New Year's Resolutions You Can Actually Keep

Welcome to the Moms who Create podcast. I'm Kelly Heil, a mom, author and artist, and I'm on a mission to celebrate and empower you, whether you're a season pro or just starting out. I'm sharing my insights and resources, diving into the stories of amazing writers, artists and entrepreneurs and helping you rewrite the narrative of balancing motherhood with your creative journey. Grab your coffee, a notebook and let's get started. This is the Moms who Create podcast. Hi everyone, and welcome back to this year's first episode of the Moms who Create podcast. Happy new year. Are you as excited for 2024 as I am? Like I've said before, I love a good reset. I'm a I love Monday's type of person, so what better way to start the first episode of the year than this one? Let's talk about new year's resolutions and ones that go beyond the ordinary, focusing on unique and really achievable stick with it goals. It's not let's lose weight, let's just feel like most of them are. Let's lose weight right. And although health is really important, today's theme is about embracing, like imperfection and finding beauty in the whole chaos of creativity. Here are some new year's resolutions that you can actually keep. Number one embrace imperfection. We're just going to start it off with embracing imperfection and this wild, unpredictable journey of motherhood and creativity. It is so full of surprises and twists. You know your kid can go to bed at night completely fine, wake up at 3am with the super high fever and then be completely fine and happy by noon. Now throw in all of your projects on top of that and you just never know what to expect. Sometimes, in our quest for perfection, we end up boxing in our artistic expression and all of those surprises and twists. You know what? That's the actual. That's the good stuff, if you know what I mean. It's like trying to control every ripple and wave in a wild river an impossible and exhausting mission. If you really just try to find that perfection in everything that happens during the day, you can't really tame it all the time. So embracing imperfection isn't about settling for mediocrity. It's about recognizing the beauty in those unplanned moments of creation. Think about an artist working on a masterpiece and a random splatter of paint lands on the canvas. Instead of freaking out, they embrace it as a beautiful mistake, adding character and depth and more personality to the artwork. Imperfections aren't flaws to erase. They're the heart and soul of our creations. They're like the fingerprints of authenticity, proof that a real human touch is at play in a world that really craves that flawless perfection and precision that you see on social media every day. So give yourself a little creative freedom. The unexpected, that just wonderful, undamed aspect of our life so cheers imperfection and the beautiful messiness of creativity. Resolution number two this one is fun. You guys create a mom cave. I know I talk about that. You like you don't have to have a certain spot you go to to create and you don't. You know, I've talked to countless people that have written a book on their phone in the car pickup line getting their kids, and that's amazing and that's needed, that's necessary. But how fun would it be to also have a mom cave, or what do they use to call them? She sheds, remember. She sheds let's. Let's say mom cave, because I feel like I need to live, laugh, love, sign up if I say she should. Anyway, it doesn't. It doesn't even have to be physical, like a physical tree. It can be a mindset shift, like an intentional move that recognizes the importance of honoring your creative self. So, whether it just materializes as like a cozy corner, an actual she shed, like outside in one of those little houses, just make a sanctuary where, like, your ideas can hit full volume and your imagination and creativity can just absolutely soar. It can be a corner, it can be a room, it can be you know what it could be like a coffee shop you could have like your favorite table at Lulu's coffee in porium. Please let me know if there's a Lulu's coffee in porium Anywhere where you're listening, because it just came to me and I know I want to go now. I want to go. But if you have your favorite coffee shop, the library oh man, you can go to the library, find a corner and you could spend four days there. That could be your mom cave. And if you go to the adult level, it's like somewhere on the adult level the library you are guaranteed 99.9 percent to have zero interruptions. But let's think of one that we can make at home. Okay, I always have a script that I write to keep me on track, but I'm going to put my phone down. I'm going to look around my room and think, okay, if I'm gonna make a mom cave right here in my office, what would I want to do? My husband and I share it right now, so we have like the same desk and we just kind of have all first everywhere. I've always wanted to redo it. We're gonna redo it sometime, so let me just redo it in my head with you, a mom cave. We have a really cool I would say futon. But