The Pause Between Now and Next

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Lauren invites listeners to pause, reflect, and reset for a more regulated year ahead.

Lauren opens the new year with an invitation to pause between “now and next.” This episode creates space to reflect on the past year, release what no longer serves, and move forward with more clarity and steadiness instead of urgency or burnout.

Lauren explores how pausing supports nervous system regulation, sustainable leadership, and intentional design. Listeners are encouraged to do less on purpose and reset their systems for a more unhurried year ahead.

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Transcript:

Lauren Spigelmyer: Back for the new year. Feels good to start another year of this podcast. I think we're on year…4, 5, this is year 5, I think. 4 or 5. Anywho, it seems like ideal timing to have an episode on… kind of pausing. Like, it's a natural new year, it's a natural new transition. So, we're talking about this pause between, kind of, the now and the next. What has come into play last year for us as individuals, and in our place of work, or influence, and where are we going next? So, the goal here is to help kind of help you as individuals, if you're a leader, help you as a leader, and the systems as a whole, the organization, pause long enough to integrate what came into play last year. Think about what we can release that is no longer serving us as individuals or serving the organization, and orient towards this year that will… that is now in play, with clarity, with steadiness, with groundedness, with intention, instead of the likely state that we were coming from, which is maybe… urgency, or straight productivity, overwhelm, burnout, all the things. Like, how do we start this new year and stabilize and make it sustainable to have a year that doesn't feel so rushed, that feels a little bit, maybe, dare I say, like, unhurried.

Lauren Spigelmyer: So, before we move forward into this episode, into this year, we really just need a moment to pause. Not to kind of analyze all the things that went well or not so well, and not to rush into planning for the next year, but literally a moment. Just sit still and kind of, like, let thoughts wander through your mind, in, out. Because if we don't reflect a little bit on the past, and kind of what got us to where we got to, and maybe even what kept us stuck, then… that path kind of influences and carries us and determines, even, how we move into what's next. So, lots of things here, so I'm gonna ask you to literally pause. Just sit here for 30 to 60 seconds, just kind of do, like, a January, February, March, April, May, all the way through the year, just, like, kind of mentally fly by those months, and just, like, think about, did anything stick out? Good, bad, ugly? What come up? What is coming up? What came to mind? And just so… With that. And then when you feel like you're ready, and if you still need longer, just continue the pause and we're just gonna take, like, a big collective exhale, just, like, a huge, like, like, blow it away, let it all go. The goal here is to… kind of metabolize the year. Take it in and release it, and plan for moving forward without self-judgment. I think a lot of end-of-year reflection can be fun for some people, but can also be a little bit overwhelming, and it usually includes a lot of self-judgment. We… even if we got to where we wanted to get to, we usually then just move right on to the next. It's like, what's next? How do I move… what's… what more can I have? What greater? So, really just, like, pausing with this, and really sitting with it and not judging it.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, so… post-pandemic, we're like, how many years out now? I don't know, 3 years out? Like, there's still, like residual stuff from post-COVID in a lot of the systems that Jessica and I support: nonprofits, healthcare, medical, police, law enforcement, behavioral health, because law enforcement is the same. But a lot of these fields that are, like, trauma-facing fields, high-stress fields, and what it has asked of us as individuals and as teams is kind of to live in this chronic urgency, and then there's staff instability because of the urgency that moves us to burnout. There's ever… there are ever-shifting expectations, there's emotional overload, there's, like, empathetic overload, there's, like, secondary trauma that comes from trauma exposure to work, trauma-exposed work. So… There has been some heavy in the society and world as a whole, but definitely in this and these types of work. So, when we pause, like, these natural transitions, and kind of do some reflection, and then some thinking forward, it's how we prevent carrying the unprocessed stress into the next year. So, we want to… kind of consciously reflect. Let our nervous system settle. Move through the, maybe, like, reactivity, the burnout, even, like, the collapse of just, like, wow, the year is over, and that was so much. Even if good, so much. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask you to reflect on these things, and you can, you can just sit and reflect, you can write them down in a journal, you can do whatever you want, but there are 4 questions I'm going to ask you to reflect through.

