I’m constantly learning and developing. I grow - sometimes up, lately old.
This deep hunger for knowledge has been with me for as long as I can remember. Thanks to a solid five years of psychoanalytic therapy, I can remember quite far back. My curiosity was insatiable, so much so that, at four years old, I pestered my parents to teach me to read, endlessly asking what those funny symbols meant and my default set question was “why”?
This led me to explore my entire life, and through a series of fortunate events and an incredibly developed sense of sensibility to all things human, I made the immutable decision to study psychology at the age of 15. I needed to understand why. Why do people function the way they do?
Feeding off of everything my predecessors laid before me, while I was attaining my master's in clinical psychology, another, more developed set of questions pushed me to become an immigrant in the Netherlands.
My palette had developed a curiosity for understanding human performance and excellence, and my default questionnaire evolved to accommodate the "what" and the "how" alongside the why.
I’ve always been reflective - think of me as that spinning top in Inception, constantly evaluating and reevaluating both my own life and those of my clients. It’s what makes me good at my job, it’s what inspired my career choice, and it’s what I see myself doing indefinitely.
Since my teenage years, I’ve had a habit of looping through three core questions: "why am I doing what I’m doing", "what do I really want"? and "how can I make it happen"? I’d take reflective pauses at arbitrary and then key moments - birthdays, end-of-year reflections, sometimes just for fun - and take a spin through this loop with pen and paper in hand. In the early days, these habits seemed random. But as I tinkered and obsessed over them, they solidified into real practices, birthing my personal ritual of reflection.
These reflections, looping through why, what and how eventually became more than just a personal habit - they evolved into a structured approach I now teach to others who, like me, want to live more intentionally. And it’s this reflective practice that inspired my Design Your Best Year Yet workshop series, created to make planning accessible and grounded. I’ll circle back to that in a bit.
The formal concepts of goal setting and resolutions came into my life past the age of 25, and so I was surprised to learn that my spinning on a loop is a habit that people had developed and have tried to keep perfecting for years.
A new era began for me - one in which I was crushed that yet again I didn’t invent anything - hah - and one in which I began experimenting with what was already created before me.
I tried out every single strategy I could get my hands on in regards to planning and since my spinning orbit is shorter than the span of an entire year, I was quite efficient in covering the most popular techniques for goal setting for more than a decade.
Couple my experimenting loopy nature with the data my clients have been consistently feeding me about their own habits and reasoning, and here are some interesting things I discovered. Most people dislike planning with a passion. And by this, I mean they hate it. The embodiment of pressure in the chest and stomach, the clenching of the jaws and buttocks make the very thought of this process a living nightmare people tell their therapist about. Trust me, I’m a psychologist, I’ve heard it all before.
My clinical inclination helps me not want to avert my eyes when faced with this living nightmare, but steadily and calmly pick up the scalpel of why, and start analyzing. Why do people actually hate planning?
Three reasons: they hate the feeling of being caged in, they dread being confronted with their unrealistic expectations, and they can’t make decisions without feeling they’re going through the seven circles of hell. Two out of three of these, stem from perfectionism by the way, so no matter how hard you try, you’ll fail anyway - because perfectionism is a setup for failure, not success. Yes, you may quote me on this.
My entrepreneurial mindset is very solution-oriented and when you couple this with a genuine interest in alleviating human suffering - I began conceptualizing solutions for this particular conundrum of the planning one feels compelled to engage in at the end of a year.
I’ve learned that the pressure to make the perfect decision is a blockage, that the habit of reflecting on the past is for some people uncomfortable because they don’t have a structure for it and it becomes overwhelming, and I also learned that projecting themselves into the future can be a visit into dreamland - Stephen King edition.
For most people, imagination unguided and dreaming beyond it is simply not possible. They’re either too anchored in critical thinking or they spin off without holding a foot in reality and this is what sets up people to abandon 80% of their resolutions by the end of January, reinforcing the self-loathing loop they’re working all year long to get out of in therapy.
Rooted in superstition and magical thinking, we fail at setting up resolutions because most of us didn’t get handed the comprehensive guide to resolution setting, and we’ve not yet written the New Year’s resolutions manual for Dummies - so yet another task for this ambitious psychologist.
Could I give people a helping hand while they’re crossing the arbitrary finish line from one year into another?
I’m certainly not up to the grandiose task of writing a book about it - yet, thank you Carol Dweck - but I have worked for the past couple of years in creating a system that works for me and a few fortunate people from my closest of circles.
And since I really wanna hear about other issues than this one from the people I work with, I decided to set up the Design Your Best Year Yet workshops series. Aiming that once and for all, I would empower my clients to set themselves up for the joy of planning and help them do it in a grounded and strategic way, that would align them for steady action.
From not knowing what to focus on when reflecting on the year that’s about to end, to not knowing how to decide on what to focus on in the year to come, but also circling back to review this plan a little bit after the enthusiasm of the symbolic fresh start of a blank calendar page has worn off - this workshop series touches upon the habit of resolution setting threefold.
Reflect, Reset, Refine - rolling off the tongue - my mapped-out strategy for all things planning is a confident attempt at serving a multi-layered dish to overthinkers, high-achievers, relentless explorers of the mind and habit library, but also to the dreamers, the caretakers, the hopeless romantics that still want to lay pen to paper and write their resolutions with stardust and glitter.
The first phase, Reflect, is all about looking back - honestly and without judgment. It’s a bit like auditing your life, except with compassion and curiosity. In the workshop, I will guide you towards creating a foundation for realistic planning.
Next comes Reset. This is where you learn to let go of the unrealistic expectations that have held you back. We redefine goals, adjust priorities, and set an intention for the coming year that aligns with your real desires and circumstances - not some Instagram-perfect version of them. Think of Reset as pressing a mental ‘refresh’ button, freeing you from the pressures of perfectionism.
Finally, there’s Refine. Planning doesn’t end with making wishes and setting goals; it’s a continual process. Refine is about creating check-ins and adjustments to keep your momentum going all year long, so you’re never stuck in a rigid plan. This stage ensures that your plans evolve with you, allowing you to stay inspired and aligned.
In fact, I aim to share experience, skill and knowledge with people aiming to use these strategies both for their personal life and for that of their business. Because for the entrepreneurs I know, their business is such an integral part of their lives, we always plan everything with two calendars at a time.
So I invite you to do a simple math exercise - how much will it cost you to not make this decision right now?
Design Your Best Year Yet isn’t just another workshop series - it’s an investment in you feeling more aligned, purposeful, and prepared. Let's start breaking the cycle of abandoned resolutions and crushed dreams. Join us if you’re ready to make this year different!