Episode 218. Who Do You Want to Be on January 1?
What if January 1st isn’t the starting line?
We tend to arrive at the end of the year and do one of two things: scramble to accomplish everything we said we would, or decide the year is basically over and we’ll start again in January.
But lately, I’ve been asking myself a different question:
Who do I want to be when I wake up on January 1st?
Not what do I want to accomplish.
Not what do I want to weigh.
Not how much money do I want to make.
Who do I want to be?
There are roughly 90 days left in 2026, and I’m using them for a personal experiment: 90 Days of Soul Care.
And no, this is not 75 Hard: Spiritual Girl Edition. 😂
I’m not interested in a rigid checklist or starting over because I missed a day. I’m interested in becoming the kind of woman who tends to her inner world consistently—while still leaving room to ask myself what my soul actually needs that day.
In this episode, I’m sharing what that looks like for me: meditation, prayer, energy work, journaling, time with God, my audio affirmation practice, creating before consuming, and even allowing my creative expression to become part of how I care for my soul.
We’re talking about discipline without rigidity—creating enough structure to keep showing up for yourself while leaving enough freedom to follow what you actually need.
Because one day Soul Care might mean a guided meditation.
Another day it might mean getting outside and touching some grass.
And another day your soul might tell you to lay your ass on the sofa and watch Netflix. 😂
The question isn’t, Did I complete the prescribed action today?
It’s:
Did I tend to my soul today?
I’m also sharing one practice that has made a huge difference in my creativity and business over the years: creating before consuming. Before scrolling, reading everyone else’s thoughts, or filling my brain with outside input, I’m giving my own ideas somewhere to go first.
And maybe that's part of what these final months of the year can be about.
Not hustling.
Not maximizing Q4.
Not getting all of our shit together before December 31st.
Maybe this is a seeding season.
A season to tend to your inner world and nurture the garden of who you're becoming.
So I'm inviting you to sit with a few questions:
Who do you want to be on January 1st?
What's on your heart?
What are you ready to do?
What are you ready to say?
You don't have to know exactly who you're becoming yet.
You can simply begin tending to her now.
In this episode:
Why I’m thinking about January 1 differently this year
My personal 90 Days of Soul Care experiment
Becoming intentionally instead of “by accident”
Why discipline doesn’t have to require rigidity
Creating flow within structure
The spiritual and Soul Care practices currently in my toolkit
How I create and use my own audio affirmation tracks
Why some of your old affirmations may have already “expired”
Creating before consuming
Why creative expression counts as Soul Care for me
What it means to ask what your soul actually needs today
Why Q4 can be a seeding season instead of a sprint
What could exist in your business, family, or identity by January 1
A little Human Design + astrology exploration of why I research, experiment, organize, refine, and then teach what I learn
I’ll be sharing what my Soul Care practice looks like throughout Q4 on Instagram Stories. Come follow along and tell me what you’re tending to in these final months of the year.
You don’t have to wait until January to become her. Tend to the woman you’re becoming now.
Podcasting with Heart is my self-paced course for the person who wants to learn how to create and launch a podcast themselves.
And I’m opening a small number of private Podcast in a Day intensives for the person who knows they want a podcast but wants support taking it from an idea to publish-ready.
Links and details are below.
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https://nicholejoy.kartra.com/page/podcastingwithheart
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https://nicholejoy.hbportal.co/public/podcastinquiry
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Transcript:
Hi, welcome back. I wanted to share some stuff with you because I've been thinking a lot lately about who I have become in the last couple years, but more importantly, who I'm in the process of becoming right now in real time And I wanna urge you to think about that for yourself and who you're currently becoming.
I have chosen a date of January 1st inspired by a conversation I was having recently with a few fellow entrepreneurs, and we were talking about the last quarter of the year. And we kind of laughed about how come Halloween, the rest of the year is pretty much over. That when it comes to business and launching and building things, it's tricky to run the type of businesses that we run and do new things during the [00:01:00] holiday season, and it tends to be pretty quiet November, December, other than, , existing client work, right?
So the question was, do we do something right, right now or do we wait until January 1st? And neither are right or wrong, but it got me thinking more about who I'm becoming come January 1st. And I was thinking about how many of us, well, I used to do this, it's been quite a while since I've done this, but a lot of people still will give themselves a big permission slip through the end of the year and say it's basically just a big write-off and everything begins January 1.
And I was thinking, what if we did the complete opposite of that? and think about what you can be doing in this final quarter of the year to help you get to the next version of yourself on January 1. And I'm not necessarily talking about what you wanna accomplish or what you wanna weigh or how [00:02:00] much money you wanna make, not what your goals are for the last quarter, but who you wanna be.
