Myth of the Clean Slate

0:00So picture this, it's the first week of January. Your brand new planner is open. The pens are lined up. The resolutions are written. The apps are downloaded. This is the year you finally become the new you. and for a minute, it actually feels that way. You're up early, you're eating right, you're answering emails like a machine, you're working out, meditating, maybe even reading all the books you swore you'd get to last year. And you start to think, okay, maybe this is it. Maybe I finally left the old me behind. And then almost invisibly, it starts. You miss a workout, you snap at someone you love, you doom scroll at midnight instead of going to bed, raising my hand here, by the way, you break one tiny promise to yourself and then another, and then another, and then that shiny hopeful phrase, new year, new you, it quietly turns into, here we go again.

1:00Same patterns, same stuck places, same you. And underneath it all, this really painful question, if I can't become the new me, I keep getting sold, does that mean I'm just not fixable? What if the answer actually has nothing to do with your willpower, your worth, and everything to do with a story that you've been told about what it means to start over? So in this episode, I want to share a very different way to close out the year and begin the next one. We're going to talk about why the whole idea of a clean slate, wipe the past, erase the old you, become someone entirely new is not only unrealistic, but may actually be the thing that's keeping you from the kind of change that actually lasts.

1:49And we'll explore a quieter, a more powerful alternative. Seeing your past self not as a problem to toss out with last year's confetti, but as your greatest resource. Your built-in library of data and wisdom and truth about what you actually need to build a life that fits. We'll look at how to turn this year into information instead of indictment, how to stop starting from war with yourself and how to step into the new year without trying to become someone else, but finally walking forward as you already are. Now, as we go along, I'm going to share a bunch of really valuable questions and prompts that I think will be really valuable and insightful.

2:34I think you'll also really enjoy exploring the answers too. Feel free to just listen through the whole episode and then go back and do them later. You can pause and answer the questions along the way if you want, or we will also include a link in the show notes to a simple one-pager PDF that you can download with all of the questions and prompts in it so that you can sit down and work your way through it afterwards if that's easier for you. So excited to share this episode with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

3:10So a bunch of years back, I had what I still think of as my sort of New Year's spreadsheet of perfection. I remember sitting down one December night with this kind of giant mug of tea, feeling that delicious mix of nostalgia and possibility. And I thought, okay, this is it. This is the year I finally get my entire life dialed in. So I opened up my laptop and I created this monstrosity. Multiple tabs, daily habits, weekly targets, monthly goals, sleep, fitness, work, relationships, creativity, money, color codes, formulas, conditional formatting. If my life were a tech startup, this was my series A pitch deck.

3:54On January 1st, I woke up feeling like a machine, actually. crushed the workout, ate the perfect breakfast, meditated, no phone till 10 a.m., inbox handled. I was like, who is this guy? And where's he been all my life? I love him. And for a handful of days, maybe even more, I was pretty much nailing it. My spreadsheet was a sea of green cells. I would open it just to bask in my own competence. You know that feeling. And then, as it tends to do, life did that thing that life does. A project blew up, a family thing needed my full attention, sleep went sideways, my mood followed, and all the systems, all the structure, all the carefully architected plans, they started to wobble.

4:44I'd miss one workout and then two, or stay up late answering email, which meant I'd be too tired for the morning routine. And then I grabbed something quick to eat that wasn't part of the plan. And I'd say, oh, I'll catch up on the weekend. And of course, the weekend came and did what weekends do. A few red cells showed up in that spreadsheet and then more and then a whole row. And here's what's important. Instead of asking the only useful question, huh, what can I learn from this? I went straight to, dude, there you go again. You're just not the kind of person who follows through like this. Old you is back, new you was largely just a fluke.

5:29And almost overnight, it wasn't just the spreadsheet I abandoned. In a very quiet, subtle way, I abandoned myself. I mentally dragged old me out to the curb like trash and made this silent promise. Next year, I'll finally become the real version of me. the one who never falls off, the one who never struggles. And it took me years to see that that move, trying to throw away who I've been, was actually the very thing that kept me stuck. So today, as we close the chapter on this year and really stand at the threshold of a new one, I wanna offer something that runs a little counter to the whole new year, new you machine.