Lauren Spigelmyer: The first one is. Where did my system feel most stretched this year? And this system could be, like, your nervous system. It could also be, like, the collective system if you were overseeing people. And then the follow-up question to that is, where did I find steadiness, groundedness. Even briefly, or, and or, if you're overseeing people, where did we, as a team, find steadiness, even briefly? Third question is, what patterns kept or even keep repeating despite our best efforts? When you think back, like, what were your stuck points as an individual? What were your stuck points as an organization? And the last one is, what did this year teach me about capacity? My own capacity. Myself and my team. So, I'm gonna ask you to… think through those four questions. Where did my system feel most stretched this year? Where did we find steadiness, even briefly? What patterns kept repeating despite our best efforts? And what did this year teach me about capacity? Once you've reflected through those questions and really kind of sat with them and spent some time on them to, like, kind of move your mind, your nervous system, your body through them. Then we're gonna release them. We want to let go of what we don't want to bring forward with us without self… judgment and shame. And when you think about this, what I really want you to think about is, like, when we move through these things, we let them go, and we move into, like, a planning phase for next year. It's… this kind of pause into a reset isn't about doing more. Like, what more can I do? How can I be more productive? It's really actually about doing less on purpose. And when you do less on purpose, then your nervous system can rest, and you actually end up doing more. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but it really is biologically how we're wired. If you're leading people, depending on what your childhood was like, what your leadership experience was like, what your education was like, you're probably carrying with you a lot of expated… expated… outdated expectations. I combined the two words. Expectations that are outdated, or outdated expectations. You might even have some resentment towards people or individuals, people above you, below you. You might feel like there are these rhythms that you have, or routines that you have in the workplace that are not sustainable, that are actually really dysregulating. And you might have these, like, oh my gosh, I just have to power through it, kind of habits, actions, behaviors? So, kind of think about some of those things. Are any of those things true? If they are, jot them down. And then what I want you to think about is, like, some of those things maybe were helpful to us at some point, but now we're releasing them because they're causing us to stay stuck. And… just because we're releasing some of those things doesn't mean that they were wrong, they served us at some point. It just went out. Fit.

Lauren Spigelmyer: What we need moving forward, or our growth for the next phase. So, here are some of your release-based prompts and questions. What drained us? Or what drained me more than it gave this year. What drained us more than it gave this year, or what drained me more than it gave this year? What am I still doing out of habit not out of effectiveness? I can tell you that one of mine was when I went into a nervous system dysregulated state myself and we had an ever-growing to-do list. Instead of time blocking. and giving away my mind to, like, certain chunks and certain activities that related to each other, or I could, like, stay in one, I would jump all over the place. And I… I know my nervous system is dysregulated when I do that, because that type of habit is not effective. It drains my mental capacity, or anyone's, so much faster than if I had just time blocked and… chunked and stayed in, like, projects for chunks of time. Your third question is, what expectations no longer align with who we are becoming, or who I am becoming? I'm gonna add a fourth one here. What rules do you have for yourself? What rules have you created for yourself? Like, one of my rules in my household that I made up that's not a true rule, but I made up for myself was, like, the house has to be clean before I go to bed. I can't leave stuff out. I can't wake up to a dirty house the next morning. I can't leave dishes out, can't leave toys out, everything has to go away. That may feel nice to me, but that's also a rule I created. That's not a true rule. So, what expectations no longer align with who you are becoming, and what rules have you set for yourself? And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna move into the reset. So we're gonna kind of… reflect, we released, now we're gonna reset. We're gonna stick with these three R's. We want to move forward with some type of… intentional design. Like, I think sometimes, and I've done this in the past, where I was so goal-oriented, so perfectionistic, so Type A, that it was, like, goal overload. It was, like, goal-setting overload. And when you do that, and you're tracking a million things, and…

