We’ve spent the last few weeks looking back at your year, celebrating what worked, learning from what didn’t, and creating space so your nervous system can actually support you as you step into something new.

Now, in this final episode of 2025, it’s time to shift into possibility.

Today we’re talking about why "new year, new you" culture completely misses the point - and why trying to fix yourself, overhaul your life, or force rigid resolutions is the exact thing that keeps derailing your progress.

Instead, I’m showing you how to enter 2026 with a fresh approach rooted in self-trust, alignment, and the feeling you want to build your year around.

This is about choosing a North Star for how you want to feel next year, and letting that guide your decisions, your rhythms, your routines, and your goals. It’s the simplest shift with the biggest impact.

In this episode we explore:

• The unconscious “you’re not enough” messaging behind New Year culture
• How to create goals without pressure, perfectionism, or fix-it energy
• The power of choosing a feeling as the foundation of your year
• What alignment really looks like in daily life
• How to build a year that reflects who you want to be, not who you think you should be

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We are on a mission right now to get you ready for a brand new year.

And in this episode, we're going to be talking about ways that you can update and upgrade your approach to your goals and desires next year so we can really open the door to building a life that feels truly right for you.

We're going to be dumping all of that new year, new you talk.

And we're definitely not here to try and fix ourselves.

Instead, we're going to be treading a new path to deeper alignment, deeper self trust, and therefore a way of living that feels expansive, exciting and easeful.

Welcome to the Busy Woman's Guide to well Being, the podcast women who are done 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.

It's literally the only two weeks of the year that I don't put an episode out there.

So we're going to make this a really, really good one.

And what we've been doing for the last three weeks is really helping you to build a foundation for the things you want to achieve and the things that you deeply desire to have in the new year.

So I hope over the next couple of weeks, while I'm not releasing my usual episode, that you'll maybe come back to these.

You're gonna use them for a bit of reflection time and a bit of planning time, and you're gonna use that to really get prepped and ready for January.

Now, I'm not a big resolutions girl.

I don't know about you, but I have really moved away from making very specific promises and resolutions in the new year because it started to feel like a lot of pressure.

And for many of us, we feel excited.

Yes, we love the idea of a fresh start, but we also feel an awful lot of pressure at a time of year when, quite frankly, a lot of us want to hibernate.

And then by the third week of January, we've given up, haven't we?

We have packed it in, we've said, this is not working for me, it's all too much.

And we maybe do not achieve the things that we want to achieve.

So what we're doing here is not making huge declarations.

We're not talking about how we're going to do everything differently next year.

But instead, what I really want to do with these episodes is to help you to create a sense of possibility, to help you get really aligned with your desires and to get really intentional about the kind of energy that you want to enter the New Year with.

Now, we might use that to plan our goals and to plan certain milestones for ourselves and all of those kind of things.

There's nothing wrong with doing that.

But what I really want to do, particularly in this episode, is show you how you can approach it with a different kind of energy.

This time.

We're not aiming for that fixed fix it energy that I need to fix myself approach.

That's not what we want.

Because what often happens with that is it feels restrictive, it feels at odds with the positive energy that we want to create.

So instead, what we're doing is we are creating the feeling first.

We're going from that rather than these are the things that I think I should be doing.

We're going, what is the way that I want to feel?

Because what that then does is it makes us open to ideas, it makes us excited about the possibility, and we create a really positive energy around the way we want to show up and the possibilities that we can open up for ourselves in that New year.

So so far, we've been on a bit of a journey.

So we took a moment in episode two to eight to really reflect on the year that's just gone.

In episode two to nine, we really looked at how we can create some space to build our energy for the New Year.

And both of those things are really, really important.

You don't need to spend a ton of time on them.

You do need to incorporate those into what we're going to do for the New Year.

Because we really want to be thinking about learning from what went from what has been.

We really want to create some space and some time for ourselves to build our energy for the New Year.

Because I don't want us to create from pressure.

I don't want us to create that from a place that is going to drain us and leave us just pissed off with everything by the third week of January.