6:15It's this idea that you need a clean slate to begin again, that you've got to erase, outrun, or disown the you who didn't live up to your resolutions. I think that's a myth. And not just a myth, it's a myth that quietly fuels shame and blocks growth. And it keeps you just reliving the same patterns year after year. Now, if you've been around Good Life Project for a while, you've heard me walk through a framework I developed called Success Scaffolding. It's this eight-part, real-world, adaptable structure for bringing big and meaningful, sometimes even impossible-seeming goals to life. That work still stands.

6:55I still believe in the power of thoughtful scaffolding, of designing your environment, your support, your mindset, your actions in ways that make change not just possible, but probable. What I'm talking about today is not goals or bad or plans don't matter or burn your frameworks. What I am talking about is this. Even the most elegant framework, including success scaffolding, will struggle to take root if underneath it, you're still carrying this hidden belief that, quote, old you is broken and needs to be erased. This episode lives underneath all of that. It's about the layer beneath any resolution, any goal, any scaffolding, your relationship with the person who lived this last year.

7:45So in this conversation, we're going to explore a different way to end the year and begin the next one, one that doesn't require a perfect reinvention or some kind of wholesale upgrade to your personality. But instead, it asks you to turn toward the person you've actually been this year and say, okay, let's go together. So let's start with this clean slate myth. We've all heard the phrase, maybe even said it ourselves. I just want a clean slate. This year I'm starting from zero. New year, new me. And on the surface, it sounds great. It feels hopeful, fresh, empowering. The clean slate myth says, to truly start fresh, I need to disown who I've been.

8:35I need to wipe away the evidence of my missteps, my broken promises, all the times I didn't show up the way that I wanted to. I need to become a fundamentally different person almost overnight. And you can see it everywhere this time of year. The marketing built on new year, new you, the 30-day boot camps that imply that you'll come out the other side as a completely different human. This social post said quietly say, the old you is a problem. The new you will finally be worthy. Look, I get it. It's emotionally seductive, frankly. On some level, most of us are carrying moments from the year that we're not proud of.

9:16Like I'm raising my hand here. There are so many moments, choices we made out of fear, times we numbed out instead of speaking up, stuff we meant to do and didn't. The idea that we could just erase all that, hit some cosmic reset button, and step into a version of ourselves that never struggles, of course that sounds appealing. A clean slate, it seems like a way to escape, frankly, shame. To skip over the awkward, uncomfortable process of self-examination and jump straight to, I'm good now. It gives us the illusion of control. I mean, if I can just reboot hard enough, I'll never have to feel like this again.

9:58But here's the hidden cost. When the only version of you who is allowed to exist is new me who never messes up, then the moment February me shows up, the tired, stressed, imperfect, very human you, the whole experiment just collapses. Because now it's not just that you slipped on a habit or missed a workout or raised your voice or didn't hit a target. It's that you have, quote, betrayed this fantasy of who you're supposed to be. And instead of asking, what happened here? What is this trying to show me? You end up asking, what is wrong with me? So you turn your past into an enemy. You treat your failures as, and I'm using failures in quotes there, by the way, as evidence that you are just fundamentally broken instead of information about your life.

10:58You cut yourself off from the data, all the incredibly useful nuance, sometimes uncomfortable, but always valuable feedback that this year has been offering you about what drains you, about what nourishes you, or where your nervous system says, nope, where you come alive. what you actually need more of and less of. The clean slate myth says, burn the evidence. But the evidence is exactly what we need. You also end up planting the seeds of what I call future self-sabotage. Because if your story is, this year I must become a completely different person, and you may use different language, but that's fundamentally what you're saying.

