Renee
Every January, the year feels enormous.
Twelve whole months. A fresh calendar. Plenty of time for the things we want to do, the places we want to go, the projects we want to finish, and all those goals that somehow seem completely reasonable when 365 days sit in front of us.
Although, for me, January comes with a bit of an asterisk.
By the time the new year begins, we're in full launch mode for our February Soulful Leadership Experience. While everyone else is talking about easing into January, setting intentions, and starting fresh, I'm looking at speaker schedules, event details, registrations, emails, hotel rooms, and a countdown that suddenly feels very short.
So somehow the year feels enormous while the first two months feel like they're moving at warp speed.
Then Soulful Leadership Experience happens, we come home, catch our breath, and I swear I look up five minutes later and it's October.
Suddenly Halloween is around the corner, Thanksgiving is practically five minutes later, the holidays are staring us down, and we're already putting things on the calendar for 2027.
Seriously, what happened to the year?
There's something about October that makes me very aware of everything I thought would have happened by now. I'm a planner, so of course there were plans. Things I wanted to accomplish personally, things we wanted to do in the business, places we wanted to go, and ideas that seemed completely doable when January was staring back at me from a mostly empty calendar.
Now I can see the end of the year from here, and my natural instinct is to look at what's still on the list.
Mark
My instinct is a little different.
I look at what we thought this year was going to be in January and think, of course, it changed. We made those plans before we knew what the year would actually bring.
Some things worked. Some didn't. Opportunities showed up that we couldn't have planned for. Other things became less important. Some things we thought would take a few weeks took months, and some came together faster than we expected.
That's life, and that's definitely entrepreneurship.
A plan can give you direction, but it can't possibly account for everything you're going to learn along the way.
Renee
I know this.
That doesn't necessarily stop me from looking at an unfinished item on a list and thinking, "But we said we were going to do that."
Part of me has always associated following through with doing what I said I was going to do. If I committed to something in January, shouldn't I still be committed to it in October?
Except I'm starting to think that's not always the right question.
This is also the time of year when “finish strong” starts showing up everywhere. There are roughly 90 days left! It's Q4! Make it count!
Apparently, we're all supposed to spend the next three months sprinting toward December 31 with a checklist in one hand and a pumpkin spice latte in the other.
But what if, instead of asking “What do I still need to accomplish before the end of the year?” we asked something else?
Do I still want everything I said I wanted in January?
Mark
That's a very different question.
Because changing direction isn't necessarily the same thing as giving up.
Sometimes you stop because something gets hard. But sometimes you change course because you've learned something you couldn't have known when you made the original plan.
I think there's a temptation, especially in business, to measure ourselves against decisions an earlier version of ourselves made. We set the goal, announce the plan, put something on the calendar, and then feel obligated to keep pursuing it because we don't want changing our minds to look like failure.
But growth should change some of our decisions.
If we know more in October than we knew in January, shouldn't some of our plans look different too?
Renee
Sometimes we keep chasing an old goal simply because the version of us who wrote it down wanted it.
Meanwhile, the version of us standing here in October has lived another nine months.
We've learned things. We've changed our minds. We've discovered things we didn't know we wanted. We've had things happen that we never could have planned for.
And some things that felt incredibly important in January simply aren't that important anymore.
That doesn't mean I'm throwing away the rest of the year and declaring October through December one long holiday break. Although I would like to formally put that option on the table.
I still have things I absolutely want to accomplish before 2026 ends. I'm excited about projects, experiences we're looking forward to, and things that still matter a lot to me.
I just don't want to spend the final months of the year frantically trying to prove I used it well.
Mark
Maybe that's another way to think about “finishing strong.”
It doesn't necessarily mean doing more.
It might mean getting more intentional about what gets your attention with the time you have left.
There are things worth finishing. Some things are worth beginning even though the calendar says October. And there are probably a few things that have been following us around all year that we're allowed to finally admit we don't want anymore.
There's freedom in recognizing the difference.
Renee
Especially that last category.
There is something wonderfully satisfying about crossing something off a list because you completed it.
I'm discovering there can also be something pretty satisfying about crossing it off because you've finally decided you're not going to do it.
Done. Just in a completely different way.
Mark & Renee
January gives us a blank page and asks what we want to create.
October gives us something different. We have most of a year of actual life behind us. We know things now that we couldn't have known when we made those original plans.
So maybe October doesn't have to be a countdown or a mad dash toward December 31.
Maybe it's a chance to look at what's still in front of us and decide what genuinely matters now. What deserves our energy. What we're excited to carry forward. And what we're finally willing to leave behind.
The rest of the year may suddenly feel very short.
But there's still plenty of time for what matters.