think are really necessary.
The first things that come to mind, and this is so cliche, I’m sorry, but the first things that come to mind for me are some of those mundane household duties.
I feel like we circle around these things often on the podcast, the regular everyday dishes and laundry and even meal planning and feeding the family and getting up and going to work and picking up the house, the things that feel like they’re just part of life in a way that is non-negotiable.
I want to invite you to consider that everything is optional and that there may be ways around some of the things that we dread or that we can simply stop some of the things that we put upon ourselves that we think we should do because other people do them. Or we thought that’s just something that adults do.
Maybe we can set some of those things down. I want you to think about quitting or stopping, not only as giving up–we sometimes get in our minds that it’s not okay to give things up, that we can add and add, but that we’re not supposed to let go, that we’re supposed to be diligent and we’re supposed to endure and we’re supposed to keep on keeping on.
What if there’s things in our lives that don’t serve us? What if there’s areas of your relationship that you can set down? What if there are whole relationships, whole people who have served their function as learning and as connection, and that you can move on from?
What if there are activities that you once really enjoyed that you find yourself not liking so much anymore, or at least not deriving the same pleasure?
I want you to, just in a quick overview, think through some of the things that you have going on in your life and are there any that sort of jump out as a “I don’t really want to do that anymore. That one doesn’t really feel like it fits me or it doesn’t fit who I want to be.”
Sometimes this process of just quick reflection makes things tangle up in your mind. When you get cognitive and you start thinking about them with your thinking brain, you can start justifying or counteracting your own argument, you may think I don’t really wanna do that…but here’s all the reasons that logically make sense, why I should continue those things that I’ve been doing, because I’ve been doing them for however long, and it just feels like I’m supposed to.
You can talk yourself in and out of almost anything.
I want you to set aside your thinking brain for just a minute, and I want you to think about this with your body. I know this sounds odd if you haven’t done this before. Our bodies are so complex and powerful and interconnected. They’re networks of knowing, and I want to invite you to consider the different things happening in your life and maybe bring one up and don’t think with your mind, but allow your body to feel how it feels.
Does it feel like a yes, like a “I love this thing, like I wanna continue doing it?” Or does it feel like a “no”?
I’ve had things in my life that on paper and in my thinking brain make complete 100% sense. If you were a robot, the programming would say continue. This is something that makes sense for all of these reasons.
And yet my body has said no. My heart has said No, I’m done with that. It doesn’t light me up.
And while I don’t think that every single thing that we do in our lives needs to light us up, I do believe that we have a lot of intuition than we give ourselves credit for, and that we build our realities so often, much more focused and based on other people’s ideas and opinions than on listening to ourselves and our own intuition, and trusting in our inner knowing, and allowing our lives to be guided by a set of personal values rather than external ideas.
Some of the things you may find yourself deciding to say no to are things that you put on your to-do list week after week, and you never quite get to. That probably means it’s not a very high priority and maybe you can just set it down and not worry about it.
Ir things that every time you think of, you feel a little sick, that’s your body saying, I don’t really want to do that anymore.
I don’t know if you’ve heard the concept of clean discomfort and dirty discomfort. I’m going to give you an overview, explain this.
I heard this first talked about through Brooke Castillo of the Life Coach School podcast, and she describes discomfort or this sort of difficulty challenge, obstacle as having sort of two different functions.
One is that naturally things that we’re trying for the first time, things that are hard just because they’re hard, things that are challenging, things that demand time and attention and effort, those can cause discomfort because that’s inherent to the challenge and the obstacle–that’s clean discomfort.
When at the other end of the discomfort you have progressed in the direction that you want to go, dirty discomfort is when you force yourself to do things because you think you should do them, and you’re actually not moving in the direction that you want to go.
You’re either sitting in this self-pity type of resentful discomfort about things, and you’re angry up and upset about it, and the energy you bring to it is really negative and ugh, not great.
And you can have both. Some things can have clean discomfort because they’re challenging and dirty discomfort because you pile on this layer of negativity to it.
In addition to that, there are for sure things that we do over and over again that are just as uncomfortable because really we shouldn’t be doing them. We’re forcing ourselves to do things that we don’t really want to do.
What are those things? What pops up for you when you think about what you’re currently doing, or you have done recently that you are ready to put down and stop.
I’ll give you a couple examples from my life. One is from last year, last January when we moved into our current house, I decided that I was going to stop sharing the ins and outs of my home decor design, DIY process on social media.
I have designed and renovated and decorated several houses over the last 10 years. I’ve had a blog for 15 years, and at one point a big portion of my revenue for my business was from sharing design and DIY blog posts on my blog.