11:43then every time you act like, well, you, it feels like proof that you have failed. You know, one off day isn't just an off day. It's a referendum on your identity. So you spiral and shame kicks in and you hide and you say, I'll try again next year. You literally write off the entire rest of the year and the cycle repeats. Now, in the first two episodes of January, we're going to explore different ways to move forward from here. In the first episode after this, our January 1st episode called The Unresolution, we'll look at really how to begin again without turning your life into this rigid list of shoulds or perfectionist rules and what it might mean to relate to change in a more flexible, humane way.

12:31And in that second episode of the year, which is called The Year of Enough, we'll talk about stepping out of the constant sense of not enough and into a year grounded in a very different way of seeing yourself and your life. So by the way, be sure that you're following so you do not miss any of these episodes. They build on each other and they're super powerful. Those episodes will get into the how of moving forward, setting direction and living into enough. This one today is about the who you're carrying with you as you do that. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So let's maybe reframe this idea of failure for a moment here.

13:17Most of us have been taught explicitly or implicitly that when something doesn't go the way we hoped, it means something about who we are. We didn't stick with the habits. So we are quote lazy. We stayed in the relationship. So we're weak. We avoided the hard conversation. So we're cowards. Maybe we fell back into the pattern. So we're hopeless. We take an event and turn it into a verdict. What if instead we treated it just like data? A simple internal mantra that I have come back to again and again is it's not averted. It's data. When something this year didn't go the way you want it, it doesn't automatically mean I'm bad at this or I'm broken.

14:02It means something happened here. There's information. Let's play with this a bit now. So if you're in a place where you can write, maybe you might even grab a notebook for a moment. If not, you can just do this in your mind. And I'm going to ask you a few things. So first question, what did I actually attempt this year? and we're not just talking formal resolutions or public goals include the quiet hopes here things like i want to feel less lonely i i hope to take better care of my body i meant to be more present with my kids i i wanted to be more honest at work i thought i'd finally take that class or make that art or start that thing but let a few of those surface so that's the first question And again, if you want to just like hit pause here for a second, use your notes app, use a journal, whatever it is, that's great.

15:03Go ahead and just think about that. And I'll repeat it again for you. That first question was, what did I actually attempt this year? Again, not formal things, just include the more quiet hopes or aspirations. Take a beat. And then when you're ready, come back to it. Or you can just listen all the way through now, by the way, and then just go back to this spot and revisit these questions. So let a few of those things surface. Now, second question, where did things not go the way I hoped? And you don't need to make a long list, by the way, just maybe three to five things where you just feel some friction.

15:41Maybe you signed up for something and stopped going. By the way, I did that more than once this year. Maybe you said, I'm not going to lose my temper like that again. And you did. Or maybe you promised yourself you'd cut back on something, work or spending or scrolling, and it didn't really change. Just notice a few of those things. No need to analyze or anything yet. Now, for each of those, there's a question that is so much more helpful than what's wrong with me, which is where we tend to go. And that question is this. Here's our third question. What might this be trying to tell me? Maybe your I'll meditate for 20 minutes every day at 5 a.m.

16:24plan lasted 11 days. So the old story says, well, I can't stick with anything. I'm not disciplined. What if the new story, what the thing is trying to tell you, if you treat it as data, might sound more like, I actually liked the meditation, but I was exhausted. My evenings were chaos. I was getting to bed late. My nervous system might need sleep more than it needs a perfect 20-minute practice right now. I realized I actually enjoy five minutes, but 20 just felt overwhelming. That is data. Maybe you meant to say no more often or set better boundaries, and yet you found yourself just saying yes to things that drained you.

17:02The old story, you might tell yourself, oh, I'm such a doormat. New story as data may go something like, I say yes when I'm afraid of conflict. I say yes because I don't want to feel guilty. I say yes because I'm not sure who I am if I'm not being the quote helpful one. Again, that's information you can work with. It reveals values and fears and needs and patterns. It's not a character assassination. When you're in full shame mode, your brain isn't in learning mode. It's in hiding mode. The moment you can shift from I'm terrible to, okay, ouch, that didn't go how I wanted, but what can I learn from it?