And if you listened to the last episode, 217, I did talk about becoming, about letting ourselves outgrow old identities And being comfortable with being seen differently and trusting the unfolding of your life and the unfolding of who you're becoming with every experience
And the thing about becoming is you're always actually becoming. They say that about manifestation as well. You're always manifesting but are you going to do it with intention or are you going to manifest and become by accident? Are you participating actively in who you're becoming?
I don't think you have to know exactly who that version of you is on January 1st but I do think and I believe that you can actively tend to the woman, or if you're a man listening, the man who's [00:03:00] becoming that person
I'm recording this as of October 2nd, so I'm already on day two of this experiment for myself, but I wanted to share it with you because it's something that I'm building for me, and I tend to do things for me and then share them with my community, and that's how I've always run my business. So I'm gonna share this with you as well.
At this point, there's roughly 90 days left in this year, and I'm using this as my own personal experiment of intentionally building who I'm becoming for January 1. For me, this looks like 90 days of soul care I realized that, and I'll explain, but I realized that my physical care, my body care is on point.
I shared this on social media a few days ago. It is chef's kiss. I have become... I embody the identity of a woman who cares for my physical vessel. I mostly eat nutritious food that's gonna nourish me. I train, I lift weights, I move my body every day. ., And I love moving my body. I used to hate working out, [00:04:00] but over time, what happened with discipline is that I became a woman who identifies as somebody who cares for my physical vessel. My mental care, on point My soul care is also on point. However, I was still able to recognize that it could use more consistency, and it's something that's been on my heart's desire for a long time, and I'll share more about that in a second.
But I wanna be clear that this isn't, , 75 Hard Spiritual Girl Edition. This isn't 90 days of strict discipline. In fact, the word discipline used to really turn me off. This isn't a checklist of seven, eight, 10 things that you have to do every single day, and there's no rules about starting over because you missed a day.
For me, what this looks like and how I can get behind discipline in a way that doesn't feel constricting is I think about discipline as a sort of ritual for myself. [00:05:00] And for me, that's gonna look like showing up for my soul every day and participating in some form of soul care every single day. Now, the flow for me comes in that it doesn't have to look the same every day.
I get to decide every single day what that looks like and what my soul needs that day. That's the structure that I'm giving it. Every day for Q4, I'm participating in some form of soul care, but the flow that I can get behind is that I get to choose. It might only be a two, three-minute meditation. It might not be a meditation at all.
I can share more about the different tools in my toolkit
So as I've mentioned, my soul care practice is pretty amazing at this point. I've been building this out for 10 years. I started learning and exploring various, , what I am calling soul care rituals or practices about 10 years ago. [00:06:00] And there have been seasons of my life where I've been much more consistent than others, right?
I've had a couple kids. I've had lots of different life situations come up, as we all have. And so there's seasons where I've noticed that , I've been much more intentional about taking the actions That will help me become who I wanna be. And the thing with my identity is the intention for me is to not just intentionally get to the next version of me, but also to become the kind of woman who a daily and consistent soul care practice is just part of who I am
Now, like I said before, I'm not committing to do the same spiritual practice every single day. What I am committing to is tending to my inner world every day. So what does my soul need that day? And it's gonna vary day by day, because I don't think that we're meant to come here and have the same experience every single day.
Some days that will look like meditation. A friend of mine and I were chatting, , a few days [00:07:00] ago, and she asked me what meditations I listen to. I tend to listen to my own a lot because I create them and I infuse expansion principle energy healing into the meditations, so I know that it's not just a fluff calming meditation, which , listen, there's nothing wrong with those.
There's nothing wrong with a simple calming meditation if that's where you're at. But at this point in my spiritual game, I need something a little bit more elevated. So I tend to listen to my own, and I have a collection in my library
If you wanna talk about other meditations, other people's meditations that I listen to, feel free to reach out because there are a couple people that I trust their work and I trust the transmissions that they share Now, if it's not meditation, what else might it be? Sometimes it's going to be energy work.
So this morning, for example, today's October 2nd, I did some energy work on myself and on my kids before they even woke up. Some days it's journaling, which to be honest, is not usually my strong suit. I don't tend to love journaling, but I do notice a big [00:08:00] difference when I do it Sometimes it's prayer, and I actually pray more than I probably share about.
I'm a firm believer in prayer
It may be reading, it may be going for a walk outside, it may be taking a few minutes to just sit in silence. It may be spending time with God
I actually have a pretty lengthy list of practices that are in my toolkit that I've been building over the years. And if this is something that is of interest, then maybe we put together some more formal type of, uh, space where we can share and discuss, and I can give you a lot more detail. But as for now, I'm sharing it on my IG stories.
Some of which I have borrowed from others, and some of which I've made my own. , One of those is my audio affirmation tracks. So I remember years ago hearing, uh, this one particular woman online talking about affirmations, and she writes these affirmations, and she would talk about them sometimes, and she would speak the affirmations out loud to herself.
