[00:00:00] Welcome. I'm Samantha Foster, and this is Venus Mastermind. A space for honest reflection, pattern breaking and sovereign thinking. I'm not recording this to perform or to teach in a formal way. This is a shared reflection, a place to think out loud. To name what's been living in me and to speak honestly about what I'm seeing and integrating.
There's no agenda here beyond truth and presence. If something here resonates, take what's yours and leave the rest.
On my way to physical therapy this last week, something a client said, stayed with me. She told me she didn't want to do a vision board this year. She didn't want to gather, cut pictures or set intentions.
Why? Because it never happens, anyway. The vision board she made last year is just a reminder of what she didn't accomplish. Another list of things [00:01:00] that didn't come true. It didn't feel inspiring. It felt like failure, and that made me realize something. Most people already know their January goals won't stick.
They already know their New Year's resolutions aren't going to last, and yet we set them anyway. Even when it doesn't feel good. Even when our bodies already know better. Even when we know we're not going to suddenly become someone who loves the gym five days a week for the rest of the year. We do it because it's expected of us by society, by commercials, by social media, by our families and communities, and it doesn't just set us up for failure.
It sets us up to be people pleasers we perform hope, we perform motivation, we perform growth, not because it's true, [00:02:00] but because it's expected. And I thought maybe this would be a good year to stop doing that. To stop pleasing. To stop performing. Maybe this year we can take that off the list altogether.
So I started asking myself, why are we so attached to New Year's resolutions? Why do we keep doing something that hurts us? And what if this year we simply didn't? What if this year we didn't make a New Year's resolution? Didn't create a to-do list, didn't build a vision board, we already know we won't live.
What if I can offer you permission just for this year to set it all down, to not do a New Year's resolution at all?
January isn't a starting line, but we've been taught that it is. We're [00:03:00] trying to grow to plant seeds in the dead of winter. January is a month that belongs to a season of hibernation. Nature is dormant. Nothing is rushing to become anything during this time.
Yet, we're setting New Year's resolutions animals are resting, they're hibernating, they're conserving energy, and so should we be.
That's what we're meant to be doing. Winter is not a season to push. It's a season of reflection, and yet we pressure ourselves to launch, to fix, to change, to sprint. Gyms, fill up diet start, businesses, launch all at once, and it creates anxiety, frustration, heaviness, and we do this every single year.
This is why January feels heavy instead of hopeful. We come out of the holiday season, a season of [00:04:00] sharing, generosity, and connection, and instead of letting that hope soften into reflection, January becomes a let down.
Nothing is wrong with you, nothing is wrong with us. We're being asked to do spring work in winter. Seeds don't grow in frozen ground. This is a time for reflection, not forcing change, not setting goals, not sprinting forward. Winter is for looking in the mirror, examining our lives, what worked last year, what didn't.
It's not a season for running forward.
Our goals, assume a self that hasn't been examined, and that's why January creates an endless loop of failure. Goals are hard to achieve because most of them aren't actually ours. Many goals are set according to society's expectations, not personal identity, losing [00:05:00] weight. Getting tan, making more money leveling up in some way, shape or form.
These goals are sold to us as happiness, worth and success, but they're not our goals. They don't align with our identity because we've never been given the space to actually examine who we are. So. When we don't achieve them, we're told we failed, but we didn't. We rarely stop to ask, what is the goal actually going to do for my life?
How will it change my day to day experience? Will it truly make me feel more alive, peaceful, and fulfilled? Those are important questions and they require stillness.
When we set goals, we don't stop to examine who we are. We don't reflect on what worked last year or what didn't. And more importantly, we don't ask why it didn't work. [00:06:00] We don't ask why we feel anxious, why we feel pressured, why we feel behind. Society has trained us not to ask why. Okay. Just to assume we failed and need to do more, push harder and try again, and that creates an endless loop of failure.
Winter is meant for self-reflection, but instead we fill it with pressure. Don't rest, don't think, don't reflect. Just go, go. Go. There's no space for self-examination, no space to ask if the goal even fits, and most of the time it doesn't because the goal was borrowed from commercials, from culture, from community, from family.
It was designed to fulfill someone else's version of happiness, not yours. So it's not surprising when those goals fizzle [00:07:00] out. What's left is that familiar feeling. I failed again, I just can't do it, but that's not the truth. We're planting seeds. Our identity doesn't want, we're planting someone else's seeds in our own garden.
It really is that simple.
You see, goals are like seeds. Seeds don't grow in frozen ground, but they also don't grow in a garden, in a climate, in a atmosphere that don't belong to you. They don't grow in the wrong season, and they don't grow if they don't belong to the soil.