17:43You open up the possibility of change. So as you look back on this year, What if every quote failure was allowed to just be a feedback form, not a final grade? Now, I want to zoom in on something, frankly, probably a little bit more tender here, because this isn't just about how we interpret events. It's about how we relate to the versions of ourselves who lived those events. So if you imagine this past year as a room full of yous, I just love the phrase yous. It brings me back to classic movie line. The you who crushed that project, right? The you who lay awake at 2 a.m. anxious and scrolling.

18:28The you who lost your temper. The you who held somebody's hand in a hard moment. The you who avoided the conversation. The you who said yes when every cell in your body wanted to say no. The you who laughed so hard you cried. who in that room are you trying hardest not to make eye contact with? Sit with that for a moment. Most of us have certain cells from the year that we're actively trying to push into the shadows. The overeater, the procrastinator, the conflict avoider, the people pleaser, the one who stayed too long, the one who left too soon. The clean slate myth, it says, if I can just become, quote, new me, those versions will disappear.

19:16I'll never have to see them again. But that's not how it works. Those parts don't vanish. They just go underground. They drive the bus from the basement. They're still shaping your choices. You've just lost the opportunity to understand and integrate them. So when I talk about an unconditional yes, I'm not talking about approving of every choice you've made. I'm not suggesting you bypass responsibility or skip repair where it's needed. What I mean is this, I will not throw any part of me away. I will not throw any part of me away. One more time, I will not throw any part of me away. I will not pretend that the versions of me who coped, who numbed, who froze, who avoided aren't mine.

20:07I'm willing to be in relationship with all of me. Integration, it doesn't mean that you're proud of everything that you did. It means you're willing to keep every past version of you in the family photo. And the moment you stop exiling those parts and instead turn toward them, something really powerful becomes possible. You can finally ask them what they were trying to do for you. This is sort of like one of the fundamental bases of IFS or internal family systems, which is kind of like the hot child in psychotherapy these days, right? So you can finally ask them what they were trying to do for you.

20:50Then the you who ate late last night might've been trying to soothe a loneliness you hadn't aimed at. The you who overworked, it might've been trying to feel safe in a world that felt unpredictable. The you who scroll for hours might've been trying to turn down the volume on grief. I mean, are those always the most skillful strategies? Probably not. But when you understand the why underneath, you can start to offer yourself different options that honor the need without harming the rest of you. So I want to try a really simple, sort of a compassion practice with you. It's short. You can do it wherever you are, as long as you're not driving or doing something that needs your full attention here.

21:31If you're driving or moving, you can just listen and come back to this later. If you're able, maybe close your eyes for a moment or just soften your gaze. That's fine too. and bring to mind one version of you from this year that you've been judging pretty harshly. Maybe it's the you who stayed in a situation that wasn't great. I mean, maybe it's the you who said something you wish you could take back. Maybe it's the you who ignored the signs your body was sending. And I have done that a bunch this year. Maybe it's the you who made a choice that still stings when you think about it. Just let that version of you sit across from you in your mind's eye.

22:19Notice what they look like. Notice the expression on their face. Notice how tired or scared or overwhelmed they might seem. And if it feels okay, place a hand on your heart or on your chest or somewhere that feels supportive to you. Take a slow, easy breath.

22:43And silently, just in your mind, say something like, of course you did what you did. You were trying to get me through something hard. I might choose something differently now with what I know, but I'm not going to throw you away. And another breath.

23:02And you might add, you're part of my story. You belong. We're on the same team. And stay with that for just another moment. And then when you're ready, you can release the image. Let your hand rest back where it was. And if your eyes were closed, you can just open them again. Take one more breath and just settle into that. So that simple act of turning toward instead of away is the foundation for everything that comes next. Because before we talk about how to begin again differently, Before we talk about any future experiments or frameworks, we start here. We refuse to begin the new year by declaring war on the person who lived this one.