Now, I'm a self-projected projector, so speaking and hearing my own voice is really important for me. [00:09:00] So what I decided to do, , several years ago, is start compiling a list in a Google Doc of affirmations that resonate with me, and not just where I'm at right now, but the next step of where I'm going.
Then I record myself speaking my affirmations And when I'm really fancy I will add some background, um, frequency sounds.
At this point, my affirmations track that I just re-recorded is about 21 minutes long. So I have a lot
And what I like about the audio affirmations track is unlike doing a meditation, this is something that you can actually do while you're driving, you can do while you're out walking. Um, I can play it on the loudspeaker when I'm in the shower I can play them when I lay down to go to sleep because it doesn't matter if my conscious self hears it even if I'm sleeping the affirmations go into my subconscious
And a tip, if this is something that you're interested in doing, is I tend to update mine and re-record. I used to do them every quarter. It's been about six months at this point, so I just redid mine, , yesterday
And that's because when you go back [00:10:00] and listen to something you recorded three, six months ago, some of the affirmations are already expired. You're already there. So I encourage myself to add the next step. What's after that?
Now, a little bit connected to soul care for me as a soul-centered, heart-centered entrepreneur is also, um, this is a little bit different in that it may not categorically belong under soul care, but for me it does, and that is expression, my soul's expression. And so what I mean by that is in the mornings when I wake up, allowing something to come out of me before I consume, so creating before consumption.
, There's times and seasons of my life where I fall into a bad habit, just like many of you probably do, where I wake up, get my coffee, pick up the phone, and start scrolling
And that's okay. If you're there, that's fine. However, in the seasons, when I look back, in the seasons of my life when I chose to [00:11:00] create before I consume other people's content, I tended to have a lot more creativity flowing out of me, uh, a lot more energy and momentum building in the sharing and expression of myself through the business.
Now, what that creation looks like, I'm not writing a book every morning. I'm not writing a blog post every morning. I'm not even writing a full social media post or anything like that. Sometimes, yes, although sometimes it's simpler than that. Sometimes it's getting a thought out and expressing it, uh, about a potential podcast topic, for example.
And I-- for now, I will be talking it into ChatGPT, just flushing out the idea that I wake up with. , And then if I'm ready to take it a step further, I'll organize it into a cohesive outline for a podcast episode. When I was actively in the middle of writing my book, I can't remember how many words, but I would sit down in the morning and make myself write a certain number of words before I moved into any consumption.
And this wasn't editing and cleaning up and having perfect [00:12:00] paragraphs. It was just dumping. Now, you might even just brain dump. You might wake up in the morning, grab a, a journal, and ask yourself a few basic journaling questions. There's journal prompts all over the internet, all over ChatGPT. You don't need that from me at this point.
But that counts also. And then I have a PM practice that's really amazing, and I've shared it in some of my private containers. , Maybe I'll share that in a separate episode. But it's a journaling type process that I do at night before bed, and I don't do it every night.
But again, that's one of those things I'd like to get much more consistent about
So as part of my soul care for October, November, December of 2026, I'll also be creating in the morning before I consume
Now, one of the conversations that got me to thinking about this experiment is a conversation I was having with my friend, former client, Melissa Fernandez. She's the owner of the Postpartum Doula Agency, and she's been on the podcast actually I think two or three times at this point. I love her dearly.
Shout out, Melissa. So she's doing 30 days [00:13:00] of heart-centered, and I may not be using the perfect language, but 30 days of basically following her heart's desires. And it got me thinking. I felt the invitation. I'm a projector. She's a projector as well. But I felt this invitation to explore what does my heart desire, and one of the things that kept coming up was that for years I've been saying I want a consistent practice when it comes to spirituality or soul care.
Her invitation opened that up within me
So if this is something that you'd like to experiment for yourself, I'd love to hear about how it's going and what else you want from me. Do you wanna hear more details about the things that I'm working on every day? Some days I'm doing more than one thing. , I would imagine there may be days over the fourth quarter that I may not have time to do a lot of different things, but I will find time for at least one every day.
And if this is something that you would like to do, , I wanna encourage you to remember that being disciplined doesn't require rigidity. You can still have flow within the structure. [00:14:00] What if you can be disciplined about showing up for yourself and intuitive about what that showing up looks like, about what your soul needs right now on a daily basis?
For example, maybe your soul tells you to get outside in nature and touch the grass for a little while today
Tomorrow maybe it says, "Lay your ass down on the sofa and put some Netflix on." Currently watching Dead to Me with Christina Applegate,
Another day it may be a guided energy healing meditation that's twenty minutes long and if you're like me and you fall asleep during meditation, again, it's okay to do that. It still goes through to the subconscious.
So the question every day is not did I complete this specific prescribed action? The question is, did you tend to your soul that day, and what did that look like?
