Last week, we took a gentle but honest look back at the year you’ve just lived - what worked, what didn’t, and what you’re proud of. 

This week, before you rush into planning 2026, I want to guide you into something far more powerful (and wildly underrated): the pause.

In the busy season where life is loud, routines are disrupted, and your nervous system is probably crying out for rest, creating intentional space becomes the difference between goals that feel aligned and goals that feel like pressure. This episode is all about helping you breathe, soften the noise, switch off autopilot, and give yourself the clarity that only stillness can bring.

Practical reflection prompts from the episode:

• Where can I intentionally create space—physical, mental, or emotional—over the next two weeks?
• What helps my nervous system soften? (A bath, a walk, lying on the bed for 10 minutes, sitting in silence…)
• Where do I need to slow down so that my plans for next year come from desire, not pressure?
• What would feel good—not productive, not worthy, not impressive—good?

Space creates clarity. Before you choose your 2026 goals, give yourself room to digest this year and reconnect with what you actually want—not what you think you should want.

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In last week's episode, we did a mini review of our year and gave ourselves the opportunity to reflect and celebrate and acknowledge.

So this time we're going to look at creating a bit of space for ourselves, easing that end of year pressure and ensuring that we can feel as calm and grounded and ready as possible for any changes that are about to come our way.

Welcome to the Busy Woman's Guide to well Being, the podcast for women who are d with the hustle and are ready to feel at home in their own skin.

I'm your host, Alex Life, therapeutic and fitness coach for busy women who want to do less, live more, and feel good from the inside out.

Every week I'm going to help you to cut through the noise, challenge the shoulds, and find new ways to live and move that actually feel like you.

Hello.

So we started that last week in episode 228.

So do go back and listen to that if you haven't done already.

And then this week, we're going to be talking about creating space, because the fact is we often rush headlong into resolutions or changes or plans and we don't give them enough thought.

And what we really need to be doing is creating space for the strategy, creating that pause so we can really plan everything in a way, ensures that it's the best possible route for us.

That ensures that we are in the best possible place to do that.

Because a lot of the time our nervous system is on high alert most of the year.

We are rushing around, we are busy, and life just keeps lifing.

And so what we then try and do is we plan from there.

We plan from.

I'm flipping exhausted.

It's the end of the year.

Finally had a little bit of a break, and then we go straight into and now what do I want for next year?

And so what happens is there ends up being a lot of internal pressure.

We're operating from a place of should rather than desire, and we're not necessarily in the best energy to make the decisions that are going to serve us the best.

And what happens really is that we end up being driven by the idea that we need to be taking action and moving forward all the time.

And the thing is that when we are making plans from that place, then we don't always make the best of plans.

We don't always think about how it's aligning with what we want.

We're not thinking about how it's aligning with how we want to feel in our lives and what we want to create more of in our lives.

So what I'm encouraging you to do this week is to hold a bit of space for yourself so that you can have the opportunity to get really aligned with those plans and really make them work for you in the New Year, so that we don't dive into the New Year with these resolutions that we've given up by the middle of January.

We don't want that for ourselves this year.

We want to be building and building and building throughout the whole year and building that life that we really want.

And when I talk about alignment, I think sometimes it's very easy to throw that word out there, isn't it?

And we're like, what does alignment really mean?

What I really mean by this is making sure that the plans that we make are congruent with the things that we really want for ourselves.

Because what I often see is that we don't succeed with our goals because they are not congruent with who we want to be and how we want to show up in our lives.

They don't match.

The two things are not running together.

They're not running alongside each other.

We have got the thing that we're doing over on one side, and we've got the thing that we want to achieve over on the other side, and they're running in parallel lines that are never meeting.

We want those lines to meet.

We want those two things to work together.

We want those two things to be in alignment with each other.

So that's what we really want to create that space for.

Because if we don't do that, we operate from a space of urgency and busyness, and I must take action rather than a place that is properly considered and is properly thought about.

So this is a busy time of year.

I get that.

I realize that.