Instead, we want an approach that is going to work with our nervous system and that is going to really empower us from a place of truly knowing what we want and truly knowing what's important to us.

We start from the energy that we want to create, rather than the things that we think we should be doing.

So that's what we're aiming for this week.

But before we move on to that, what I want to talk about first a little bit is about what often usually happens as we move into the New year.

Because what we're really going to do is we're going to counter this and we're going to talk about what we maybe want more of instead.

So what usually happens is Boxing Day kicks in and all of a sudden the world is telling you, you need to become a different woman.

In January.

All of the fix it stuff comes out, the detoxes, the challenges, the resets, the planners, all of those things which are all about you outrunning this old, flawed version of you and becoming a more perfect, more acceptable version of yourself.

And the unconscious message beneath a lot of this is, you're not enough as you are.

You need to change.

And it can feel really hard not to be dazzled by that.

Absolutely.

Because the idea of being a better person, of being a thinner person, of being a more organized person, whatever that thing is, can feel really, really inviting.

We get excited by it.

We start to imagine how much better our lives are going to be when we fix these aspects of ourselves.

And there's nothing wrong with wanting to change those things.

There's nothing wrong with wanting better ourselves.

There's nothing wrong with making plans for ourselves.

But what I really want to talk about today is how we move from this, this, this pressure based, where it's all about.

This is what I should be doing.

This is what the world is telling me that I need to be doing.

This is all about how I fix myself and make myself a more acceptable person.

And instead thinking about what do I want to create in my life?

How can I tune into how I want to feel and how can I use that to plan my next steps forward?

Because that really leads us to having a lot of clarity, a lot of clarity around the steps that we need to take.

Because when we're going from shoulds, yeah, we sort of know the steps that we need to take, but they're not aligned.

They're not truly aligned with how we want to feel.

And that's why they stop working after the third week of January.

That's why we get pissed off with them.

That's why we start to resent what we're having to do.

That's why we throw the towel in, because it's not properly aligned with what we really want for ourselves.

So that's really what we're going to consider this time, because we need to be connected with ourselves.

That's the place that we need to operate from.

We need to operate from a place of this is what I desire.

We need to operate from a place of creating rhythms and routines that are actually designed for your life, rather than just constantly trying to shoehorn somebody else's version in.

In a way that doesn't fit your energy, doesn't fit your lifestyle, doesn't fit your values.

And what we're really talking about here is congruency.

And so let's take an example of somebody coming to me saying, I want to feel more free and relaxed in my life.

I'm sick of running around all the time and doing all the things and feeling stressed and feeling overwhelmed, and I don't want that anymore.

I want to feel free and relaxed in my life.

But what they're doing, and this is what I often see, is that in order to reach that state, what they're trying to do is desperately cross everything off the to do list first, try and keep running as fast as they can to get on top of it all, so they can feel like they have finally earned the ease.

I've had many conversations with women who are doing exactly that.

When I get there, then I can rest.

When I get there, then I can let go.

When I get there, then I can relax.

And then, of course, they wonder why they never get there.

And it's because the action they're taking, keep up the relentless pressure, keep going, keep producing, keep being productive, is not congruent with the thing that they want, which is more ease, less pressure.

So before you move into even thinking about planning your goals for the next year, what I want you to become really conscious of, really aware of, is what is the thing that I want to build for myself.

Because it changes your entire approach.

When you go from that place of, this is what I want to create, and this is how I'm going to create it, you end up in a very different place with a very different approach, and potentially even with very different goals for yourself as well.

And I just want to give you a bit of a truth bomb here, because the truth is, if you continue to chase the same things in the same way, next year, you will end up with exactly the same year.

If you want a different year, your approach has got to change.

You have got to start to come into alignment with yourself.

You've got to stop fighting yourself because that's what is happening.

When we move from pressure, we're fighting with ourselves all the time and that is just not productive.

So have a think about it like this.

We often move into the new year trying to fix ourselves, right?

And that results in us over committing to things, trying to do too much all at once.

It leads to us being hyper vigilant.