And you can start with sitting while you're listening to this or take a moment today and think about how your life could change come January 1st if you commit to your soul for the next 90 [00:15:00] days Is there something that you're desiring to cultivate with your children? what could exist in your family culture? Maybe it's a culture of kindness. Maybe it's a culture of having empathy for each other and showing up for each other in simple ways
What could exist in your business? , Maybe it's a manuscript for a new book or a new offer or a business in general or a podcast
And in terms of your identity, maybe it's a completely different you
So listen, after Halloween, the business year isn't basically over. The year itself isn't basically over. We have three whole ass months to do something with, right? And I get that launching things in business can be tricky during the holidays, , there's still time to do very important things internally
We're not hustling, we're not getting all of our shit together, we're not maximizing our output for Q4, just to be clear. It's not sprinting through the end of the year like many of us were taught several years ago in online business spaces. What if this is a seeding season? What if you're seeding and
[00:16:00] tending to the garden of who you'll become
Today, if nothing else, I'd love for you to sit with that question of who do you wanna be on January 1?
What's on your heart? What are you ready to do? What are you ready to say?
For accountability, I'm gonna be posting what I do every day, , to my Instagram stories, and I invite you to connect with me there. Uh, give me some feedback. Show me what you're doing. Tell me how this lands. I'd love to hear from you. Also, I found this really fascinating. , , so I had a very near and dear friend of mine reply to my stories when I was sharing about this a couple days ago.
, I think it was September 30th. I just gave everybody a heads-up, this is what I'm gonna be doing, and this is what she responded: "This is so good. The way that you know how to take care of yourself is a gift to this world. We all need to learn from you. Thank you for sharing yourself with us. You're beautiful, my friend."
Then she said, "I wonder if there's a part in your - chart or human design that talks about how organized you are in your mind. It's why you're so efficient and successful in life. I love that." So first, thank you, Laura. I love you. I really, really appreciate this for so [00:17:00] many reasons. , One, because I'm a human.
Two, because you see me and you recognize me, and as a projector, being seen and recognized is... I don't think there's much better than that. So of course, there are things in my chart. Some of them I'm most already pretty aware of, but I actually ran this through, , I purchased a astrology chat thing.
I don't even know the correct name for it, but it lives in my ChatGPT, and I bought it from an astrologer who I really like. And I have uploaded my astrology chart, my human design chart, so as various transits and different things with the astrology occur throughout the year, I will check in how that's impacting me based on my chart.
So I went in there, and I shared what Laura replied to my story and said, and it broke it down for me so nicely. I could not have done this part better myself. Astrology is not my strong suit. It's, um, it's an interest of mine. It's something I enjoy exploring. , But I'm not well-versed. And human design I've been learning about for probably , six or seven years at this point, but I still don't consider myself very [00:18:00] well-versed.
It went into a lot greater detail than what I could have told you. So for one, I am a Virgo rising, which means I'm very organized, discerning, efficient, practical, and I can naturally see what needs to be fixed or improved. I'm also an Aquarius moon, and so per this chat, I see patterns and systems, especially around work routines and how things function.
I'm also quad left, so all of my arrows on my chart are facing left, and my understanding of that, my very simple understanding of that, is that I am more structured. I tend to lean on structure. I'm a Taurus sun, , meaning I ground ideas into something practical. I'm drawn to research, learning, teaching, and turning my experience into wisdom.
, In human design, I'm a one-three. The one is the researcher. The three is the experimenter. So I investigate deeply, and then I learn what actually works through real-world experience, and that's what I always come and share with you. All of my work has come from my own research and my own investigations and experiments.
[00:19:00] I'm self-projected, meaning I can discover clarity by hearing myself talk things through. My voice helps me recognize what's true for me. One of the reasons I love podcasting, I think projectors in general probably do really well podcasting, but particularly being self-projected, just talking things out is incredibly helpful for me.
, Also in my human design, I have the 43-23 channel of structuring. I have the one-eight channel of inspiration, which is creative individuality and expressing my own way of doing things that can naturally influence others. So overall, it's showing me that I am a researcher, I recognize patterns, I organize the information, articulate it, test it, refine it, and then I go and share and teach.
And if that doesn't nail me to a T
And what's really interesting is it shows me my career gifts. It says that the industry can change but the transferable strength remains that I can see the patterns, create the structure, and communicate what I've learned so that other people can use it.
Which is a [00:20:00] very beautiful way of explaining
How I moved from blogging about clothing to birth work childbirth education, doula work into business coaching, online business coaching energy healing practitioner author, podcaster they've all evolved very organically and my core strengths have remained
Okay, I hope you found this incredibly helpful, and I hope it inspires you to pick something for Q4 that you can focus on internally. And again, I would love the feedback. You know where to find me. Have a great week