You can't grow a mango or a banana in the state of Washington or New York. Why? Because they're tropical fruits. The soil doesn't support them. The climate doesn't support them, the atmosphere doesn't support them. That garden simply won't allow that seed to come into fruition [00:08:00] or even begin to grow, and that's our goals.
Our goals are seeds and many of the seeds we're trying to plant don't belong in the garden we're in. We're planting tropical fruit in a northern climate or vice versa. A lot of our goals and visions have been inherited from our families, from society, from expectations that were never actually ours.
They don't align with our identity. Before we plant anything new, we need a season to prepare the soil to learn what kind of garden do I even have? What kind of seeds actually grow here
Because we are the garden, we are the soil. And right now many of us are walking around as unprepared soil. Gardens full of weeds, frozen ground, with no real capacity to grow [00:09:00] anything new. Not because we're broken, but because so much has been pushed onto us that doesn't belong. Before anything can grow, we need to understand the soil we're working with.
That's where this season begins.
Our borrowed goals and our borrowed identities come from systems that don't actually know us from corporations. From advertisers, from industries that have never met you and never will. They don't know your identity. They don't know what brings you peace. They don't know what makes you feel alive, and yet they tell you if you buy this, if you subscribe to this, if you do this, you'll finally feel good.
But that story doesn't align with who you are because it was never about you. It's their vision, their [00:10:00] dream, their goal. Their goal is for you to buy
when you buy their product. That's what fulfills them. That's what makes them feel successful. They even sell you an identity. Buy this body, buy this brand, buy this car, buy this lifestyle, wear it, become it. But that identity isn't yours. It was never created with you in mind. And yet we adopt those beliefs.
We call them our goals, but they don't benefit us. They benefit the system that sold them. That's not alignment, that's conditioning. And until we question that, we keep chasing dreams that were never ours to begin with, even gyms sell an assumed identity. You need a membership. But are you even a gym [00:11:00] person?
Does that environment make you feel alive? Does it energize you? Does it feel natural to you? For some people, yes, absolutely, but for many people it doesn't. And so people pay for subscriptions they never use, not because they're lazy, not because they lack a discipline. But because the identity doesn't fit, so every year we keep setting New Year's goals based on assumed identity.
Identity we borrowed. Identity society handed us. Identity that we never examined.
When we continue to live in misalignment, it's often not because we're lazy or unmotivated, it's because we're living inside an identity that was never truly ours.
As long as we keep setting goals adopted from others , we quietly sabotage real fulfillment [00:12:00] for ourselves. And we repeat the cycle every January. We push, we plan, we promise change, even though it feels heavy in our bodies for a reason. Winter was never meant for constant forward motion. It's meant for rest, reflection, stillness, peace is allowed.
Being still is allowed. But instead, society keeps pushing borrowed identities. Identities built on productivity, performance, and external validation. They promise fulfillment, but they never actually deliver it, and the body knows this long before the mind is willing to admit it.
When we continue to live in misalignment. When we live someone else's identity, someone else's goals, someone else's vision, the body breaks [00:13:00] down. We experience inflammation, fatigue, anxiety, depression, physical illness. We're tired, we're depleted, we're discouraged, and this isn't weakness. This is the body saying. This isn't me.
This is what people mean when they talk about coming out of the matrix. Not rebelling against society, but recognizing this isn't me and beginning to say no. It's about stopping the adoption of beliefs that aren't yours, questioning what you've been handed. Choosing what actually fits you.
As a society. We hurt ourselves when we don't question this, when we push people to become something they're not, and we need to take responsibility for that.
So here's a question worth sitting with. Who in your life are you [00:14:00] pushing to become something to chase a goal? That doesn't actually align with them. And is it possible that it's your goal, your vision being projected outward?
This work always comes back to self examination. What are we doing and why? We need to understand something important.
If we don't know who we are, how can a goal ever truly align or become achievable? Alignment doesn't come from achievement. Achievement comes from alignment. It comes from an alignment of identity. What we really want isn't more money. It isn't losing another 10 pounds. It isn't finding the perfect partner.
It isn't becoming an entrepreneur just to say we are. What we really want is freedom. Freedom to be ourselves, freedom from the prison [00:15:00] of to-do lists, from the pressure of goal setting, from the cycle of New Year's resolutions so we can relax, so we can exhale just like nature does every single year. And when we're aligned with our identity, with who we truly are, that's where the magic happens.