23:47Let me say that again. We refuse to begin the new year by declaring war on the person who lived this one. You don't build a good life on top of self-rejection. You build it with the full, messy, beautiful, sometimes painful truth of who you've actually been. So let's talk about identity for a minute. Not in the big philosophical sense, but in the just very practical day-to-day sense of what kind of person do I believe I am? I mean, most of the loud, shiny New Year culture is obsessed with aspiration. Next year, I will become the kind of person who does X perfectly. I will become more disciplined, more organized, more productive, more spiritual, more everything, basically.

24:32There's nothing wrong with wanting to grow. And again, there's absolutely a place for thoughtful frameworks and scaffolding that supports growth. I spent a lot of time developing them myself and practicing them myself. But when you only ask, who do I want to be next year without ever looking at who you've actually been, you run into a problem. You risk choosing identities that are aspirational, but completely disconnected from your lived reality. based on a comparison pressure or marketing, so far from what your nervous system has experienced that they feel like a costume. So if for years your quiet story has been, oh, I'm just not someone who follows through, trying to force yourself into, I'm a high performance machine who never misses a day, that's a pretty big leap.

25:25Your brain is too smart for that. It's not gonna buy it. So instead of inventing a brand new identity out of thin air on January 1st, I mean, what if we started by just noticing the identity that's already trying to emerge? What if before asking, who will I be? We asked, who have I already been in my best, truest moments this year? So let's explore that. If you can think back over your year and look for just glimpses of the person you want to be, not in some idealized form, but in a tiny real human moments. I mean, maybe it was, you know, the day you had a hard conversation you've been avoiding and you stayed kind and honest or the time that you chose rest over yet another hour of work, even though the to-do list was screaming at you or the moment that you walked away from a situation that wasn't okay.

26:17The evening that you play with your kids or your friends or your partner and actually let yourself be present or maybe it was the morning that you went for a short walk. not because you quote should exercise, but because your body just wanted fresh air or the hour that you spent making something, writing, cooking, building, drawing. For me, a lot of this year was metal smithing, weirdly enough, brand new thing in my life, just because it felt good. These moments may have been small. They might not have made your highlight reel. You might've forgotten them, but their identity clues. They're saying, hey, this is also you.

26:56This is who you're becoming. So if you like, you can even turn these into sort of like quiet identity statements. You know, things like, I am someone who tells the truth with care, or I am someone who is learning to honor my limits. I am someone who keeps coming back even after I fall off or I'm someone who cares deeply about my people. I'm someone who is slowly and perfectly listening to my body. I'm someone who creates things even in tiny ways. I mean, notice the language here. I am someone who is learning to fill in the blank. We're not jumping straight to perfection. We're acknowledging a certain trajectory, like a direction.

27:47And as you do this, I want to be really clear. We're not designing new goals yet. We're not locking in a big plan. We're not doing new year strategy. That's what the next couple of episodes will actually help out with in a very different way than you've heard before, along with all the tools and frameworks that we will revisit over time. things that I've shared in past years like success scaffolding. Right now, we're simply noticing, who have I already been this year in ways that feel aligned with the life I actually want? Because when you walk into the next year holding that evidence, it just changes the conversation.

28:27You're not saying I have to become an entirely new person. You're saying, I've already been this person in flashes. is how can I keep honoring that part of me? And I'd love to offer a very simple year-end ritual that you can do with me now or come back to later when you have more time maybe. So if you're able, grab a notebook, grab your favorite note app, whatever it is on your phone or your device. I've actually been kind of flipping back and forth between note apps and paper and pen or actually paper and pencil lately. Um, we spent some time in Japan over the summer and I kind of fell in love with Japanese stationery and notebooks and super cool pencils.

29:09I'm a weird nerd and I geek out over stuff like that. So I've been slowly kind of finding my way back to a beautiful mechanical pencils and paper, even though I had been an electronic notes person. Like I use my notes app for everything. Can't imagine how many thousands of notes I have. So maybe play around with this a little bit. Like just what feels right to do a little bit of playful note-taking and thought here, right? So, and if you don't want to write this down right now, that's completely fine. Just listen in, listen in, travel along, walk through this mentally. You can always go back for it.

