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Hello, everyone. Happy 2026. Hope everyone had a great holiday, had some intentional time off, hopefully got to slow down a little bit. I know for the parents out there, you might be rolling your eyes without child care, without school. It cannot feel like that at all, but hopefully some good time with family nonetheless. So there was not an episode released last week, which was not my intention, but.
We were actually trapped in the Caribbean due to the Venezuela. We were actually trapped in the Caribbean due to everything that happened in Venezuela. So we were not able to fly home for an extra five days. And I did not have my podcast equipment with me there, nor did I have childcare. So my plan was to share my approach to New Year's resolutions with you all.
And while that now may feel a little bit late in the month to be doing that, maybe setting intentions isn't something that you typically do. maybe you, like me, had young kids who are home over break and are only getting to this now. So I am not personally a fan of resolutions. To me, resolutions, it feels rooted in shame and guilt.
this I resolve to be different than I have been in the past because I'm in some way flawed or broken or need to be better. I don't buy into that. And we're just not about that energy here at Conscious Success. So I believe that we are all perfect, whole, and complete, but we are not yet finished. And so I really like to use the opportunity at the start of a new year to really just slow down and listen to my inner voice and to reflect and to try to
get clear on what are the ways that I want to continue to grow and evolve this year? How am I going to become even more of myself, an even more aligned, empowered version of myself? And that is a totally different come from rather than a resolution of trying to be different or trying to fix something that's broken. So I personally,
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appreciate and like using the start of a year, the fresh calendar year, the date, the new energy, to ritualize these reflections and intentions. But if that doesn't feel good for you, I know for some people, January, it's like in the middle of our winter season. It doesn't feel the right time to start anew. Maybe you want to ritualize this around your birthday each year. Maybe it's when, in the fall, when we're returning to work.
and our kids are returning to school after a summer break. So whatever time in the year works for you, it's not really important that it happens at a particular time or certainly not January 1st. But I do think it's really important that it does happen because our life can get so busy and we're so often trapped in the doing and just trying to do more better faster that we miss.
the forest through the trees. We miss the intention setting. We miss the opportunity to slow down and to reflect on, okay, what do I desire? Where am I trying to go? How do I wanna continue to evolve and what actions may empower me to actually get there? And I deeply believe, and I talk about this with clients all the time, that our success, our luck, it really lives at the intersection between intention and action. We don't get there.
by never knowing where we want to go and just hoping we're going to show up there by happenstance. If we don't set an intention, we're very unlikely to just arrive there. But at the same time, we can set all the intentions in the world. But unless we take a line to action, unless we figure out what am I empowered to do to get to that intention, then nothing is likely to change. And I call this a form of grounded manifestation.
when we get really clear on what we truly desire at that like sole authentic self level, and then we figure out what is in our power, what can I control, what actions can I take, that is when we really drive results. So this is the process that I do each year that I wanna share with you today, and I'm going to share exactly how I go through it and what my own intentions and actions are. And I hope that this acts as an opportunity for you to
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Reflect and think about whether this process could work for you. And feel free, feel empowered to make it your own. But again, I do think that just ritualizing and setting time aside to do this type of reflection and intention setting can serve us so well so that by the end of the year, we have so much to reflect back on and to feel in awe and to feel proud of ourselves.
that can allow us to continue to grow in the direction that we seek to go.
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And in the past, I never set either resolutions or intentions because I was largely operating in survival mode. I was not connected to my sense of desire or vision of what I actually wanted. And also, I never actually set the time aside to plan and figure out what actions I'd actually need to take to set myself up for success. I would just wing it and hope that I got there, right? And then what would inevitably end up happening is that
come the end of the year, nothing had changed. I'd forgotten about my intentions by the third week of January, by the first week of February. And then I just kind of felt a little ashamed and a little stuck, like, shit, there's another year that went by and I didn't actually action any of those things that I said I was going to. And then it creates this negative feedback loop where I don't even wanna set goals, I don't even wanna set intentions, right? Because I'm just going to feel ashamed or disappointed.
