Winter - A Time for Rest, Reflection, Resetting, and Dreaming
2026 is upon us. I’ve seen a lot of people talking about resolutions…but we all know that most resolutions fail.
Let’s look at why…
Vague Goals - “Be Healthier” aren’t often thought out far beyond that. Without clear and specific action steps assigned to these goals they become difficult to manage or maintain.
Unrealistic Expectations - a lofty expectation without the small steps necessary to achieve them is just a hope and the lack of identifying the small steps and changes necessary can lead to burnout and discouragement.
Lack of Accountability - when we come up with a resolution but don’t write it down, revisit it, or share it with anyone it becomes easy to abandon that resolution. This lack of accountability leads to excuses and abandonment.
Motivation vs. Discipline - motivation is not long lasting, discipline is. Building the habit and doing it even when you don’t feel like doing it, doing it when it’s hard, doing it when it’s cold, doing it when time is short is discipline. Motivation is fleeting.
No plan for set backs - too often we have lofty goals but don’t consider all the things that can go wrong. While we can’t envision every obstacle we may encounter - we have to be realistic in what we are trying to do.
Lack of Prioritizing - often we set goals, but we do not take the time to prioritize them or make them non-negotiables.
To be completely up front - I don’t like creating resolutions that start on January 1. Winter is long, and dark, and often cold, heavy, and difficult. Instead, I think of winter and the first couple months of the year as a time to rest, reflect, reset, and dream about possibilities. I enjoy creating warmth. In the winter you will find my kitchen often has multiple items cooking or baking, a fresh pot of coffee or kettle of tea brewed, with scents of cinnamon or nutmeg in the air. My living room has blankets over every chair and couch because snuggling up with a warm blanket, a good book, and a cup of tea is one of my favorite things to do. I like to spend the dark evenings looking forward; planning for my garden, planning projects, planning trips, and considering where I’d like my focus to be as I wait for the cold, dark, and long nights to give way into springtime.
Winter for me has become a time of reflection, resetting, resting, and dreaming. It has become the place where I sit considering changes that have occurred, changes I’d like to make, recognizing patterns and identifying what to carry with me and what to let go of. It’s a time of recharging my battery. It is not the time for starting lofty goals when the sun hides for days or weeks at a time, when the dark comes before I even get home from work, or when the cold makes me want to stay inside and hunker down.
These next few weeks I am focused on reorganizing spaces in small bites, clearing what no longer serves me or my dreams for the year, creating plans for my garden and plotting out what that will look like, creating action items, taking time to reconnect with things and people I love.
As a Dream Manager, one of the things I’ve loved doing is having my own dream session at the beginning of the year. Several years ago, as I became certified as a Dream Manager we went through the process of writing down our own dreams. with a goal of getting to 100 dreams. Those dreams are specific to twelve different areas with some dreams straddling one or more areas - which is perfectly fine. As we began writing those dreams down I thought there was no way I’d come up with 100! To be fair, initially I did not. I couldn’t even remember before reading the book, and starting the process of being certified when I had spent that much time considering what I dreamed of. And then it hit me, I had stopped dreaming. I had been surviving for so long that I hadn’t considered the future and what I’d like to do or accomplish. The few times I did it was as a passing thought “someday I’d like to write a book.”
I was not at 100 dreams as we began sharing some of the dreams we had written down as a group, but as people shared, I was reminded of dreams I had once had and hoped for that I had not thought of as I went through the exercise of writing them down. By the time the entire group shared, I had written a few more dreams down and was at 99. That night as I sat in my room looking over the days materials and the dreams I had written down and then spoke to my husband I closed the book with 115 dreams written down.
As months went by, I didn’t open up that journal - life was busy, work was insane and I was burning the candle at both ends. However, a year later as I looked at my journal I realized that some of those dreams I had managed to accomplish. So, as the year started, I considered which dreams were ones I really wanted to focus on. I made these dreams SMART creating actionable items and steps for accomplishing them.
Nine months later, I published my book. The one I had delegated to “Someday” status just a couple years before.
What was different?
Well, I committed to it. I created SMART goals to surround the entire dream. I placed timelines and scheduled time for writing and editing. After publishing the book, in quick succession I set up my website, created my blog, and began speaking in public about the book and the blog.
As we step into 2026 there are many things happening around us that we have little to no control of. Days can be long, especially at this time of year, and yet the time goes by quickly. I encourage you to take time for rest - recharge your battery and take care of yourself, take time for reflection - on where you’ve been and where you want to be, on what you carry into this year and what you leave behind. take time for resetting - get rid of what is cluttering your life, decide what you want and need - professionally, personally, intellectually, emotionally, prepare for fresh starts and finally take time to dream!
Spring will be here soon.
So, while we wait -
Dream big, dream incredibly, dream with audacity, dream SMART - but most important is simply to take the time to DREAM - about the life you want, the accomplishments you want, the legacy you want to leave behind.
What are your dreams for 2026 and beyond? I’d love to hear about tthem!