29:46This isn't about creating a perfect exhaustive review of your year. It's just about taking a few minutes to relate to yourself differently. And we'll move through these three questions. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So question one, what wants to be seen? What wants to be seen? I know it's a little bit of a worried question. What wants to be seen? Take a breath. Now, looking back over this year, what moments keep tugging at your sleeve? There might be moments, moves, losses, wins, transitions. There might be small, quiet scenes that for some reason just keep playing in your mind's eye or they stick with you.

30:44They could have happened almost a year ago, but they're still fresh as day when you just think about them. I'll give you a few categories that you can play with. Maybe this will help also. Maybe a moment that you're proud of. A moment you regret. A moment that surprised you. Maybe a moment that broke your heart. Maybe not even because something that happened to you, or maybe it's just something that you witnessed. maybe a moment that made you feel deeply alive. And you don't have to write the whole story here. It's not about recording a verbatim dictation of exactly what happened. Just a word or a short phrase that brings each moment to mind.

31:38Just like something that triggers you to see that scene again. So give yourself a minute here. If you want to hit pause, totally cool. Do this and come back. Or again, you can just listen through and then come back to this place and then spend time and do it, actually do the exercise. So that brings us to question number two. What are these moments trying to tell you? Now, look at one or two of those moments and gently ask, what did this show me about what matters to me? Right? I'm going to share those two things again. So the big question is, what are these moments trying to tell you? Right? And now look at one or two of those.

32:29Just pick one if you want, and then gently ask about it. What did this show me about what matters to me? So we're going a layer deeper here. It's not just what happened to me, but what did this reveal to me about what matters to me? This is so important and we rarely ever do it. Maybe that regret shows you how deeply you value honesty. Maybe the proud moment, it shows you how much courage you actually have that you didn't think you had. Maybe that heartbreak, it reveals how important connection is to you. Maybe that surprising moment shows you that you're more resilient than you thought. So then ask, what did this show me about what I need?

33:17So the first part, what did this show me about what matters to me? And now, what did this moment show me about what I need? So maybe you learned that you need more rest than you thought, or more boundaries, more creative time, more support. I think a lot of us could use most of those things as we're kind of walking through this, right? And finally, here's the final sort of sub-question here. And what did this show me about how I respond when life gets hard? and what did this show me about how I respond when life gets hard? Which for many of us over the last year, in some way, shape or form, it has.

34:04And there is a moment that we associate it with that shows me something about how I respond when life gets hard. And we answer this not as a judgment, not to judge how we responded, but just as information, right? It might tell you that, oh, when life gets hard, I pull away or I power through and then I crash hard, which tends to be my default often. I get anxious or I reach for my phone. I reach out to one trusted person or I go into fix it mode, right? You can even soften the language as you write. So instead of, well, I'm terrible at X, Y, Z, maybe just, I tend to struggle when fill in the blank.

34:48Instead of I have no willpower, maybe I get overwhelmed when dot, dot, dot, right? Again, we're not handing down verdicts here. We're just reading the feedback form. So pause. And if you want, again, you can just keep listening through and then go back when you're ready with your notes app or your pen and paper or pencil and notebook, whatever it may be. and really just spend some time listening, reviewing the cues here, the questions, the prompts, hitting pause, and then doing the work. It's beautiful what comes up and it's beautiful the frame that we bring to it when it does. That brings us to the third sort of like meta question here.

35:30What part of me do I want to walk into next year with? Again, what part of me do I want to walk into next year with. So for each of those moments, especially the hard ones, you can ask, what part of me showed up here that I actually want to keep? Right? Maybe in that tough conversation, the part of you that showed up, it was courage. Maybe in that regret, that moment that brought the regret when you think back on it, the part that's showing up now is your conscience, your desire to do better. Maybe in that loss, the part that showed up was your capacity to love. Maybe in that proud moment, the part that showed up was your creativity, your persistence, your tenderness.

