My (compassionate) January debrief

The 'both/and' of a start-of-the-year review, through a self-compassionate lens.

Jan 31, 2025

I had some plans for January. And by the end of the day today, January will be over.

Did I achieve all my plans? Of course I didn’t.

And yet I am not berating myself. I am not being hard on myself. I’m refusing to believe that little voice I hear that tells me I’ve ‘failed’ already, in the first month of the year.

I’m human. And January ‘Januaried’ - as it was always going to do!!

(Why, oh why, do I ever expect January to be anything other than January?!)

Yes, again, January has been different than I expected & hoped, and yet this year my overriding feeling is one of compassion for myself, not of failure or frustration.

How about you? Have you managed to start the year as you hoped? And as you mean to go on? Has January opened right up for you, allowing you to reach for your goals with confidence, energy and fully-resourced?

Or, like me, have you had a perfectly human (in the Northern Hemisphere) experience of January?

A January filled with rainy, or even icey, days - making you feel trapped at home? A January filled with winter germs going around your family like wildfire? Or perhaps a January filled with sleepless nights due to a symphony of coughing, snoring from clogged up sinuses and/or perimenopause ‘wiredness’ rearing its ugly head again, at 4am most nights?

Mine was also filled with three days of a migraine, that seemed to come out of nowhere, and that forced me to my sofa for those days, instead of letting me crack on with all the behind-the-scenes work for my business that I had planned to tackle over the winter break.

This has been my January - frustrating.

I’ve mostly felt like it’s been holding me back, when I have wanted to be more active, more energised, more busy, and more productive.

As a business owner particularly, I always have a list as long as my arm of business-related tasks, many of which I had hoped to clear off my to-do list before the client-facing work picked up again towards the end of January.

But my January seemed to hold me back from that. Forcing me to rest, or to sit with my unwell son, or to nurse my own ailments.

And here we are - January 31st. And my client-facing work is back in full-swing. Those earmarked ‘catch-up’ times, between Christmas and when I saw my first client, honestly feel a little bit stolen from me, by life - by the weather, by the germs, by perimenopause. I truly did my best, and yet I still didn’t come anywhere close to ‘catching up’, or even ‘starting the year as I mean to go on’!

Oh, what I could have achieved if I was not so hampered by … well - January life!

Oh, what I could have achieved this month if I was not also so held back by… well, being human!!

But that’s just it isn’t it? It’s all life. And we’re only humans after all.

Life cannot be controlled, for any of us, however hard we try - We can only ever work with what we can, while life continues to happen all around us, and all we can do is react to life’ happenings as best we can.

Two foundational self-care practices have been key for me this month, to navigate this very human life I lead:

Self-compassion1 &
Flexibility, aka letting go, aka surrendering.

A self-compassion practice, for me, looks like this:

With self-compassion, I feel & validate my feelings, I acknowledge my common humanity & I speak kindly to myself.

With self-compassion, I say to myself - ‘Ah, it feels so hard to not have control over all of these factors’, ‘Wow this is really frustrating’, ‘I’m disappointed that I’m not able to be as productive as I feel I could potentially be right now’.

With self-compassion I also say: ‘It’s human to be affected by life in unpredictable ways’, ‘No human can control it all’, ‘Lots of other humans have been sick this January, or trapped in by ice & snow & rain’, ‘Human bodies need rest regularly, often at inconvenient times for our work, especially during winter’.

My self-compassion now even tells me kind things about myself: ‘It’s amazing what you have achieved, given what you can’t control!’, ‘Well done for all that you have achieved, despite things being different to how you imagined’, ‘It’s amazing how you are learning to listen to your body when it needs rest - I really think you should celebrate that’, and ‘Look at you, learning to let go & surrender to the universe! This is a really hard new skill for you, after feeling like you’ve needed to control everything your whole life - you are really exploring this edge, well done Jenny, you are really growing!’

My mind truly feels a much nicer place to be these days, with these voices, rather than just the harsh, critical ones!

Letting go, surrendering & being flexible, for me, looks like this:

This self-care practice truly is relatively new for me. I used to feel like things had to be ‘just so’, and I would honestly have anxiety attacks and/or rage explosions when (inevitably) things did not go as I had planned (aka: ‘as I had wanted to totally control’). I still honestly feel this potential in me, daily …

But these days, with my self-compassion practice as a foundation, I do find myself more able to be flexible. To roll with the punches. To feel annoyed, frustrated and disappointed, provide some loving care for myself for those hard feelings.

Then, I now also find that I feel far more able to problem-solve, quite spontaneously - to make the best of the reality that I am actually faced with, rather than the reality I had hoped to be faced with.