But it is also a great time of year to let go of a few things.

We're not necessarily in our normal routine.

We're hopefully spending a bit of time away from work and things like that.

And so it actually is a really good time to just let go of some of the internal pressure, to give ourselves a bit of mental and emotional space so that we can make sure that 20, 26 actually becomes reflection of our desires rather than a reflection of a long list of shoulds.

So we're going to create some space, we're going to create some stillness so that we can create clarity.

And that's what it's really about.

When the mind is busy all the time, when we are busy all the time, we don't necessarily have clarity.

And so we do things just because.

So we're going to give ourselves that buffer.

We're going to interrupt those automatic loops.

We're going to give a bit of proper consideration to what we're doing and how we're doing it.

And I have had a huge lesson in.

In that myself this year.

I already shared a little bit about it in last week's episodes, but I'm just gonna briefly share it again here today.

So a little bit earlier this year, I made the decision to rebrand my business.

It had felt a long time in the coming or a lot.

Yeah, a long time in the coming.

Is that the right way to say it?

It felt a long time coming anyway, and it was something I'd talked to coaches about and they'd always been, yeah, you can create this, but you can still have this.

And I felt like I was walking this tightrope between the thing that really wanted and where I was in my business at the time.

But eventually I said to myself, right, this is ridiculous.

This has been running through your head for the last couple of years.

You need to just get on and do it.

You know where you're heading, but you're not letting yourself go there because you're still holding on to all of the old things.

And previous to this, I'd been running on a lot of pressure.

I'd been running on a lot of fear around what's going to happen to my business if I start to change things.

There was a lot of pressure around creating content all the time and.

And doing a lot of things for my business because I thought I should be doing them.

So what I did earlier this year was I gave myself permission, essentially.

I said to myself, just take some time away.

Take some time off.

Now.

It wasn't completely time off because I still had personal training clients, I still had my fitness membership, but I kind of said to myself, look, rather than being on the busy train and trying to do all the things that you think you should be doing, what you're going to do is you can just take your foot off the gas for a bit, you're going to slow down your days, you're gonna keep doing the things that absolutely need to be done.

You're gonna keep looking after your existing clients, your existing members, but you're basically gonna stop doing anything that is unnecessary.

So I didn't post on social media for about three months.

In the end, I think originally I said I was gonna give myself a few weeks off.

I didn't post for about three months because it felt really good to give myself the space from that.

I didn't really send out any emails, and I basically cut anything out that did not need to be done to look after my existing clients and members.

And it was a revelation because I created space in my brain or for my brain to just disengage.

It disengaged from all the doing, and it allowed me to start creating a plan that was based on my desire rather than my fear.

And I realized that so much of what had held me back was fear.

If I let go of this, what's going to happen?

If I stop doing this, my business is going to fall apart.

If I don't do this anymore, then it's going to take forever for me to catch back up again.

None of those things happened.

I created something even better.

I created something that felt completely aligned, completely congruent with what I wanted to create for myself in my life at that point.

And I've had so much lovely feedback about the rebrand.

It's felt really good to do this.

I don't know what all the fuss was about that I was making because honestly, it was a load of old rubbish.

I even had this whole conversation myself around, oh, I don't know about letting go of the name chick fit, because, oh, you've had that for such a long time.

It served you so well.

It's made zero difference.

And everyone's like, love your new name.

Such a great name.

I really love it.

The whole reblan looks amazing.

It has done me no harm at all.

And in fact, it has made things better.

I'm bringing in new, amazing new clients that I'm loving.

Working with the whole rebrand feels great.

I feel like I've got this almost this fresh slate to start from.

It feels amazing.

And all of that happened because I gave myself space.

I gave my brain the space to really let it come in in the way that it needed to, to really help myself get aligned, to not expect anything specific of myself, but just to allow it to happen.

And so it did.

It didn't happen without a bit of work on my part.

Obviously.

There was a lot of work that went on behind the scenes around the Rebrand.

But I didn't do it in a pressured way.