it's like an upscale futon, if that makes sense, and it full folds out into like a bed. But it is so cool it's like a hound's tooth design on it, so that like just looking at that makes me want to make something. I have a picture of Mona Lisa. That was my grandma's. It's hanging up on the wall to my right. It looks so elegant. I'm not like an elegant person with my decor. I love like eclectic designs put together. My dream would be like a Scottish castle meets Dick Van Dyke mid-century furniture. It's totally different. That would be like the best aesthetic. Anyway, I have a record player. My husband has like Legos. He's a Lego person, but I would take the Lego out and put more books. I don't have a big bookshelf in here, but I would put books everywhere, all different kinds, all different genres. Books really inspire me, even if it's just all the spines lined up. Let's see. I have a. Follow your dreams like Canvas thing up with books on it in a typewriter in a world. I just love that. A Bob Ross clock I put a palette like a palette with dried paint on it, hanging on the wall. I Love it. I love it. It just makes me think about painting. I have an online vision board, but I want to have like a printed out vision board. I know a lot of people keep a digital now, but I think if I was to make this like my mom cave, I would just put a huge vision board on one wall of all the things I want to do, maybe like publisher names, art museums that I would love to be in one day, maybe some awards, you know, mmm conferences, workshop summits, things that I want to go to, things that I would like to speak at one day, and people talk about manifesting and stuff. A vision board can help you Manifest it. I put those in quotations because you gotta work really hard, but you also want to speak it out loud too. All right, let me wrap this up. I have an espresso machine upstairs, but I would want like a coffee corner in here, so let's put a coffee corner over there. Mmm, a lot more pillows, a huge rug. Now it's just getting expensive, but you know, you can dream. I want a big green rug, again like the Scottish kind of feel, and Maybe some like this is really weird. Maybe some like paint brushes hanging down from the ceiling in various patterns. All right, that one. You have to be in my head for that one. But you see what I'm saying. I just set back and I look around. I think, okay, if this was my artistic mom cave, what would I want it to look like, what would I want it to feel like? And if I wanted all the things I listed and more, it would probably be a lot to buy at once. But maybe I can also make a resolution to buy these things Over the course of a year to make my room, to make a place where I can go just to feel, just to feel. Let it become a place that you don't just go to to create, but a place that you can go to to feel refreshed and just undisturbed by the outside world. All right, I'm going to go back to my phone and see what number three is. But please make a mom cave and please send it like a picture to me and show me what it looks like. I love this idea. All right, resolution number three Collaborate on some projects with your kids. So imagine this a moment of pure creative joy as you and your kids just dive into some sort of escapade of some sort of art and together that's the keyword you do it together. Collaborative projects are. They're not just about making art. Okay, they're about building memories. Sometimes it gets frustrating if you have little ones and you're like no, do this, you're making a mess, and you're like those memories are not happy, but are they not happy? Are they not happy or are they happy? When you're done and you clean up, you're like you know that was fun, that was actually really fun doing it with them, and you're instilling core memories in your children. You are planting those seeds of creativity at that time that they're also spilling paint water everywhere. The real magic of these projects lies in the shared experience. So a canvas turning into a playground where ideas just dance, the colors mingle and you create a masterpiece of all of this shared creativity. So you can do crafting, painting, write a story, record a family podcast. I wrote that down. It was like is this a thing that people could do? Because it popped into my head and maybe they could record a family podcast for fun or like a recording. You can just, you know, get your voice memos up on your phone and then just come back and listen to everything everyone had to say Sounds cute. What I'm saying is the possibilities are endless. Once you put all your heads together and come up with some things, you'll be surprised at all the fun you can do. By doing this, you're going to create an environment where your kids' voices can be heard and also their imaginations can just totally flourish. It's like an easygoing introduction to the world of just self-expression. So each stroke of a brush, word on a page, any of that becomes like an affirmation to their unique perspective. It's important, that's important, you guys, and in these moments you're not just the teacher or the