January '23
Welcome to Reset Learning Studio, a monthly newsletter to help you reach your greatest potential. Reset combines professional coaching with spiritual lessons to help you live a meaningful life. Each month, you can expect a theme with lessons, practices and tools to help you in your personal and professional life.
December's Theme: Slow January
Instead of celebrating January 1st as my New Year, I was alone in the country in my sweatpants and asleep by 11:30 pm. Dev was in Canada with his family while I, on a deadline, edited my book for 8 hours a day, starting 10 days ago and finally finishing yesterday. Hooray!
Instead, I used the Winter Solstice on December 21st to reflect on 2022, and I'll celebrate the Lunar New Year in a couple of weeks, just as I did growing up. Plus, according to astrology, Mars and Mercury are retrograde until January 12th and 18th respectively anyway, giving these first few weeks of 2023 a slow, quiet, introspective feeling that is incompatible with go, go, go productivity.
This is all to say that I call BS on the pressure put on us to completely turn our lives around starting January 1st. I am all for new beginnings and making changes, but they are more effective when they come from your Personal Sense of Time, which is guided by your intuition, and not what everyone else is doing. I don't have a New Year's resolution. Instead, my goal is simply to pay attention to myself and tune into intuition, asking, what do I need? Sometimes I need structure and goals, and other times I need quiet contemplation. Sometimes I need homemade soup or a deep dive into my finances.
What about you?
What do you need for today to be great?
What do you need for the rest of this week to be amazing?
In your heart, what do you most need for January?
Of course, many of us don't have a choice about slowing down because we have work on our plates that can't be moved, but I do want to encourage you to respect the Mars and Mercury Retrogrades and make time to fit in slowness and quiet amongst all the external action. Retrogrades are such a powerful opportunity to review, reconsider, and revise our old assumptions about what we want. I've been seeing this quote from Zora Neale Hurston pop up a lot: "There are years that ask questions and years that answer." In this same vein, there are times to create your vision, and times to go after it. Why not let January be a time to craft your vision before you fully spring into action?
To support you in your visioning + future actions, I wanted to offer this community a Money Manifestation Guide whenever you decide you're ready for it. It guides you in setting your vision for this year and the farther future, and then there are 31 days worth of pages for the specific journaling exercise I did religiously in 2020 and 2021 to manifest a ridiculous amount of goodness into my life. There are also affirmations and supportive words for when you feel frustrated.
Choose a month when you want to do the process, print out the pages, and follow the guide each day. The daily exercises are the same every day (you're building a habit!) and only take five minutes.
Download it here!
Dear Liz,
Thank you so much for creating this podcast. Sharing your experiences (in such an articulate, concise, and caring manner) and what you've learned from them is honestly one of the best gifts I have ever received.
I have been practicing gratitude and recognizing the conditions for happiness around me every day. Sometimes realizing how blessed I am can feel overwhelming! When I realize how much abundance I have in my life, it conflicts with my thoughts of "I deserve more/I deserve what I want in life i.e. more space, a new car, more money etc." Do you have any advice on how to find balance / how to deal with these "conflicting" ideas?
-Trish, 30, Long Beach, California
Dear Trish,
Sometimes we turn away from our dreams, convincing ourselves that they’re silly, selfish, or greedy. We think to ourselves, who am I to want more when what I have is perfectly fine? A helpful way to work with this guilt is to remember how accomplishing your dreams can help others. You see, every personal dream also contains the desire to make the world a better place in ways big and small.
For instance, If you want a promotion and a raise, consider how getting this creates a positive precedent for other women in your industry. Also, imagine the good you can do with more influence and money. Think about how getting more space or a new car can inspire the people around you to demand more for themselves, too.
It’s not selfish to have dreams. In fact, they’re a natural part of our human existence. Dreams of a better world are what inspired our ancestors to cook with fire, plant crops, and rise up against oppressors. They are as essential to life as breath. You see, the essence of being human is change. You are always evolving, and your dreams exist to help direct you. You must accept that you will always continue to yearn for a more fulfilling life, and that's not a bad thing. We all know people who have given up on their dreams. Notice how doing that erodes one's innate energy and vitality.
Know that you can grateful for the present moment while also dreaming of a better future. I have a wonderful life and I love where I am, but I sure as heck hope I'm not where I am now in five years. People of course deeply love the children they have, while also still wanting to give them another sibling. Whenever you start to feel guilty about wanting more, remember that it is literally baked into your human DNA to grow and evolve your life and the world around you.
This is a helpful mantra from The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks that reminds us of our human purpose: I expand in abundance, creativity, success, and love every day as I inspire those around me to do the same.
Or try this simple one whenever you feel this conflict more acutely: I love where I am as I expand into more
Today, let's celebrate the fact that you have a beautiful life AND you're building an even better future. I hope you can see how much you deserve it.
Sending you lots of love,
Liz
Modern Love Pocast: "Your Weirdest Dates"
I'm a little biased here, but Dev wrote a beautiful essay about our unique love story in the New York Times and it got turned into a podcast episode with a Q&A from both of us at the end. The voice of the person they chose to read is so soothing.
Atomic Habits
After years of avoiding this book, because it was literally everywhere, I finally read Atomic Habits. I took away these two big learnings that I still think about all the time and make me feel a lot better about myself.
1. When it comes to good habits, it's okay to break them just as long as you go right back the next day. One day of bad habits is understandable. Two days in a row is a downward spiral. I love this concept because it gives me a lot more compassion for myself if veer from the healthy path. I simply accept that it's what I need and commit to not doing it the next day!
2. The success of a habit depends on how many times you do it and NOT how long you do it for. Thus, it's better to do something small, for 2 minutes every day than to go big a couple of times a week. I never knew this, so I'd go full steam for a couple of weeks, but none of the new habits actually stuck. This way is so much more reasonable and sustainable.
That's it for this month. Thank you so much to the 1,000 new newsletter subscribers who joined us last month, and here's to a slow and nourishing January!
Love,
Liz
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