I partnered with Home Depot and with Sherwin Williams and with Lamps Plus, and did a bunch of fun collaborations.
On paper, it made sense to continue to use this new house that needed some updates and for sure, a lot of design and decor and renovation here and there as a stepping stone to continue collaborating with companies that I love to continue having great content to share on social media.
My home content does better than anything else that I share. It gets a ton of interactions and people share it and like it and save it. And it feels helpful in some ways for me to share that. Especially DIYs, I share the ins and outs of details and how to do things, and I love to teach.
So on paper, this is one of those things that just makes sense. Move into a new house. It’s like this is a whole new opportunity for opening a new chapter of these partnerships, and my body said, no, we are done mining our home for content.
This is a really personal decision. There are incredible design and decor influencers that share their home as their platform. That’s amazing. And I love following those people.
And my body last year said, I don’t want to be one of those people. So while I gave up a lot of content ideas, a lot of partnerships, and possible revenue, I knew that it didn’t align with my values and the direction I wanted to go, to have that continue to be a major pillar of what I share online.
I have shared little bits of my house and a few little updates that I’ve done here and there, and I will continue to do that as it feels good for me. And it’s also been interesting that overall, the amount that I have to contribute to Instagram and social media as a whole this last year has been a lot lower because I’m doing a lot more offline that, in my real life that I’m not sharing or transferring directly to online.
And I know for a lot of people that’s like the way that they live their normal lives instead of people who have spent the majority of their adult lives on the internet as content creators and influencers.
And I now try to think of myself as an educator instead of an influencer.
It’s a big shift. So that was a big stop for me last year and it has felt so good.
My everyday life in my home with my family has definitely benefited because it feels like space for us rather than space for everyone. Maybe you’re part of an organization or take classes that you’re over.
Maybe you have some regular friendships that feel like they’re more draining than energizing. Maybe you do some chores around the house that could be hired out or even just let go of. Or maybe you can just put them down for a while or reorganize so that more people participate and your load is a little bit lighter.
Maybe you have habits that you are tired of, and now’s the time to kick him for good. Deciding what to stop creates the space for what comes next. Which is what we’re gonna keep steady, what we’re gonna systematize and what we’re going to start.
Second S: Steady
The second S is steady. In other guidelines of this sort, it would be called continue.
What are the things that you like that you’re doing that feel pretty good? You’re already doing them. You have a habit or they’re part of your regular schedule anyway, and you enjoy them. They feel good. They feel aligned with your values.
When you think about where you’d like to be in five or 10 years, these are activities and relationships and obligations that point you in that direction, that feel like you want to continue doing them.
Stay steady with these things. Most of our lives will probably be things that fit into this category. Hopefully. Hopefully you like the majority of things happening in your life right now. The value-aligned things that contribute to your wellbeing, to others’ wellbeing, that feel like a good fit for who you are and where you want to go.
Some of the things in my life that I like that I wanna keep doing are going to the CrossFit gym, which is something that I started about a year and a couple months ago, and it feels really good and I like it. So I’m gonna keep doing that.
I also want to continue podcasting. When I began recording in 2018, I had no idea that this would be something that I liked so much that I wanna just keep doing it.
I have been more consistent with this podcast than I’ve ever been with any other area of my life, and I think that just goes to show that it hits all of my buttons.
It’s like a really good fit for me personality wise. It’s a really good system that I have going. (We’ll talk about systems in a minute.) It continues until now, and into the foreseeable future, to contribute to my own wellbeing and hopefully to yours as well.
As I look ahead to this next year, I made the decision, I guess a few months ago that the way that I have been hosting retreats has felt really good, and I like that. So 2023 is another year full of in-person meetups with Creative camp and Summer Camp and Novios Couples retreat.
These are things that I’m going to continue doing. Novios is a new one, but the other ones have been going well. They feel good. They are adding value. They make sense. They are logistical and difficult and have some of that clean discomfort that I talked about earlier. The challenge of actually bringing it all to pass, that for sure exists and it’s totally worth it.
Another thing that I have on my steady list is my garden. I planted my first big vegetable garden in 2020 and fell in love. Gardening feels like magic to me. I’ve already started pulling out seeds. It’s only January and I’ve started pulling out seeds and plotting out what’s gonna happen in addition to my raised vegetable beds and my rose garden.
(I’m planning to plant some flower beds this year for the first time. So this is would hop into the start category, which is at the end of the podcast, but I’m jumping ahead of myself because it’s related.)
