Feng Shui and Crowbars

I have been thinking a lot about the tension between acceptance and growth, and how we can honor who we are today while still making space for who we are becoming.

This essay started with a very ordinary moment: scrolling through my own goals from January and realizing June Valerie looked very different than the person who wrote those plans.

Instead of asking why I had “failed” to keep up, I wondered something different:

What if the goal was never to become someone else?

What if the goal was to learn how to care for the person already here?

I’m so glad you pulled up a chair.

In my spare time, I enjoy creating and selling Notion templates - naturally, this means I use a lot of Notion templates in my own life both personally and professionally. Last week, I caught myself scrolling back through all of my personal entries from 2026 and reflecting on goals I had set for myself in January.

January Valerie had color-coded plans and five workflows she was going to use every single day without fail forever.

April Valerie had skipped a few weeks.

June Valerie had written exactly four words in one weekly reflection:

“Still figuring it out.”

I laughed.

Every new year, we scour for planners and optimization hacks, download new software, delete archives from our hard drives, buy a gym membership or a new fitness wearable, or maybe even yes, create a Notion template.This is the year we will totally, most definitely, one hundred percent! become our most organized, efficient, productive and healthy selves with efficient workflows and exercise routines and diets and and and

Woof.

That’s a lot. No wonder by June I was down to four words and a figurative prayer.

Those ambitious plans slowly get tucked between ordinary rhythms of life:

Work.
Laundry.
Doctor’s appointments.
Dinner.
Drink enough water.
Walk 10,000 steps.
Show up for the people we love.
Try to be a good friend.
A good partner.
A good parent.
A good employee.
A good human.

Exhaustion.

(And, of course, schedule time for self-care!)

Then one day, almost without noticing when it happened, the dream we were so excited about becomes something we promise ourselves we’ll return to “when things settle down.” It’s the classic story of a New Year’s Resolution becoming a New Year’s Hope and Dream.

The problem isn’t that we want to improve in certain areas, the problem is that we expect to become a totally different person in like, a week.

Where did we learn that?

Where did we get the idea that we’d suddenly become 5 a.m. people with color-coded planners, perfectly optimized workflows, and meal-prepped refrigerators...

...when some of us don’t even own a planner?

Somewhere along the way, we started confusing growth with replacement.

Not a slightly different version of ourselves, no.
Not a gentler version.
Not a wiser version.
Not even a healthier version.

Someone else entirely.

Hopes and dreams are beautiful, but believing we must become a stranger to ourselves in order to achieve something? Maybe less so.

We very rarely sign our mortgage or lease, walk into our new space while the ink is drying, and think “Ah, yes, by next Tuesday this place is going to be entirely different.”

Homes become home a little at a time.

We repaint the walls or rearrange the furniture. Hang new pictures and pen the windows.

We rarely start with a wrecking ball.

I wonder if people are more like houses than we realize.

When we walk into a new space, we see so much potential it can often feel overwhelming. Where do we put the couch, hang the tv, what wall art goes here and what better suits the feng shui there? Does that dining table I bought off Wayfair even fit here?! (…It did not.)

So we start slow. We unpack one box and arrange our knick knacks and accent chair. Tomorrow, we do another. The day after that we go back and realize that the accent chair looks terrible in that corner and on it goes for a while - the new yard needs mowing, the guest room faucet does that annoying drip-drip thing so we gotta figure that out, and yet we still go to work, rest, play, and show up in other areas.

The making of home can be slow because it’s going to be there for a long time.

There is no emergency.

There is no deadline where the house has to be perfect before you are allowed to live in it.

And then, of course, we decide in the next couple of years it’s time to redecorate. If you’re like me, this too happens in stages. We aren’t taking a sledgehammer to the still-sometimes-kinda-leaking guest bathroom sink, but maybe we do finally call the bonded and insured plumber instead of your dad’s friend of a friend, Gary - and a wallpaper professional while we’re at it.

We buy new knick knacks and curtains and decor, maybe spacing things out between a few months or year’s worth of paychecks. You start to fall in love with your space again.

Sometimes, yes, we replace flooring. Sometimes we discover there is a foundation issue that needs attention. Sometimes a professional needs to come in and help us repair something we cannot fix alone.

But sometimes, it’s as little as shifting the chair over just a little to the left and the quiet of not hearing that faucet anymore. Tiny renovations that lead up to big changes and increased comfort. No sledgehammer necessary.

Maybe we ought to look at ourselves the same way. Instead of ripping out floorboards all over the place, maybe we fine tune one area here and there, or even just put a rug over it for awhile! Maybe, we ought to realize that real, lasting growth and change can look much softer and simpler than trying to rewire ourselves at a deep, fundamental level.

I have never met someone who successfully exhausted themselves into being “better.”

Instead, long term change comes from meeting ourselves where we already are. Maybe we learn how to ask for help, grieve what we need to grieve, or decide when we really do need to decline an invitation to rest. Maybe we talk to ourselves more kindly, or work to enforce the boundaries we know we need but are afraid to implement out of fear of being disliked. Maybe we learn to hang new art on our walls - pieces that better reflect who we are now.

Loving the house doesn’t mean you stop redecorating.

Accepting something does not mean you become complacent with it.

Imagine how boring it would be to sit on the same couch with the same fifteen-year-old pillow covers every. single. day. (No offense to anyone with fifteen-year-old pillow covers. Some of them are probably very comfortable.)

I don’t buy new pillow covers because I hate my house.

I buy new pillow covers because I live there.

We should treat ourselves the same.

Instead of asking, “What needs fixing?” maybe we ask, “What needs my care?”

We don’t have to decide everything needs to go right now.
We can choose kindness.
We can choose patience.
We can choose the slower work of becoming.

And sometimes the slower work of becoming looks almost laughably simple. Instead of color-coding everything in the planner, we could just write it down, or y’know, buy a planner. Instead of waking up at 5am to hit the gym by 6 when we’ve never willingly woken up before 6:30 a day in our lives, we do ten pushups each day or set the alarm to 6:15. What if we said “I too am deserving of taking my time to become more myself” and dropped the crowbars.

January Valerie still has space here.

She’s what keeps the rest of the year going.

The hopes, dreams, goals and desires are integral and wonderful. But maybe April Valerie had a better idea of how to make small shifts to keep things sustainable before June Valerie completely burnt out.

So, maybe this week, instead of asking what needs to be fixed, we can ask what deserves a little more care.

Maybe there is a room in ourselves that has been waiting for attention.

Maybe there is a chair that just needs to be moved.

And I think I will replace those couch pillow covers. It’s been a while.

Leave This on the Table

What parts of yourself have you been treating like a renovation project when they might simply need a little care?

Where have you been reaching for a crowbar when a small adjustment might be enough?

What is one tiny renovation — one small act of kindness, patience, or attention — you could offer yourself this week?

If something here resonated with you, I hope you carry it with you — not as another thing to accomplish, but as a reminder.

You were never a project waiting to be completed.

You were always someone worth coming home to.