Reflect and Reset for 2025
Flows and Flops: How To Set Yourself Up for More Enjoyment and Less Disappointment in the New Year
Your eyes don’t deceive you: you’re receiving this on a Sunday night! Since this edition of Do Yoga in Paris contains tips for creating optimal conditions for a fantastic new year, I wanted you to have this list before January 1st to give you enough time to dream and plan.
CreativeMornings’ Paris chapter hosted its final-for-2024 session a couple of weeks ago and the theme was, appropriately: Cycle.
Guest speaker Camille Sereis described different sorts of cycles — natural, seasonal, menstrual, creative, the infamous seven-year one — and asked us to think of three of our “flows” (accomplishments) and three of our “flops” (failures) of 2024, then sift and sort them to figure out which flows to repeat and which flops to avoid in the new year. It was a playful way to close out 2024’s cycle of talks.1
“History repeats itself. So you might wanna pay attention.”
—Quavo
Flow or Flop
Why take stock of your year-to-date flows and flops? It’s pretty simple: to ensure there is more enjoyment (more flows) and less disappointment (fewer flops) going forward. But simple doesn’t always mean easy which is why an entire cottage-but-sophisticated industry has sprung up to help.
In the spirit of radical honesty, here are my 2024 Top 3 Flows and Flops:
FLOWS: moving forward with my art prints and selling them at a pop-up this summer in the Marais; taking up running after a long-ass absence; spending three days in Vienna and soaking up every last Klimt.
FLOPS: 100% fucking up an interview with a company I really wanted to work for; not running or dancing as much as I wanted to; continued financial insecurity in spite of a lot of projects.
As you can see, there’s a lot for me to unpack and analyze before beginning the new year.2
Heading into the Next 365 Days with a Plan
If you would like some assistance in setting up your ideal 2025 and/or would like to excavate a bit deeper than just enumerating a bunch of shit you want to accomplish in the new year, the worksheets and ideas below are a good place to start:
Ness Labs
This Year in Review template breaks things down by category and leans on neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s Plus>Minus>Next journaling technique, a simple but effective way to whittle things down to their essential usefulness and/or joyfulness. Stack 2025’s deck in favor of more flow, fewer flops!Grace Clarke Consulting
Part-time Parisian marketing and brand strategist Grace Clarke’s 2025 Personal Annual Planner gets granular with really keen advice like this bit that hit straight home: “‘I have to figure this all out before taking a step” → ‘I have to take a step in order to start figuring all this out.’ You don’t need more information. You need implementation.” Word.Shout out to and her most excellent Feed Me ‘stack for reminding me about Grace’s planner!
Ditch the vision board
If positive visualization doesn’t work for you because it’s too dreamy, you may be someone who responds more positively to the wake-up slap of reality. Caroline Adams Miller, executive coach and author of Big Goals, developed the BRIDGE method to do just that: her process helps you imagine your future by preparing for roadblocks and transforming negative feelings into forward-moving action.
The Yogi Plan
No surprise: ancient yogis had a roadmap for how to achieve fulfillment.
No surprise, part deux: a Western yoga teacher capitalized on this knowledge by writing it all down in a best-selling English-language book 😹
Rod Stryker’s The Four Desires: Creating a Life of Purpose, Happiness, Prosperity, and Freedom3 is — no snark at all — a step-by-step guide for using yoga’s precepts of Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha to fashion a meaningful, mindful life (no actual asana required.) The title and its companion workbook are excellent tools for uncovering why you’re here and how you’re meant to inject your special sauce into this project called Life.
Back in my Abhaya Brooklyn days, I took part in a small group Four Desires course which combined readings, journaling, homework and discussions with asana, pranayama and Yoga Nidra. Because I am someone who 1) needs rigor and 2) practical exercises and 3) appreciates accountability, this was the right, holistic introduction to the Four Desires for me. If you think a course might be up your alley, click here and search for teachers near you (the lightbulb icon means TFD certified.)
If None of These Resolution-Adjacent Ideas Work for You…
💸 Read
’s final 2024 Good Decisions newsletter entitled “Prepare for the Best.” There are enough nuggets of wisdom in there to inspire your 2025 and supercharge all the years that follow (although I sincerely hope it doesn’t take that long to turn your desires into reality.)🐘 Open your windows wide on January 1st and burn sage or palo santo to defunk the air and bring ceremony to a fresh start. Bonus points for chanting Ganesh’s mantra — Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha — as you walk from room to room, priming your space for the new year.
🎉 HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! BONNE ANNÉE À TOUTES ET À TOUS! 🎉
This is a PSA for Creative Mornings: if you haven’t attended one, put that on your 2025 list of things to discover. Their mantra? Everyone is creative. To which I say, “hear, hear!” If you’re in need of conversation and creative inspiration, these early bird get-togethers are a fab way to jumpstart your day and see things anew. Highly highly recommend!
Did you notice that there’s nothing in my 2024 Flows and Flops list about Do Yoga in Paris? That’s because I continue to be ambivalent about its usefulness in its current form…
My apologies but Big Goals and The Four Desires link out to Amazon because I couldn’t find links for the Do Yoga in Paris bookshop (why oh why is there no bookshop.org in France???) If you decide to purchase the books, please please please head to your local bookseller. By the way, Rod Stryker is leading an online meditation and reflection session on January 1st, 2025 to fuel your resolutions if that sounds like something you’d like to try then register here.