Gardening is a Steady. (And I’m going to plant some milkweed and some wildflowers and hopefully raise some monarchs. Again, we’re jumping to start for me.)
What are the things that you like that you want to continue doing that are going well for you? Those are your steady category.
Third S: Systematize
The third S is systematize. This is an important tweak to the regular stop, start, continue process that you may have heard of before.
What are the things that you want to continue doing that, you could make a little bit easier on yourself by systematizing them.
For example, one of the things I want to continue doing is going to CrossFit. The way that I can systematize it is to decide ahead of time, which are the days and times that I’m going to go and put it in my calendar as like a non-negotiable appointment.
You may think that I should have already done that. I haven’t already done that. Right now, the CrossFit gym that I go to is open seven days a week. There’s a bunch of different schedules. I normally go at 8:30 AM or at noon, but there’s earlier classes. There’s classes in between. There’s afternoon and evening classes.
In order to systematize this for myself, I can sit down with that schedule and with my calendar and simply make some decisions ahead. What is my baseline CrossFit schedule? Systematize it, stick it in my calendar as a repeating event and then plan around it rather than waiting to see what happens in my life.
Will I go at 8:30? Will I go at noon? Will I even go today? Just plan on it. That’s something I’m planning to systematize.
Now is a great time to systematize some of those ongoing duties that you might have, like meal planning. Feeding your family would be the baseline underlying responsibility, right? Everyone needs to eat.
How is that happening in your life right now? I have done a handful of podcasts about meal planning and food in particular, and I mentioned along with our sponsor, Thrive Market. Feeding my family in a healthy, reasonable, and easy way has been one of my favorite goals and aspirations of the last 10 years.
When Plum was born in 2013, I feel like my life went off kilter in a way that it never is quite rebalanced. This is my new normal, being a little bit out of control with most things happening. Meal planning with my minimal meal plan was the way that I systematized feeding my. It brought so much ease into my daily life.
We still use a minimal meal plan almost, I guess 2015 is probably when we really instituted it, so it’s been a long time and our meal plan changes seasonally, and I will refer you to the episodes about meal planning to hear more about that if it’s new to you.
Thrive Market–just another shout out for our sponsor that I seriously love. They add this other layer of ease and system that once you establish a baseline meal plan, you plug that in and have the ingredients delivered to your doorstep without you even having to think about it.
It steadies and systematizes your grocery budget, it studies and systematizes when you have food in the house and what you’re going to eat, systematizing things.
You already know you want to do, systemizing just makes them a little bit easier, and that frees up time, energy, and resources for other things.
Episode 22 is the original minimal meal plan episode, and you can head there if you want to learn more, all about the system of a minimal meal.
In addition, Episode 25 is all about planning successful systems.
So if you have something in mind that you’d like to systematize, but you don’t really know how you can listen to that episode for more tips.
Fourth (and final) S: Start
The final S in today’s episode is Start.
This is a fun one. This is the one we get all starry-eyed about. The problem with getting all starry-eyed about the start before we’ve gone through the stop and the steady and the system is often we’re piling more on our plate than actually fits.
And then things that matter a lot might be what falls off or the things that we start don’t really get a chance to take root because we’ve overburdened ourselves. We haven’t created space before adding things to our responsibilities.
In this section, I want you to just dream a little bit. I want you to think about what are things that I’ve wanted to do that I’m curious about, that I could learn more about, that I could discover or dig into or begin anew.
In Episode 162 of this podcast, I shared an idea called a Big Dreams Map. This is something I do at the beginning of the year where I allow myself to go big in my head and think about what are the things that are just floating around up there that feels so exciting and fun and different and new without any expectation that I must write them down and accomplish them, that I have to make it happen.
If if I did have the time and money and resources and energy, what would I want to spend it on? What does a perfect day look like? What does a new activity look like? What are the types of friendships I’d like to have? What lifestyle feels like a good fit for me that isn’t part of what I’m actually doing right now?
I had an amazing experience last week where a friend reached out on Instagram and reported back on her big dreams map, which I did not ask for, and was overjoyed to hear what an impact the idea of allowing herself to dream big had.
With permission, I want to share a little bit of what she shared with me.
She said, after one of your podcast episodes about setting big goals, I did it and read them all year long. I would like to share some of our successes. We adopted a new daughter, renovated most of our home. I’m almost done with my master’s degree. I got a gaggle of animals. This particular friend owns a farm and I started an in-home organizing business.
Wow. The idea of allowing yourself to just think about what if, what are some of the things that I want to do? And then I love that she talks about reading them all year long and allowing those to guide some of the decisions of where to spend time and energy and what things to pursue.