So before we come into alignment, before we can worry about what is aligned, we're allowed to pause, just like nature does during the season. Nature is resting, sleeping. Conserving energy and we're allowed to do the same. We're allowed to be still, especially in winter, and this season of pause doesn't have to last just three or four months.
It can last all year, especially if this is new for you, especially if this is your first [00:16:00] time doing this kind of work. This can also become a seasonal practice. Something you return to every winter. It's a season to throw away the to-do lists, the goals, the vision boards, because a lot of those tools are anxiety driven, survival mechanisms, not truth.
Instead, make it a season to ask what worked last year? What didn't? What brought aliveness? What brought anxiety or depression? And why? Why didn't it work? Why didn't it feel good? Why didn't it feel like you? This is the beginning of subtraction because our lives and our bodies have limited capacity.
Think of your life like a bucket. Your bucket can only hold so much, and when you fill it with other people's visions, other people's [00:17:00] expectations, society's goals, family pressure, opinions, and obligations, there's no room left for you. This bucket becomes heavy burdened. Those borrowed expectations are like rocks, sand, water.
They're heavy, but the goals and visions that actually align with your identity, they're like popcorn. They're light, they smell good. They're easy to carry. Before you can add the popcorn, you have to empty the bucket. You have to remove the rocks, the sand, the water, because many identities, beliefs, and patterns don't serve you.
They serve someone else. Subtraction has to come before creation. So what happens when you start emptying the bucket? Your system begins to return to its natural baseline, a [00:18:00] neutral state, not extreme highs, not extreme lows.
You are no longer triggered by commercials, by urgency. By go, go, go by. You must do this. When you see the same ad from a neutral state, it just doesn't land. It doesn't hook you. You don't feel pressure to buy the bag.
Join the gym. Chase The next thing, and that's because we don't make good decisions from extremes, not from fear, not from adrenaline, not even from what feels like drunk happiness. We make good decisions from neutrality.
Neutral doesn't mean numb. Neutral means regulated, clear, grounded. It's where discernment lives. Society trains us to be triggered because triggered people are easier to move. Fear and excitement are tools [00:19:00] of control. When we're triggered. we"re movable persuadable, but not in our best interest. Neutrality removes the hooks.
Ads stop working, stories become irrelevant. Old identities lose their grip. Even your past stories begin to fall away. And that's when space opens. That's when choice returns. So before planting new seeds this year, let's pull the weeds. Let's loosen the soil and let's take time to understand the garden, to understand us who we are, what kind of garden we actually are.
Let's start taking away the rocks and the sand from the bucket. Empty the bucket. Pull out what doesn't belong till the soil. Not so we can rush to plant something new, but so we [00:20:00] can understand what actually grows here. What kind of seeds will grow in you?
What will feel alive when you nurture it, when you tend to it, when you give it your time and energy. We don't need to plant many seeds at once. No rushing, no five new goals. Sometimes not even one. Sometimes a whole year is spent just emptying, tilling, pulling out what doesn't belong, and that's okay.
There's no finish line here. There's no race. There can be a full season. Even a full year of nothing but removing, loosening, and making space so you can arrive at neutrality. Neutrality looks like this. No emotional highs, no emotional lows, no triggers pulling you [00:21:00] around. You wake up in the morning and pause.
And you don't feel much of anything. You feel neutral, maybe even bored. Your old stories feel irrelevant, and you realize you don't need to decide anything, today. You are not in a rush anymore. That's not regression, that's readiness because when you reach neutrality. You get to choose your values, your beliefs, your patterns, your identity.
That's when real alignment begins. And you may discover something surprising. You may realize you only want to grow one crop, one seed. That's it. And that gets to be enough, because this time you are choosing you, you are choosing aliveness.
You are choosing life on your own [00:22:00] terms. So maybe this January, it's okay not to perform. Not to set a goal. Not to create a to-do list. Maybe this year it's okay not to do anything. Maybe it's a season to reflect, to ask what no longer works and to start taking things out of the bucket to start pulling out the weeds.
Maybe it's not about the gym or losing weight or fixing yourself. Maybe it's about rest, stillness, being, not adding, not buying, not consuming, not performing. Just subtracting despite what ads, family, society, and social media tell you. You don't have to look a certain way, be a certain way, become anything.
Peace is allowed, [00:23:00] boredom is allowed, neutral is healthy, and that neutral state, that's where good decisions come from. And it's your turn. I'm going to pause here and let this land. If something in this resonated, you don't need to do anything with it. Just sit with it and notice what continues to unfold. Thank you for listening and thank you for being here with me. Happy New Year's.