So we're counting, we're tracking, we're controlling.

It leads to us feeling exhausted by the effort.

Sometimes even just thinking about it makes us feel pretty tired.

It ends up with us feeling behind with feeling like we're not good enough and we're trying to earn peace rather than creating it.

Like I said in my example before, I can earn peace when I have completed all of these steps.

We're not creating peace for ourselves, we're trying to earn it.

And that's the version of us that is often chasing more ease, but using pressure to get there.

Now instead think about what an aligned version of you might be doing and how they might be approaching things.

They're moving at a pace that works for them.

They're choosing routines that feel supportive to them, not ones that they're going to end up resenting in two weeks time.

They're aware of what is supporting the energy and they're moving towards the things that are supporting the energy.

They're feeling more grounded, they're feeling more light, they're feeling more at ease.

And they're coming from a place of creating peace rather than having to earn it.

Is it the first one?

Is it the over commitment, the hyper vigilance, the earning rather than creating?

Or is it moving at a pace that works for you, choosing routines that feel supportive and actually consciously creating peace?

And if, as I suspect it is the second, then let's think about how you can start building that for yourself now.

I want to feel strong, I want to feel calm, I want to feel energized.

I want to feel spacious.

I want to feel confident.

I want to feel peaceful.

Choose the word that feels the most aligned with, with you, with how you want to feel in the New year.

Because that word, that thing, is gonna become your North Star, it becomes the thing that you filter everything else through.

Then you start to run everything through the filter of that.

Will this feel peaceful?

Will this create more peace?

Will this challenge my peace?

So asking yourself, is it going to help or is it going to hinder?

And that will then inform the actions that you take.

And it makes sure that everything that you do is going to be in alignment with that feeling.

So we're going from the feeling you want to create, rather than things that you think you should be doing, Maybe even write that word somewhere so you see it every day and it reminds you to just filter your decisions through that, filter your goals throughout, filter your life through that.

Because I promise you that when you start to do that, that everything suddenly feels that bit easier.

Everything suddenly feels that much more aligned with what you want.

Everything just starts to slot together a little bit better as well.

And what I really want you to take away from this episode is you don't need to fix yourself, you don't need to overhaul yourself for the New Year.

What you need to do is become conscious of the woman you want to be and how you want to feel, and start from there.

Not from the pressure, not from trying to perform some kind of role, not from trying to prove yourself, but from that deep know that you already have around the feeling you want to create in your life, what you want to create more of in your life.

And you can still have goals, you can still work towards things, you can still want to improve yourself.

But what happens when you approach it more like this is that you run your decisions through that filter and you get really, really aligned.

So everything you do directs you towards the feeling that you want to have, rather than taking away from it all the time.

So spend a bit of time with that if you want an idea for other words.

Because I know sometimes it's not always easy to come up the word.

If you go and search for a list of values on Google, that can be very helpful, that will come up with lots of words around your values.

Now, not all of them are going to be relevant to how you want to feel, but they can be helpful.

And your values, I mean, I've not talked about that in today's episode, but Your values are really important as well.

And maybe you will choose one word around what you want to feel and maybe a word or two around your values, because that can be really informative as well.

But anyway, I'm not going to overcomplicate it.

Let's just go with the feeling first.

And then what.

What that means is we're simplifying everything, aren't we?

We're going from the place of, okay, I want to do this.

Does that align with how I want to feel?

Yes.

Great, let's go for it.

No, let's update and amend, or let's do something different.

And it just means that you are going to feel so much more in tune with the things that you're doing.

They're going to make so much more sense to you.

They're going to feel so much less pressured.

So spend a bit of time on that.

Maybe come back and listen to this in the last couple of episodes again at some time over your little Christmas break.

And in January, I'm going to be back with an episode that's going to take all of this and help you to plan for the New Year in a way that's going to feel truly, truly amazing.

Let's create the foundations and then let's put that in place in the New Year.

So until then, I'm going to 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 at Life Edit with Alex for more real talk, mindset shifts and daily inspiration.