And so I think that this process is how I learned to flip that so that come the end of the year, it actually gets to be a point of celebration and positive reflection rather than feeling like I felt short. So the process that I like to use is first, I like to choose an overarching cohesive word or word of the year that is my intention that applies across every aspect of my life.
And then I really like to ground that intention with thinking about, OK, so how am I actually applying that to each sphere? So that's both personal and professional. And I'm going to talk to you about what that looks like across every area of my life this year. And then in each of those spheres, I like to really write down, what is the specific set of actions that I'm going to take, that I'm committed to taking in order to make those high-level intentions my reality?
That's what we're going to walk through for the rest of this episode. again, I hope just hearing this process inspires you and makes this feel more accessible so that come December, you can look back with awe and pride on the year that you had, knowing that you really showed up in alignment with your highest self. OK, so to get to my word of the year, every year in this year, I start by journaling about what do I know is coming in the year ahead?
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Do I want? What's feeling really top of mind? What's feeling really important to me? What gets to be a focus? And so in some personal news that I haven't shared yet publicly is that I am currently pregnant, and my husband and I are expecting our third child at the end of June. So right there as I was journaling and trying to come up with the word of the year and setting these intentions for 2026, I knew that
especially having done it before, welcoming a new child into our home, into our family, into our routines, it is going to take a lot of time and intention and space. And so this year was never going to be a big growth year for me, but rather one of really welcoming this newest member of our family and really last member of our family into our home and setting myself
setting the business and setting my clients up for success through this transition, despite that I will be taking time off for a maternity leave. And so that was really kind of a starting point. And then in thinking about that and the timing of everything, I was like, OK, well, the first half of the year before I go on maternity leave, I really want this half to be about focusing on how do I do what I already do well, even
better with less effort? How can I think about systems? How can I think about support? How can I focus on tech debt? How can I work smarter and not harder? And then I looked at like, OK, so then in the latter part of the year, in the last quarter, after I'm back from maternity leave, what do I want to build? What do I want to offer in that part of the year?
that is really going to allow my family and the business to continue to thrive and to continue to grow without needing to scale my time in the business. Because right now I have a fully booked one-on-one practice. I love the work that I do. I love the clients that I get to serve. It has really pinched me that this is my reality today that I've built over the last few years. The last few years have been much more growth years.
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But now I'm at this fortunate place where I can be in a little bit more of a maintain and a little bit more of an optimize. But I knew that I didn't want to keep scaling my time spent in the business. I work in my business about 30 hours a week and I am fully booked, right? So I knew also that, okay, I need to think more creatively about how am I going to continue to serve my clients at the level that I do, if not higher.
while being able to scale my business and scale my revenue without increasing my time. So that was also a focus and something that I was journaling about. And what does that look like to set that foundation and that product suite up so that I can continue to not only be able to show up as the type of mother that I want to be, but also continue to show up as the type of business owner that I want to be as well. So I journaled about all of that.
And then I also started to think about like, so outside of this new baby, outside of the business, what am I desiring or what gets to get my attention this year? And now knowing that we're gonna have three kids in our family, we either need to renovate our current home or we're gonna need to move. And so while it's not an immediate pressing issue, I knew that this is something that I wanna spend time.
thinking about and working on. And so I knew that setting that kind of foundation of what our actual home and setting the foundation of what a forever home could look like was something that I wanted to devote attention to, whether that ends up being renovating, moving, or potentially both. So that was something that was really top of mind. And then lastly, I just wrote down some miscellaneous goals and things like.
focusing on my skincare, focusing on how to cook in a way that feels more easeful and time efficient in this season of having young kids and thinking through my health and thinking through exercise. So all of those were kind of a laundry list of things that I also wanted to focus on. So I started there. Again, I just freehand journaled all of this. And then I tried to step back and look at like, okay, what are the common themes that I'm seeing?
