3 steps to reset your life: winter edition
Creating a foundation & container before anything else
Happy Wednesday dear ones! In this post, you’ll learn about…
✍️My personal 3-step process for life reset & life design during Winter Season
❤️🔥 Journaling prompt to help you reset your life
🎁 The Seasons of 2025 free calendar & journaling page
📖 The 3-step life reset for winter season
In last week’s post, I ended with two questions for you to explore:
What does your ideal life look like? & what is the best version of yourself?
If you feel like you missed the boat on your yearly intentions and goals because you don’t know exactly what you want or how to set tangible goals and plans, do not worry! First, let me tell you it’s normal not to know exactly all the goals and steps ahead at this moment.
Also, each season allows us to reset our lives differently, as each season represents its own cycles too. If we feel like we missed the boat, we don’t need to “wait” for a new year to start over or give ourselves a much-needed reset. A year gives us at least four opportunities to do this.
So if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you to read last week's post first before continuing with this one, as it makes clear why this is not the time to set strong and long-term goals, but a period of setting a strong foundation first.
Last week’s post 👇
In this post, we explore a three-step process that better aligns with Winter while creating the foundation we need to have empowering intentions and achievable goals without overwhelming and depleting ourselves down the road.
Step 1: Exploration
✨Getting clear about the big picture
Before anything else, we need to be 100% clear on the vision for our dream life. Hence, the previous questions: what does your ideal life look like? & what is the best version of yourself?
At this step, you need to be able to dream freely and without restrictions.
What do you want for yourself and your life?
What does the life of your dreams look like?
Who are you?
What are you doing?
Where are you at? Where do you live?
Who are you with?
What do your days look like?
✨Permission to dream
The previous is not a one-time-only activity. It takes time to have a clear vision and by actually allowing ourselves to envision those dreams with time some of them will make more sense to you and others not so much.
So daily or otherwise a few this per week or moon phase, give yourself the space and time to sit quietly by yourself and just start inviting those dreams in. Explore the previous questions each time. We are paying attention to our conscious dreams.
If you remember your night dreams, then this is a great time to start writing about them. Write not only what you remember of your dreams but also how you felt about them and what you intuitively think they mean to you without using dream dictionaries of any kind. We are also paying attention to our unconscious dreams.
Write both the conscious and unconscious dreams down in your journal.
Review them often.
What themes, people, objects, activities, places, feelings, and other things repeat over and over again?
After you have explored your dreams for a while and you feel you know them through and through, they will start to make 100% sense to you, and you’ll feel inspired and motivated by them.
Step 2: Untangling dreams & setting priorities
✨Core Values
What are core values?
From mindtools.com:
Values are beliefs that define what is important in how you live and work. They are central to your identity and guide your decision-making.
Values are created in our early years by our experiences and are also molded by our near environment as we grow up. We can take over the values of our parents, caregivers, family, teachers/school, and present religious & political views. From there is where our moral compass is born and it’s where our integrity is located.
Whether we are aware of it or not, our values decide each one of our decisions.
The problem with values arises when:
We think we want or need to have certain things or be a certain type of person because we are looking and adapting ourselves to the cultural and collective values that may not align with our core values.
Some of the values we inherit early on don’t resonate with our true core values. We think they are part of our values and thus part of ourselves, but they still cause internal friction.
And so, we are not clear on what our expected, inherited, and core values are, never mind what the differences between them are, and which ones to follow and which ones to release.
⭐️Tip: start journaling whenever you need to make decisions, no matter how big or small they are, and honestly write how you feel about your choices plus how you truly feel about the consequences of those choices. It’s important to do this often, from a place of honesty, and review these journal entries often. With time you’ll start to read between the lines and differentiate between inhered values, expected values, and core values.
When we know our core values, we can then check the work we have done in step one and match those dreams with our core values.
Are there any dreams that don’t match with your core values?
If so, I’d recommend leaving those at what they are…just dreams, and keep only those dreams that align with your values.
✨Time, resources, and space
Whether we like it or not, agree on it or not, we (unfortunately) have limited time & space, including limited resources as well. This is where the term “to be realistic” comes in.
With time, I mean 1.) the actual time we have at our disposal to work on designing and the actual creation in our desired life = taking action. If we need to learn a new skill, we need to take into consideration the required time we need to learn something new (is it for example a course of a few months or a degree of a few years and what is the daily/weekly time needed to successfully complete the course/degree?) and this needs to match our available time (free time). We then need to see how to manage this new endeavor/activity/curse/degree and at what pace. 2.) The actual time we have over a year/four seasons at our disposal. Depending on your lifestyle and life situations (which is never stagnant, even if it may seem that way) your available time will fluctuate during the year and the seasons.
With resources, I mean everything outside of our bodies we need in order to work on designing and the actual creation of our area life = taking action. This can be having extra money, being financially able to start a new course, buying the needed materials, and getting those materials that are needed in order to take the steps required.