you have too many goals, it really wrecks your nervous system, and then it leaves you at the end of the year feeling not only depleted, but, like, you haven't maybe met a lot of your goals, because you might not have, and you might have met some, but it just kind of keeps you wired. Even if you met all your goals by the end of the year, and you had so many goals, you just feel like, by the end of the year, like, a little bit fried. So… when we reset, it doesn't mean we're making resolutions. Reset is really… in choosing how we want our system to feel, our bodies, our nervous systems, and how we want it to function. So, metrics are great, yes. In business, we tend to have a lot of metrics. But I'm gonna ask you to ask yourself, how do we want things like communication to feel in our role, in our life. In our organization, how do you want meeting functions to go? Or how do you want meetings to function? How do you want them to feel from start to end? And how do we want leadership to show up under chaos and stress? Because those things are going to come into play no matter what. I'm just gonna think about, before you're sending your metric-based goals, your SMART goals. organ it more towards a little bit of feelings-based thing. How do you want meetings to feel? How do you want communication to feel? How do you want leadership to feel? How do you want all those things to feel? And then I'm gonna move you into this reset triad. So, the reset triad is just one rhythm you want to protect, so one work-based, personal life-based rhythm that works really well, that's like a ritual and a routine and a habit that sustains you. I want you to think of, number two, one practice to strengthen. So that's one habit, behavior, action, tool, strategy, thing that you want to strengthen a little bit more. And what's one big pressure you would like to release? So, write those three things down. One rhythm to protect, one practice to strengthen, one pressure to release. A little bit more actionable, but don't make it overwhelming. I'm not making gigantic lists of things to change right now. And then once you've done that, we're gonna shift again, and orient to what's next. We really want this year, 2026, to be a year where people can learn to regulate, where they can recover, and when… in our Five Ives system, where they can thrive, or even move into the Hive stage.

Lauren Spigelmyer: If you don't know what I'm talking about with Thrive and Hive and the Five Ives, FiveIves.com, It'll explain all of it to you. It's what Jessica and I ground our work in. It's a continuum we created to help people understand where they are as individuals and as people on the nervous system scale. If you want to have a different year this year, from 2025, we have to design systems to be a little bit different. We're not really asking people to try harder, we're just… Modifying systems to create more regulation, so that we can be more productive and achieve greater goals. With that, I'm gonna ask you again to go back to that beginning pause and just kind of go through the year again, 2025. Same kind of flow you did at the beginning of the session. And then once you've done that, I'm gonna ask you to now go back through and do the same thing for 2026, except 2026 hasn't happened yet. So, think about what some of the things that you reflected on today, that you released, and you're… you're kind of holding sacred, and strengthening, and all the things. Visualize all the months for 2026, but what it might feel like if you've achieved this regulated, unhurried, state where you've integrated the things you wanted to carry forward. And then when you're done with that, just know that reflection really gives us wisdom. It's like that kind of metacognitive space that we don't usually allow ourselves because we're too busy. Releasing things also frees up some space in our mind and our body, and the reset gives us direction. Hear me, that you do not have to rush into 2026. Like, let the holidays and the end of the year be that thing that slowed you down, and carried some of that… carried some of that unhurried nature into 2026, because if you can keep your nervous system more regulated, no matter what role you are, you're going to feel better, do better, and produce better. Regulated systems resourced, aligned, and ready to go. And when you implement that, you will very likely end 2026 feeling happier, healthier, more regulated, and probably, like, had a more productive year. If you want to learn more about, and I'm like… individual and collective, whole organization alignment towards sustainable practices. I don't even want to say, like, goal setting or, like, you know, individual or organizational goals. This is more of, like, creating staff sustainability and a system for doing so, Jessica and I have created a program that helps organizations achieve this. And we walk alongside you based on your specific needs and your specific role, and your specific organization and help map this out for you, and it's called the Staff Sustainability Program. If you desire to learn more about this, and what it looks like, and what it entails, go to FiveIves.com, F-I-V-E-I-V-E-S, and on our services page, the staff sustainability link is the very first link, and that will tell you all about the program. If you want to learn about some of these things from an educator standpoint, we do have a course that's running the end of January through May? Late April, May called Behavior Breakthrough that works with staff to address behaviors that happen in K- early… early… early childhood? Yeah. Early childhood, not K-12. Early childhood to 12 classrooms, and how you prevent burnout in that type of position, and that is called the Behavior Breakthrough Course in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania. So, you can earn 4.5 credits to move through that course with us. We'll do some coaching alongside it. That is also on the website. If you go to FiveIves.com, the very first page, scroll all the way to the bottom, and you'll see on-demand resources and the University of Partnership… the University of Penn Partnership course called Behavior Breakthrough is on there for you to register. And if you just want to chat with Jessica and I about the work that we're doing, and how we can support the work that you're doing, just ping us through anything on the Five Ives website, and we will get back to you. As we go into the second week of January, we are going to move into a new series called Leading Under Pressure, so how regulated leaders make better decisions in high-stress systems. If that sounds like it's for you, then I hope to see you for the next episode in a week. I'm Lauren Spigelmyer, and thanks for joining me.

Categories: : Regulation Strategies

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