You are not a robot. And neither am I.

Every year I like to have an overarching theme or intention for the next 12 months. It is not something I think strategically about, it comes to me from Source.

This year it took a little longer than usual for me to feel it. I was sick from the day after Christmas to basically a couple of days ago, and stayed almost the entire holiday season in bed. I could not send cards as usual, take time off to have fun and see friends, go hiking, and do the things I always look forward to do during the last few days of the year. Ugh!

But this time of forced slowing down was an unexpected and powerful reminder of what my values are, what I am committed to, and what I want to keep front and center in my life and work in 2025.

And my thoughts all went into the same direction:

The pain of being asked to work while sick, being denied time off, being treated at work as a cog in a machine; the unrecognized abuse of working people who cannot make ends meet even though they dedicate the majority of their time to their job, the failure to see as normal a career gap or change that so many people will at some point experience; the use of coaching as a tool to appease high level employees who are asked to do more and more and more; the pain of not being able to afford to study what you love, the inability to find a position that appreciates you at a deeper lever. Being treated as a machine.

You are not a robot, and neither am I.

We are human beings.

We have the right to say No, change our minds, being treated with kindness.

We will make mistakes - and that's normal.

We will disagree - and that's OK.

We will need to learn more, we will discover new interests, we will grow and want to make changes.

We will need time to recharge.

We will get sick, go through tough times, be needy, become unavailable.

We will experience joy and celebrate achievements.

We will feel lost, afraid, hopeless.

We will (re)gain confidence, feel grateful, realize we are so much bigger than we thought we were.

We will remember deep down we are all the same and share a common humanity.

We will enjoy how different we are and be puzzled by our own unfathomable nature and other people's ways of being.

We will laugh and cry.

We will wish we could laugh and cry.

We will be called to change and we will resist it or embrace it.

Our lives will at times be messy, overwhelmingly or gloriously so.

Because we are human beings, not robots.

In the midst of all this, I felt such profound gratitude for colleagues, clients, friends, and mentors who embodied such grace, acceptance, courage, and depth.

And my theme for 2025 became clear: appreciating, celebrating, holding space for, working to support, and creating a business and a life that knows at its very core that we are gloriously, unapologetically, amazingly human.

That's my promise to myself and to you: no perfectionism, no unrealistic goals, no Silicon-Valley type bullshit, just humanity.

I will end this post with a quote from Sydney Banks: “People are not broken, they just think they are.”

Exactly.

Happy New Year.