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come up across all of these areas and what is a word that would encapsulate this intention across all of these different spheres? So the word that I landed on for my Word of the Year for 2026 is foundation. It felt like this year was the right year to lay the foundation in my family, in my business, in my home, and really kind of in my health and these miscellaneous things that I listed off.
to set the foundation that's going to serve me for years to come. And this really didn't feel like a year where there's gonna be a revolution, but an evolution. Like so much is going well, but how can I continue to strengthen the foundation deep in my roots so that it feels even more easeful, even more sustainable, and serves me and my family and my business even more. So once I had the word of the year foundation,
Next, I wrote out what is a one sentence intention for what foundation would mean as it applies to each of these different distinct areas of my life. And then I listed what are the specific actions that I will commit to taking in order to live into my intentions and in order to ultimately realize them. So the four areas that I looked at were family, business, home, and health.
Now, these may be different for you. Maybe you're single and maybe it's dating or partnership gets to be a sphere of your life. Maybe it is, you know, creativity or something else. But think through what are the main areas of your life that really are important to be super intentional about. And I recommend coming up with, you know, three to five of these that you're going to apply your word of the year to. So.
I'm going to walk through now how I actually applied that intention and what those actions looked like for each. So for family, my intention was to integrate the newest and last member of our family and really just find our footing as a family of five. And so the actions that I then listed included taking three months off for maternity leave to bond with my baby. And as a solopreneur, as a small business owner, I don't get.
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paid maternity leave, right? This is something that I choose to take time off, but it is an intention, it is an action, it is super important to me. And so really committing and figuring that out financially, figuring that out from a client perspective was an action that I was going to do. And then making space and devoting time and emotional energy to supporting my twins through their transition into preschool and to becoming big sisters. I also wanted to...
sort out new routines, new distribution of labor, and the conversations that are going to need to be had or navigated between my husband and our amazing nanny and myself across supporting three kids, and really just devoting the space and attention necessary to adjusting to this new family unit of five. So that was family. Next for business, my intention was to create the foundation for my business.
that would allow me to continue to deliver for my clients and hit revenue goals without increasing my time spent in the business and while increasing the level of support that my clients get. So really this boiled down into two business priorities for this year. The first is systems and support prior to maternity leave. And the second was laying the groundwork to launch a mastermind by the end of the year, which I'll touch on here in just a moment.
So as far as systems and support, this really looked like, where am I still doing things manually that could be systematized or automated? Where can I offload more workloads to my amazing assistant who's so competent? What am I still taking on that doesn't need to be done by me and only me? Like, how can I actually deliver better for my clients with less effort and less time spent in the business if I'm really intentional?
about building the systems and the structure and the support to allow that to feel useful and to allow that to feel sustainable and scalable. And then the other thing when it comes to the foundation for my business is I've had this desire and this intention now for probably coming up on a year to add a mastermind to my product offering for my clients. So for a while, and this is certainly something that I experienced personally as I built my business as a solopreneur is that
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While there so many things I love about being an entrepreneur, one of the things I actually really missed and that I see so frequently with my clients as well is that in corporate, you are a part of a team. You have peers, you have a sense of community. And often, if and when we leave corporate, that can feel like a really big gap and something that it can feel quite lonely to build a business on your own and not know
who and where to turn to for support and just that sustained celebration and accountability and motivation. And it can be really hard to keep going and not lose hope or belief in your vision or in yourself, especially when you hit roadblocks. And so this was something that I wish I had had earlier on in my business journey. Now I do have, I'm in other masterminds.