parent, you're like a fellow learner. Alongside your children, you can discover new facets of their personalities and just witness this unfiltered beauty of all the ideas taking shape and seeing their creative freedom come out too. These projects are also a powerful bonding agent. It'll strengthen all the ties that just bind your family together. Already, as you dive into these journeys, you're not just like crafting art, you're weaving these connections with your kids. Oh, and your husband too. Does your husband paint? Make him paint, make him paint. So start a project with your kids, with your family. Make some new memories and if it's like a voice memo, if it's a painting, if you make a short story, a photography, go take photos together, make a photo book, whatever it is, make something, make a project together, even if it's just one this year, try it out. Try it out and see what happens from there. Resolution number four daily creative rituals. So daily creative rituals are like the brush strokes of paint on our artistic journey. That's very clever, isn't it? I think it is too Okay. It's not just the fancy strokes, they're the rhythmic pulse that keeps us alive. That was pretty good too, right, I'm getting pretty good at the script writing, aren't I? Okay, no, really. So, whether it's like a quick journal session, a doodle, short bursts of writing, these rituals that you create make a sacred space where you can connect with your artistic self. Every day, no matter when it is, you have something that you can just find yourself, focus, sit down. It could be five minutes, you guys. It could be three minutes. It could be a one minute morning journal. Okay, put my phone down. I do much better when I just talk. That's more me, instead of trying to do these notes because you guys, this all comes from my heart anyway. Okay, so a one minute journal. I said, right, when you think about writing, let's go to writing. When you think about writing, if you have a word count like nano-rimo, if you have a 50,000 word count, it can seem overwhelming. So you try to hit X amount of words a day. Okay, if I just hit what? 16, I forget what the exact one is. If I hit this every day, then at the end of 30 days I'm gonna have 50,000 words. What happens after a week when you didn't hit that word count every day, and you see the big number and you see what you've done and you think, boy, I'm behind. When you get behind enough, you quit. Not everyone, no, not everyone me. Yeah, yeah, I do. Sometimes I feel like I'm real behind and I'm like, well, you know, we'll just try again next year, let's not try again next. Well, yeah, let's try again next year, of course, but I mean, let's finish it out. But let's finish it out in our own way. Instead of having a word count this is just my opinion, do you? Instead of having a word count, what if we just do X amount of minutes a day. This is not just, like you know, rhymo, this is just a daily ritual that we're creating. So if you want to write every day, instead of saying I'm gonna write a thousand words today, 5,000 words a day, what if you think I'm just gonna write for 15 minutes today, if that's all you have, that's all you have, let's do 15 minutes, but let's make sure we do it every day. If you try to write 5,000 words every day, you're probably not going to, especially if you have little kids and your kids aren't in school or you're just busy. If you work full time, whatever it is, you're probably not gonna hit that and you're probably gonna feel real down on yourself because you didn't. But in all this chaos, if you just take 15 minutes sometimes, if you make it a ritual of morning or night or a lunch break or 2.30 in the pickup line, whenever it is, do that. It's doable and then you'll, okay, you'll start doing it, and then, after a month or two months, you keep doing it. It's just gonna become part of your lifestyle. You're not even gonna think about it anymore. You're not gonna think about hitting that certain word count that you wish you could do every day, and you know what. You might even be exceeding that word count by those x amount of minutes or hours, whatever it is you use to write. You really could, by just making sure you have this amount of time every day, you might even write more than if you tried to hit a word count. A couple of suggestions. If you're like I don't know, I don't write or I don't paint, if you just want to get into a ritual of some sort, wake up, have your coffee before your kids wake up, just try it. Just try it. I love to sleep and if you tell me I can sleep until noon, I'm gonna sleep until noon. I can't because I have kids, but if you would, let me, absolutely. But if I sleep enough at night and it's five, I'll get up at five before my kids, because I feel good and I love those quiet moments. So just give it a try. But wake up, have your coffee, grab a journal. No matter what your craft is, journaling is for everybody. I'm gonna make a shirt that says journaling is for everybody. My friend Carrie first turned me on to journaling. Thank you, carrie, I don't. I could never go back now. So get your