That’s a lot of big things all at once, and I have no expectation that’s what your big dreams list looks like. And it could. And what about big dreams and small dreams? What about, I want to go to the movies more, and so I’m going to start that, or I’m going to have a book club this year. I’m going to gather some people together for that.
Knowing what you like and what you want helps you to get it.
One of my starts this year that I actually started a couple months ago, maybe a month ago, I talked about with my therapist back in the summertime. The winter is the hardest time of year for me, the cold and dark and slowing down, which I appreciate the slowing down and the hibernation, and I’ve just been affected especially by the cold and the dark, and I know I’m not alone in that.
Wintertime is tricky for a lot of people. So back in July we started thinking of a toolkit, how to approach the colder, darker months. Some tools in place to help me feel a little bit better and to overcome, or at least buffer a little bit against some of the effects of the sort of seasonal depression that I tend towards.
One of the things that we came up with was bird feeders. You know that I’m an amateur bird watcher. It’s become one of my favorite pastimes, a part of my morning ritual, and going on walks and I bring my binoculars when I go to new parks. Now, I recognized that as something that would keep me curious and interested and awe-inspired, even in the dark and cold winter months.
Maybe having some bird feeders out in the yard is a simple solution, right?
I ordered a couple different types, got them all set up. I am not kidding you. My backyard is like Grand Central Station these days.
We wake up and just sit on the couch with a mug of hot cocoa or perk energy and look out at the Bird Feeder and count Blue Jays and Blue Birds and Cardinals and House Finches and Carolina Chick and Carolina Wrens and Song Sparrows and House Sparrows and Woodpeckers.
I’ve had a Downy Woodpecker and a Red Breasted Woodpecker.
That’s a dozen different backyard birds that now come to me right outside my window. That was a really simple, impactful start.
What are some of those things for you?
I want you to think about that as a final step in this process.
Recap
To review, I’m just going to go through these four S’s again. I’m sure that you’ve got them, but let’s just go through them one more time.
And I highly recommend, as I always do that for this exercise, you actually grab a piece of paper. Pull out a notebook and write down. Do a little reflecting with your hand and a pen and a pencil, and connect those synapses in your brain so that you can get creative and think outside the box, and also get still with yourself, and give yourself a moment to actually process.
Look forward to this new year with these four S’s.
What are you gonna stop? What doesn’t make sense anymore? What doesn’t align with your values? A big example of that a few years ago for us was that we stopped shopping for the whole year. We just decided that was something that we didn’t need for that year, and that challenge, that minimalist challenge, became the foundation of an entirely new lifestyle for us.
It doesn’t have to be big. It can be little. You’re gonna stop drinking soda after 5:00 PM What are the things that aren’t serving you that you can set aside?
What are you going to continue doing? What are you gonna stay steady with? What are those things that you enjoy and you acknowledge, I like this. I want to continue doing this.
What are the things that you want to stay steady with and hat you want to up the ante on by systematizing them. You’re going to make them a little easier. You’re going to incorporate them into your regular schedule. You’re going to actually not only continue, but continue with intention.
And then with the space you’ve created, what are you gonna start this year? What is one thing that has had a little tug or some interest in that you’re going to go ahead and do?
I can’t wait to hear. Please, if you feel so inclined. I love to hear feedback on how these things land for you. So send me a message at livefreemiranda on Instagram or an email, if that’s more your style at mirand@livecreative.co.
I would love to hear how this episode and this exercise make a positive impact on your life.
Conclusion
As always, I want to thank you so much for lending me your attention today. I hope this episode of the four S’s to begin your new year has been helpful for you.
Could I request one special start for you this year? If you haven’t yet left a written review in iTunes for this show, maybe you could add that to your list.
It takes about three minutes. It’s so simple and it means so much to me. Could you do it? Simply head to the podcast app on your phone or to Apple Podcasts online. Scroll right to the bottom, and click to leave a five star rating and a written review.
That simple one or two sentences makes a huge difference for me in the show.
The most recent review is so simple and beautiful. Shameless Sheryl said,
I’ve been finding myself going back to listen to old episodes since finding this podcast in early 2020. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Thank you for putting this out into the world.
Shameless Sheryl, thank you for listening to Live Free Creative podcast.
I would love to send you a thank you for your written review. Email me at miranda@livefreecreative.co and I will drop it in the mail.
Thank you again for being here, everyone. Happy New Year. I’m excited to dive into some plans and goals this month with you, and I will meet you back here next week. Have a good one.