It is with this foundation of both these self-care practices that I am doing my inventory debrief of January:

What I didn’t get done this January that I had hoped to get done:

Going to the gym. I have not been since December 20th (ish).
Going for a swim once every week. I’ve been for a few, but I have not been as regularly as I had hoped (this week is case in point - I’m premenstrual this week, so I’m feeling a call to slowness in nature right now, rather than aerobic activity in a man-made pool under florescent lights, so I’m going with that).
Preparing an updated ‘intro post, about me’ for Instagram.
Preparing a series of posts for Instagram that say more about how I work as a psychologist.
Preparing a series of instagram posts about holistic self-care, shame resilience, perimenopause, the overlap between matrescence & perimenopause - areas that I’m realising may well be my niche…
Writing a blog and/or Substack a week - or at the VERY least, making a PLAN to TRY to do a blog and/or Substack once a week … even making the plan eludes me.
Review & update all of my T&Cs and policy documents and templates for my business. I have updated one of these, as I needed it, but that’s it.
Updating my website to have a section on ‘you might feel called to work with me if …’ and ‘I might not be the right psychologist for you if…’ (and any other hundred or so edits I’d like to do on my website with more time).
Complete my editing of a book draft that I’m part of an editorial team for, for colleague, who is writing a wonderful book about complex trauma. I did some of it, but there is still a big chunk of editing to go!
Collating a list of relevant awareness days for my social media plan for the year- Still not done, and I just discovered yesterday that I have missed #parentalmentalhealthday already! Hey ho.
Creating a lead magnet for my business. So many ideas here, just so little time to execute them.

This is just off the top of my head, I could, of course, go on. And this is just work, there is a similar list for home!

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But more importantly, because of my self-compassion and flexibility practices, I also feel called today to write the following list too:

“Things I’m celebrating achieving in January!”

That I have done some movement, most days.
That I respected the times when my body called for stillness rather than movement.
That I have said “no thank you” to several invites this month, to preserve my energy, my time, my self-care and my limited finances.
That I’ve held my goals ‘lightly’ as ‘aspirations’ IF I have time, rather than ‘things that must be achieved’.
Achieving parts of some of those goals above - What I did achieve wasn’t nothing, not by a long shot!
The recording of three podcast episodes with podcast hosts - This, is not to be glossed over either - My whole life, I have had significant anxiety and many shame-triggers around public speaking, and I’m a highly sensitive individual with a very sensitive nervous system - so I have been running on nervous energy far more than normal this month to get these recorded! I am SO proud of myself, and I am SO grateful for my shame-resilience2 practice that allowed me to rise to this challenge this month!
The RELEASE of three podcasts episodes that feature me as a guest! I’ve added the links at the bottom of this post for you, so can have a listen if you feel so called! It was SUCH a pleasure to talk to the lovely Kelli Ritter about shame resilience and self-compassion in motherhood & perimenopause AND to the wonderful Natalie K. Martin about ‘Mum rage’ - including why I don’t love that term, what it is, why it happens, and how we can navigate through it with compassion & compassionate connections with ourselves and our children.
Being proactive & brave & reaching out to podcasters to get four more podcast recording opportunities booked in for February - Nope, I don’t do things by half! I’m on a roll, and I’m going with it, because despite the nerves - I am LOVING it! (Can’t wait to speak to you Cath Counihan, and to speak to you again Dr. Rosie Guiderthorpe!)
Doing some research about my migraines3, and being flexible to try a slightly different diet this month, which may help to minimise migraines .. a diet which so far seems to be sustainable, enjoyable AND seems to be working!
Completing a two-day training workshop with the Complex Trauma Institute, and specifically the importance of starting with stabilising a person’s relationship with their body in the here-and-now, long before asking them to open about the traumatic events they have experienced.
Deepening my ‘friendship’ with my insomnia - I have learned the hard way that, throughout perimenopause, to fight insomnia is to fight a losing battle. Now, when I lie awake at night, I allow my body to have the control over this - I don’t try to override it, I don’t get angry at it, I simply use it as an opportunity to lie still, breathe deeply, and to keep coming back to my breath if my mind wanders. To place a hand on my chest if that is where I feel wired, and provide some tenderness & compassion there, and, if my energy is particularly heightened, to sit up and read a nourishing book. An opportunity for time just for me, where no one else expects a single thing from me. Since I’ve taken this approach with my perimenopause insomnia, I rarely wake up exhausted, even when I haven’t sleep great - This feels like a win to me, and one that I am celebrating this month.

Again, I could go on!

January has not been as I imagined I many ways - it was frustrating and it was disappointing - AND it also contained so much for me to personally celebrate! It’s absolutely my self-compassion and flexibility practices that help me embrace BOTH.

Actually there is one more thing too - Another foundational self-care practice that has come to my mind as I’ve been typing this, is my gratitude practice4.

A gratitude practice for me, looks like this:

I do not practice gratitude formally at the moment - I have done in the past, for example, I have written down three things per day that I’m grateful for, etc., but honestly - that went out the window with the demands of early motherhood.

So for now (even though I’m now more than 4 years postpartum…), I just consciously try to briefly notice the things in my life, as I’m moving throughout my day, that I am thankful are the way they are.

For example, I’m grateful this January that the frustrations I have experienced this month have been of a transient nature, and that the sickness that my family has experienced has been transient too, and not more sinister. I’m grateful for my career and my business that allows such flexibility for me, when life ‘happens’, and I’m grateful for my safety, my family’s safety and our secure home. I’m grateful for both my conscious efforts AND my privilege AND luck & fortune, that ALL contribute to me experiencing this security, right now in my life.

How about you?

Are you reflecting on your January today? If so - How are you looking back on January? Can you see the both/and of the start of the year? If it has just felt frustrating, and like you’ve failed to achieve so much of what you’d hoped to - I wonder how it might feel to reflect back with a consciously more self-compassionate lens?

As always, I’d love to hear from you - both you frustrations and disappointments of January, as well as what you are celebrating for yourself.