coffee, sit down, put your feet up in the recliner and just write how you feel in the morning. It doesn't have to be a to-do list. It could be a to-do list, it doesn't have to be. It can just be like good morning journal, good morning God, anything. Just kind of. Get some words out, get your feelings out. Treat it like a breath of fresh air to start your day, no matter what you're doing. Give it a go. If you can start tomorrow, start tomorrow, wake up a little bit early, have your coffee. If you don't have coffee, what are you doing with your life? Have your coffee. No, I'm just kidding. If you don't, if you don't have coffee, get your tea, dr Pepper, whatever you have in the morning. Sit down and give yourself a few minutes. Just write See what comes out. See what comes out. Do it every day for a month. I think you'll really enjoy it and I think you're going to stick with it. Number five experiment with a new medium. Okay, picture this You're standing on the brink of your creative comfort zone. You just want to dive head first into some uncharted territory. That's the kind of excitement experimenting with a new medium brings. It's an adventure. That's really just more about art. It's a total game changer and it just gives you a fresh air into your soul, breaking away from familiar and embracing the unknown. Liberating, right, scary, but liberating. Let's give it a go, let's try something new. You don't have to love it, let's just try it. This isn't even something that we have to stick with. Like if you buy a bunch of classes for pottery, you might want to stick with it because that can get expensive, but it's not something you'd have to stick with. It could be Okay. Let me just think of something off the top of my head. Sometimes I'm not good under pressure. This was a bad idea. No, let's think of fencing. Fencing is so random, but I always wanted to do fencing Getting that little wide out, fit and put the shield, the mesh shield, over your face and you just pretend that you are in a Hallmark movie that has somebody that fences. It seems fun. Okay, that's not necessarily a medium, kind of is. Let's think of it as a new medium in life, in my just daily life. That is something completely out of my comfort zone. One for that tight, wide outfit and two because I'm holding a sword. Is it a sword? I don't know exactly what it's called, but it would get me out of my comfort zone. It would probably be fun. Maybe it wouldn't be fun, but it would get me out of my comfort zone and get me to try new things Tonight. That reminds me of tonight. I've been trying for so long to learn how to French braid. I just want to French braid my daughter's hair. I've literally been trying for like years but I finally paid off tonight because I started French braiding. She took a bath, her hair was wet, it looked really good. It sounds silly, but, like, always keep learning, always keep wanting to learn new things, even in our old ages of 30s, 40s. Things like let's French braid. My friends learned this when they were 14. I don't know. Also at 36. No, I'm 35. Oh, my goodness, at 35, I'm going to learn how to French braid my hair. So that's a little new medium for my fingers for my daughter's hair at night. You know what I'm saying. It doesn't have to be like well, I paint with acrylic, so now I'm going to paint with oil. No, just try something new. In fact, I'm just going to re say I mean, retitle this one as try something new. You can't fail at this one. As long as you just try something, you do it check, you kept the resolution and maybe you found a new hobby. I love this next one. Number six celebrate small wins. Yes, you can keep this resolution. You can celebrate small wins in your life. Creating a space for celebration within your creative process is more than just like a momentary feel good thing. Pop the confetti. You know it's a deliberate act that really feeds that artistic soul, that joy you get from acknowledging your small wins. It's not a fleeting thing. It becomes a constant source of inspiration, just giving that touch of positivity and motivation to your creative space. These celebrations can be that fuel that powers you forward in everything that you do, turning that uphill climb towards all those goals to a nice little hike. Just one small victory at a time. Speaking of confetti, I have a little confetti shooter that I'm saving for just some sort of celebration. I mean, I celebrate everything. I wake up in the morning and I'm like, oh, my complexion looks good on my right forehead above my eyebrow. I'm going to go get Starbucks. You know what I mean. So I am naturally one of those ooh, I deserve a treat every day kind of person, but I find myself not doing that often in my writing or art stuff, so that's something that I want to do too. I want to start celebrating more small wins. Okay, let's think of it this way If you put out a query letter and you get a rejection, celebrate that rejection. You know how many agents in publishing companies do not respond. You get a response, let's celebrate it. Does it sound silly to you? It's not silly. Celebrate all these small