By Colleen Gallion
Sometime around Halloween, I step onto a roller coaster and feel the harness drop down over my chest. As I pass out candy to the neighborhood kids, I feel the “click click click” beneath my feet as the ride gains altitude and momentum. I try to take deep breaths and relax as the tension builds. The coaster hits its zenith that third week of November and then, ZOOM!!! I’m laughing, crying, screaming, and white knuckling my way through to December 26th. Just when I think I can catch my breath, the calendar has the audacity to put a final loopity loop on December 31st.
I’m a New Year’s Eve Grinch. The reasons are many, but at its core, it’s because I experience it as an indictment of everything I didn’t accomplish during the year. My inner critic uses New Year’s Eve as its opportunity to roll out the past year’s greatest hits. “And coming in at #5 again…Colleen’s cluttered closet! This one makes it into the top 10 again this year….”
My never-ending list of shortcomings, unmet goals, and incomplete projects threatens to bury me in an avalanche like those poor Whos down in Whoville! Can this year be different for you and for me? Can our hearts and our minds increase sizes, times three? (I’ll stop. I promise.)
Whether you’re a Grinch, a Scrooge, or just facing some holiday blues, here are some tools to help shift your mindset and get 2026 started on the right foot.
If what you want feels a million miles away, begin at the end
When I do this exercise with clients, I call it the “What happened before that?” game. I worked with a musician who felt trapped in his day job. His dreams of making a living as a musician felt entirely out of reach, and he felt pretty hopeless. I invited him to play a game with me. (Fun fact: When we are in a state of play, both hemispheres of our brain light up. Being in a state of play is the best way to actually get real work done.)
“I’m watching the movie of your life as a world-famous musician,” I said. “We’re at the scene that shows the world that you have arrived. What am I seeing?”
He laughed and said, “I’m on stage with my band at the Hollywood Bowl playing for a sold-out crowd.”
“Great,” I replied. “What happened before you got the Hollywood Bowl gig?” We then proceeded to reverse-engineer a map that connected the dots between where he was that day and performing at the Hollywood Bowl. By starting with the ideal outcome and imagining the step that came before, he could see that it was possible.
If you’ve been struggling with the same issue “forever,” measure backwards
One of the quirks of having ADHD is that my sense of time is fickle. If I want to do something, it will “just take a minute.” If I don’t want to do something, I will avoid it because “it will take forever.” As you can imagine, this leads to all sorts of sitcom-style shenanigans in my life.
Sometimes I can laugh at myself, while sometimes I feel utterly defeated. It was in one of these moments of defeat that a friend told me I needed to measure backwards — to take an inventory of all the systems I’ve put in place over the years that have improved my time management. Am I perfect? Heaven’s no! Has there been a dramatic improvement? Yes, there has.
I can say with confidence that I will be at home, in my pajamas, on New Year’s Eve. However, the only Grinch will be the one on TV. As I work on a crochet project with my weiner dogs on my lap, I will live into my New Year’s intention of practicing self-compassion and gratitude. And when I lose my way, I can take stock of how far I’ve come and re-imagine the path based on how I want the story to end. And so can you.
Wishing you all a safe and blessed holiday season and a Grinchless New Year!
COLLEEN GALLION is an ICF-certified professional coach whose passion is supporting entrepreneurs and founders in building healthy and sustainable teams. For more information, visit www.gallioncoaching.com.