36:23See, if you can just write one simple sentence, I'm walking into next year with my blank part, fill in that part, of me that blank, right? I'm walking into next year with my blank, the part of me that blank. Now here are some examples so you get what I'm talking about. I'm walking into next year with my courage, the part of me that told the truth even when my voice was shaking. I'm walking into next year with my tenderness, the part of me that cried with my friend when I didn't have the answers. I'm walking into next year with my persistence, the part of me that just kept coming back even after I fell off the plan.

37:11I'm walking into next year with my curiosity, the part of me that asked, what can I learn from this instead of just, what is wrong with me? You don't need to nail the perfect sentence here, by the way. This is just you acknowledging, I'm not walking into the new year empty. I'm bringing something with me. And if you want to spend more time with this, feel free to pause here, as I said, or come back later with a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, matcha, whatever it is that makes you happy. Quiet corner, sit down and just create a little bit more space to actually walk through these questions and either think through what comes to mind, if that's your mode, Write it down if that's your mode.

37:57Type it out if that's your mode, right? The invitation is to not just let this moment pass you by. So as we start to land this conversation, I kind of want to circle back to where we begin. The New Year quote industry will try to sell you on this idea that you've got to become someone else. That the quote, old you is a problem, maybe the problem. That your past is baggage. That your missteps are proof that you're behind. I have bought into this myth of falling behind in my own life in so many ways for so many years. And literally turning 60 this year, I'm just beginning to shed that feeling that I'm behind in my own life.

38:48And it is still a work in progress for me. So I want to offer here a different lens. You don't need a clean slate. You need an honest one. You need the you who's tried and stumbled and gotten back up. the you who has loved and lost and then loved again. I mean, the you who has made choices that you're proud of and choices you regret and is still here listening, which tells me everything I need to know, right? You are not a project to be fixed in January and abandoned by February. You are a human in motion. The past yous, the ones you admire and the ones you'd rather forget, they're not the obstacle to your future.

39:40They're your greatest resource. So instead of dragging quote old you out to the curb this year, maybe invite them in. Ask yourself, what have you been trying to show me? What did you learn that I need to know? How can we really walk together into this next chapter? Because the only person who can step into the year ahead is the person you are right now with the history you actually have. So in our next episode, which airs, I believe it's actually on January 1st, next Thursday, we're going to talk about something that I call the unresolution. We'll explore what it might look like to begin again without turning your life into a rigid list of rules or a test you either pass or fail and how to approach change in a way that works with your humanity instead of against it.

40:33And then the week after that, we'll dive into what I call the year of enough. And that conversation, it's all about really what it means to live this coming year from a very different place internally. A sense that who you are and what you have right now can become the starting point for a rich, a meaningful, a deeply satisfying life rather than constantly feeling like you're behind and not enough. And all of that is meant to sit alongside the more structural, practical work that we've done over the years with things like success scaffolding, which I may share with you further in the month or a little further into the first quarter, right?

41:12Think of this as widening the foundation and softening the ground so that any scaffolding you build has a solid, compassionate place to land as you step into this new year, because we all need more solid ground beneath our feet and compassion to wrap ourselves in. But both of those upcoming episodes rest on this one, on your willingness right now, as you close out this year to say, I don't need to erase myself to begin again. I can start from who I actually am. And that is enough for the journey ahead. So as you move through these last days of the year, Maybe skip the fantasy of the perfectly clean slate.

41:57Take the real one instead. The one crowded with stories, lined with ink, smudged with tears and laughter. That's the slate that can actually carry you into a life that feels true. So thanks for being here, for listening, for doing this inner work alongside me. I'm walking with you into this next year. and be sure to make sure that you are following along in whatever place that you get your podcast so you do not miss the next two episodes. You're definitely gonna wanna drink them in and enjoy how they'll help us all set up the year to come. And I will see you here again next week. This episode of Good Light Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields.

42:42Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. And Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a seven second favor. Share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome too, but just one person even. Then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that's how we all come alive together.

43:21Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.