Intentions, goals and resolutions… you can bloody well hurry up and wait!

Hi everyone,

For many years now I’ve not been one for January resolutions. Not because I lack ambition, but because I’ve spent years watching how often they fail. Announced with gusto at the beginning of the year, only to be whispered later with the quiet shame people carry when they go by unmet.

It stands to reason, with the immense calls on our time and emotions, many of us cross over the finish line of December exhausted, or at least stretched far beyond our comfort. It’s such a demanding time full of feelings, full of people - we juggle the needs of others alongside our own endings and beginnings… and then January arrives with its commands:

Right. Back on form. New year. New you. Off you go.

But our bodies are rarely there yet.

And if we were to tune in more deeply, we might hear a wiser part of our interior saying: don’t do it yet, there’s no rush. Don’t set it. And certainly don’t announce it!

In case I wasn’t listening well enough this January, there’s nothing like a long, protracted bout of the latest ghastly flu bug to ensure I got the memo, rendering me to the couch with no onward destination given.

How fitting then that our first LIVE session of the new year with the Isumataq Collective community explored intentions, and why they can be hard to form and even harder to sustain. We explored the journey of an intention from seed to naming it in its fullest expression. We tracked it in a far more embodied way, allowing us to interrogate our desires and drivers, as well as our blocks and overcommitments, the latter so often forged under the pressure of a fresh cycle.

Traditional goal-setting often fails for a reason, as it imposes change without attending to the underlying conditions. It asks us to override signals rather than listen to them. And that internal conflict, between what we ‘should’ do and what our system is actually asking for, can lead to exhaustion, anxiety, procrastination, and self-reproach.

So we shifted our inquiry.

From What should I do?

To What wants to emerge?

What emerged in the room was not urgency, but honesty. A desire to listen rather than strive. Many women named a deep need for rest, for quiet, for integration.

One participant noticed how sleepy she felt whenever she tried to summon a new list of goals and recognised it as the body’s wisdom in January, not laziness but hibernation. 

Another began the session resistant to coming at all, only to discover a profound sense of expansion and freedom when she gave herself permission to need space. Another uncovered an intention that felt calm, spacious, and foundational, not performative, not pressured, but true. And another found the word “courage” arising unexpectedly from a deep, instinctual place in the body, signalling a shift towards trusting her intuition, rather than overthinking.

Again and again, a similar theme: when we stop forcing and start listening, something far more honest becomes available.

And of course it does. We’re still in winter. Nature rests in her dark, inward cycle. Seeds are not pushing yet. The earth is not blooming yet. Everything is gathering energy in the soil. There is something deeply compassionate about this rhythm, reminding us that rest and preparation are not failures of productivity, but vital before our next bloom, our next burst of activity, essential phases of becoming.

I’ve always loved the Chinese guidance on the New Year, which begins later, in mid-February. It quietly acknowledges that a truer beginning happens after the deepest rest, not immediately after the festivities. There is still too much clearing up and packing down after the party to do.

So this is your permission slip, if you need one:

You are not late.
You are not behind.
You are not failing January or February, for that matter.
You may still be wintering.

Inside the Collective, I’ve been developing and guiding people through my new intention-setting model. One that is spacious, embodied, relational, and deeply practical. I won’t go into it here, but what I will say is it’s built on listening to what wants to emerge rather than forcing what ‘should’ happen, and the outcomes are profoundly personal and sustainable. The shifts I’ve witnessed in our sessions and beyond have been quite extraordinary.

If you’re curious to explore this kind of work, the kind that honours your nervous system, your cycles, and your inner wisdom rather than overriding them, while still resourcing your ambitions and wellbeing, you’d be warmly welcome to join our conversations, every month, inside the Collective.

For now though, perhaps the most radical intention you can set is simply this:

I will rest without guilt. I will rest without apology.
I will listen more than I push.
I trust that emergence has its own intelligence.

Try it.

Spring will come. It always does.

With love,
Remi
Founder, The Isumataq Collective

Ps And please keep writing in - I’d love to hear how you get on.