With space, I mean our actual (body) ability to work on designing and the actual creation of our desired life = taking action. For example one of my dreams is to hike Mount Kilimanjaro. However, I need to take into account that my physical capabilities and energy levels which are are still low, and combined with my age I might not be able to do this, especially in a year's time. This bit isn’t about pessimistic but instead being smart. It’s okay to leave some dreams at what they are, just dreams. Maybe I need to downgrade my dream and instead downsize to actions I may be able to achieve physically without wearing myself out. By walking daily, stretching those walk duration, and doing strength training I’ll gain enough stamina and vitality that may make my dream of hiking Mount Kilimanjaro a real possibility someday.
Maybe the real intention behind hiking Mount Kilimanjaro is to feel fit and full of vitality again and to achieve that I don’t need Kilimanjaro, I may need a daily commitment toward myself to take my life and health back and feel confident about myself and my body. That is not Kilimanjaro’s work, but my own!
Combine step one with your values, with your current time, resources, and space, and go over your dreams.
What did you end up with?
This is separating the wheat from the chaff. Hear me out, I don’t imply that some dreams are worthless or bad, only that they need to be downsized (maybe a lot) to be obtainable and enjoyable without overwhelming ourselves along the way. And, maybe due to circumstances, some dreams need to go to the backburner until further notice.
This will give you a clearer picture, including several clues on where you want to set intentions and goals later on.
Step 3: Creating a container
Now, we have a clear vision of what our dream life looks like and what our best version could be and we want to grab this foundation and display it in a visual way.
✨Vision Board
This is your long-term and undated (= without a deadline) vision which you’ll be working on from now on and includes all dreams and elements you ended up with after steps one and two.
Over a period of days, a week/ a moon phase, or a moon cycle start collecting images that resonate with everything you have done so far.
Decide where you want to work on your vision board: is it your journal? is it a big piece of paper/board you want to display on a wall? Is it both?
After you have decided on the previous one, collect all the material needed such as the right type of paper, scissors, glue, pen, washi tapes, and your images
On a day that feels right to you block a few hours for yourself.
Make your space cozy with inspirational and vibrant music and if you want you can light a candle and/or incense to set the mood.
Start adding the images on the board/paper without glueing them to see they they best fit. Once you’re happy with the layout, start gluing those images onto paper/board.
If you have decided to put your vision board on a wall, then do this immediately and make sure it’s a wall you see often. If you decided to have your vision board in your journal make it a priority to look at it at least once a day.
Take your time with these instructions, you don’t want to rush over your vision board, because it needs to be the best tangible translation of your dreams into paper.
I like to add my vision word in my journal because I use quite a large journal (A4) which is ideal for displaying mood & vision boards and I use my journals daily. However, with this vision board, I also find it important to display it on a wall which I see daily as well. So now, I look at my vision board several times a day while I walk past the wall and also every time I open my journal.
⭐️ Tip: Create an inspirational journal.
This can be your current journal where you have written a lot about the previous two questions already, otherwise a dedicated journal for your life design, or a separate journal only with content that inspired you. This can include everything and anything related to your main + yearly vision & dreams but also anything that inspires you with what may seems for no reason at all. Over time this journal can be a great source of inspiration and can give us a lot of clues about our dreams and core values as well.
Winter invites us to take the needed time to work our way through these steps while we prioritize rest above all.
Taking these steps will help us create and maintain a clear vision and will support us with anything we do from now on = this is our foundation.
🎁 That time of the mo(🌝)nth AGAIN!
At the end of 2024 I shared a 2025 free moon calendar, and to complete the cyclical calendars for 2025, I created a 2025 seasonal calendar:
⭐️ Tip: this page contains spaces for seasonal journaling where you can add your important events & appointments, your intentions & goals, and or just keep track of your main seasonal keywords for each phase.
Letters from a WeatherVane’s subscribers have already received this new moon journaling page 👆 in their email inboxes.
Don’t forget to check your spam box, if you don’t see it right away.
If you are new & want to explore more of yourself and Cyclical Living combined with journaling, make sure to subscribe for free and you’ll get access to The Library where this page and all other free journaling pages shared previously here on Substack are stored.
For now, I’m leaving you with this beautiful video of frozen lake sounds created by the lovely and inspiring Jonna Jinton which for me is the essence of winter:
Above the surface, nature seems to be silent… even dead, but if we pause, dive deep, and listen we may discover an entire world full of possibilities, promises, and hope.
Has this post inspired you to set the foundation for your life first?
I hope it really does! 🤩
Everything I write and share here in this space is the work I set for myself which I want to share with you all in the hope it does the same for you too or at least points you in the right direction 🚀.
🌬️ Sending you magic & healing your way,
-Vane