But this is something that I've also heard reflected back to me from so many of my clients, the subset who through doing this work and this career redesign work realize, hey, I actually have aspirations to build my own business, to work for myself. So I really want and have had this desire to create a mastermind, a small intimate group container.
where I can continue to offer the type of one-on-one coaching I do at the level and the high touch nature of it, while also creating a community where these women can learn from each other and support one another and see what's happening in each people's businesses and the mindset and the nervous system regulation and all the challenges that we all inevitably run into and really facilitate this shared space.
that will lead to even better results. So one of my actions, one of my intentions is that at the end of the year, coming back from maternity leave, at the end of the year, coming back from maternity leave, I'm going to launch a mastermind for these aspiring female entrepreneurs. And this will really allow my clients to succeed at another level and in a way that feels so good for them because this is a request I've gotten, but also allow
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my business to grow in a way that feels scalable and sustainable and really, really good without increasing the time I'm spending in the business. So in the first half of the year, I'm going to also be really building that foundation to be able to launch the mastermind. And in the last quarter of the year, I'm going to be delivering this to the first group of clients. OK, so that was business. Then for home, my intention with this was really to create the foundation of what our forever home will ultimately look like.
whether that be that we work with an architect and we draw up plans and we figure out how we're gonna renovate our existing home, or whether I'm partnering with a real estate agent to look at the market and find other potential homes and make offers and just really laying that foundation of what is our hopefully forever family home going to look like, where is that going to be, and devoting the time and the space and really the creative energy and
working across different people and partnerships as needed in order to see that through so that hopefully by the end of the year, we have that sense of foundation that has been laid. And then lastly, for health. My intention was really to lay the foundational practices and routines to support my health and the health of my family. And this was things like really ritualizing my skincare routine to signing up for
Fastpass and getting a Peloton here at our house so that I can focus on more strength and cardio than my typical, you know, yoga, Pilates, hiking routine has allowed for. And also figuring out how to cook in a way that feels more easeful and intuitive and accessible to our whole family with young kids and with the limited time that I have.
own so many cookbooks. I love to cook by a recipe. I love to experiment and try new and interesting things. But in the season of life that I am in, I really need cooking to be easeful and time efficient. And so focusing on that and something that my kids will eat while it's also healthy and fun to cook. those are in the health intention. Those are some of the actions that I listed. And I've gotten even more granular and I would even take this and like put things into
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my asana into whatever kind of project management tool you may use or goal setting tool. But hopefully this helps you to see how that word of the year being foundation, how it applies across family, business, home and health. And how I then really thought through, okay, what are the different actions? What are the areas that I'm gonna need to focus my attention so that by the end of the year,
I really feel that I've built and laid that solid foundation. So I personally just love this process of journaling, choosing, figuring out what that word of the year gets to be, and really applying that cohesive intention across all spheres of my life, and really determining what those actions are going to be that we'll see that word through to fruition. And then throughout the year, this gets to act as a really like...
easy reminder, a decision-making filter. Like, does this align with my word of the year? Yes or no. And it can just keep, you know, bringing us back to what is that overarching intention that we've set. And I love to then put this in a little note on my phone so that I have easy access. I have word of the year, foundation, then I have each of those spheres and what my specific intention is across each one.
just so I can keep referring back. I can keep that as a reminder and I can keep that top of mind. And I really believe we're always in a co-creative dance with the universe. We can never control everything that's gonna happen in the coming year, but we can always control something, namely ourselves and our actions. And so I really find that by ritualizing this intention setting process and getting clear on those actions that we get to take, it sets us up for so much success so that...
the end of the year, can really be in celebration and in awe. And then we get to set a new year for the next, a new, then we get to set a new word for the next year as we continue to grow and evolve. So try this on for size. I would love to know how it works for you. Or if you have a different process that you think works so much better, I would love to hear what that is. This is not the only or the right way to do it, but just something that as someone who never liked resolutions or stayed away from intentions for a long time.
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this works for me and this is a process that I really look forward to returning to each year. So let me know how this landed. Let me know what process works best for you. You can always DM me on Instagram or send me an email, emmaatconscioussuccessco.com. And I look forward to talking to you in the next episode. See you next week.