rejections, because if you celebrate that rejection letter of someone actually acknowledged you enough to reply back when you get that deal, that acceptance, that email, that's like hey, we loved your book, we loved your art, you're going to be in this show, I want you at Penguin Random House. Imagine the celebration you're going to do then. So let's think of some more small wins. What's a small win? It could be wrapping up a tricky paragraph when you're writing, just stumbling upon a fresh, new idea, nailing a new technique. You know, like an impasto, impasto, painting man. That's hard, that can be hard. It seems like it wouldn't be, but it could be. So if you have some sort of like painting technique and you nail that new way of doing whatever you're going to do, celebrate it, celebrate it. Whether the wins are big or small, each one stands as a testament to your resilience and your dedication to your craft and what you're creating in this world. Resolution number seven this one you will stick with, because I'm telling you you have to stick with this one Create a creative accountability group. Your creative journey isn't this solo expedition, but it's really like this collective voyage with all the other moms around you. And right at the heart of this concept is something that's really game changing creative accountability. It's like this dynamic space where the echoes of all these shared dreams, progress reports and just creative challenges bounce off of all these like-minded individuals. Trust me, the bonds are forged within these groups. They're like turbo charged engines just propelling us towards all of our artisticals. Think of your creative accountability group as like a support squad, a bunch of other creators who aren't just companions on your journey. They're like your confidants, just sounding boards, allies who get what you're going through. Moms will understand that struggle bus you're just on. Sometimes the magic happens in the exchange of ideas, collaborations, celebrations of victories, all the brainstorming you do together. By sharing your aspirations, you're not only articulating your goals, but you can tap into this goldmine of insights and perspectives from people that have walked in similar paths as you. Your progress becomes a shared triumph. Your challenges well, they turn into this communal puzzle just waiting to be solved together. If you connect with writers, artists, musicians, anyone from various creative realms, then you are also making this melting pot of ideas, this symphony of creativity. Each member can contribute. It's just something unique and it just makes this like harmonious composition and just goes beyond everyone's individual abilities and just makes this cohesive sound. It's not a sound, but my mind's like sound. It's this wonderful creative sound. If you don't know where to begin or you need some help on finding that right group for you, I have so many resources for you. I can help you find that place to go, those people to meet online, that person that is like exactly like you. Reach out to me, send me an email, send me a message on Facebook or Instagram and I will help you. Please, I would absolutely, completely, totally love to help you find an accountability group. Okay, I am going to add one more, because I think this one kind of can be important too. You know how people do a digital detox at the start of the year and that really, really works for some people and that's great, but a lot of times, your digital footstep can boost your creativity. I say this gently. My daughter would say it gently, mommy, say it gently. I say it gently because you need to detox from everything. Sometimes I'll put my phone down, I'm not going to do anything on Instagram today, but just because everybody else is doing something doesn't mean you have to. If you want to hit 2024 hard and say I'm going to make all this stuff to put online. I'm really going to try to connect with fellow creatives online. This is going to be the time of year where I just boost my not just engagement, but actual engagement, talking to people, not put out content. Let's make all this content and put it out. Okay, that'd be great. Batch it up at the beginning of the month, but don't think, just because everyone's taking that digital detox, that you have to too, because you get so much inspiration. So much inspiration, community and help from your fellow writers, artists, whoever it is online, so food for thought. All right, you guys. That's it. That's all I have for you. Did you enjoy it? I hoped you liked these because I think what I said is totally doable and something that you can keep throughout the year, in years to come. Remember this is your year for creative fulfillment, and I am right here, along with you guys. I'm doing the same thing. I can't wait for what 2024 holds for the podcast, too. I really want to ramp up, bringing you guys more resources, help community, and I'm just so excited. I am so excited for 2024 and my personal life and for the podcast. I do this for you guys, so I really hope you're enjoying it. Happy New Year. Let's do this.