I didn't give myself a deadline.

I just let myself do it when it needed doing.

And so we can all do this for ourselves.

Doesn't need to be in quite big way that I did it this year.

But even in the small ways, we can do this for ourselves.

And what happens is that we, we do things more intentionally.

We do things in a way that feel good for our nervous system so that instead of running away from everything, we are moving towards something.

We are moving towards that desire, we're moving towards that thing that feels good for us.

And so that space is as important as every other part of this process.

So what I really want you to do this week is have a think about a.

A couple of things that you could be doing over the Christmas period to soothe that nervous system.

What can you do that's just going to give you a little bit of space?

And that, that space, that time you create does not have to be productive.

It doesn't have to be necessarily about sitting there and journaling.

If that works for you, great.

But it doesn't have to be about that.

It can be about daydreaming.

And in fact, if you could do a bit of daydreaming, freaking amazing, that is going to be really, really, really helpful.

Because it's often in the daydreams that we really start to reveal what is it I really want rather than what is it I think I should want.

And I know it can be tough at this time of year.

We got family around, we've got people to visit, we've got chocolate to eat, right?

Busy, busy, busy.

You're going to need to get a little bit intentional about that time, you know, I.

So this year, for example, it's just the four of us for Christmas.

We are having some friends on Christmas afternoon.

But then after that we go up to my mum's.

My brothers are gonna be there, my niece is gonna be there.

It's gonna be busy, there's gonna be things going on and so it's gonna be a really busy time.

But what I really try and do, even amongst all of that is just go and lie on my bed for 15 minutes and just daydream.

Not cause I want to be productive, but because I just want to create a bit of intentional space for myself.

Or I'll go out for a quick walk for 15 minutes or I'll head down to the gym at the bottom of the garden for 15 minutes or half an hour or whatever and I'll get away from all of the stuff that is going on.

And I will just daydream not listening to a podcast necessarily, not listening to even music, but just daydreaming.

Getting in the bath, that's always a favourite one for me.

If I get in the bath, my daydream time.

So I really want you to encourage you to do that for yourself this year.

What's that gonna look like for you?

Believe me, I get it.

It's gonna feel uncomfortable.

You're like, daydreaming.

Who's got time for bloody daydreaming?

Who's doing that?

You, my friend, are doing.

Okay, I want you to do that.

I want you to create space.

And what might happen is your brain might just go anywhere and everywhere and that's fine.

Or it might go towards.

I wonder what I'd like to create this year.

I wonder what I'd like to do more of this year.

I wonder why that thing that I did didn't quite work out for me.

And just get playful with it.

Just allow it to happen.

Whatever you choose, though, however you choose to create that space for yourself, remember that it is about creating a buffer.

It's not about doing anything specific in that time.

It's not about making plans in that time.

It's just about being mindful so that you can then approach your goals.

The things we're going to talk about next week a little bit more and then again more in the new year, but so you can start to really think about that from a different place, from a place where you have had the time and the opportunity to just digest everything.

And that's what this is really all about.

It's about digesting everything.

We're not trying to stuff the food down as quickly as we can and then move on to the next thing and then end up all bloated and feeling horrible.

We're taking our time.

We're enjoying the meal.

We're letting it digest before we move on to the next thing.

That is what we're doing right here.

And there are no rules around how you do this for yourself.

Okay?

So I'm going to leave you with that.

Like I say, these episodes are short and sweet.

I'm not here to tell you do X, Y and Z. I'm here to inspire you to go and do this for yourself.

So we've already reviewed and celebrated our year.

In last week's episode, this week, we have talked about creating this space.

And I hope you are going to do that for yourself over the next couple of weeks.

And then next week, we're going to talk a little bit more about stepping into this new year differently.

So not from a place of pressure, but from a place of alignment.

So for now, I'm gonna love you and leave you, and I'll see you back here again next time.

Thank you, as always, for joining me.

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And come connect with me on Instagram @lifeeditwithalex for more real talk, mindset shifts and daily inspiration.