At the beginning of 2025, my word for the year was Architect.

I was inspired by this quote often attributed to Joseph Pilates that says:

“You are the architect of your own happiness.”

As a result, last year felt like a year of actively shaping the systems, relationships, and rhythms that make real life work.

If you’ve been following this series and you’re still on the fence about joining the first New Moon Reset for Leaders, here’s what I want to say:

Bring a friend.

Truly. Everything feels more approachable when you build the habit with someone you love or trust. Life is just more fun that way. You focus on your work or personal goals, they focus on theirs, and suddenly you’re having richer conversations, building accountability together, and sharing the experience of growth instead of doing it alone.

If I were personally inviting you to the very first New Moon Reset for Leaders, I’d probably say something like:

Come hang out with me. Come play. Come sit in my little circle.

This experience feels less like a formal workshop and more like welcoming you into my home. And in a way, I am. You’ll literally see my living room through the computer screen. It’s intimate. Cozy. Safe.

By the time we reach the planning section of the New Moon Reset, you’ve already grounded your nervous system and reflected on what’s been working and what hasn’t. You’re clearer, calmer, and more connected to yourself than when you arrived.

This is intentional.
When your mind is clear, your strategy becomes clear.
When your emotions are regulated, your decisions become aligned.

Only then do we shift into planning.

After we ground the body and settle the nervous system with breath and gentle movement, we move into the next part of the New Moon Reset: reflection.

This is where clarity starts to take shape.
This is where overwhelm loosens its grip.
And this is where we begin to understand what we truly need before we even think about planning.

Every New Moon Reset for Leaders begins the same way: with grounding, intentional breath, and gentle movement. For some people, this is their favorite part. For others, it’s the part that makes them think, Wait… what exactly are we doing here? Can we skip to the planning?

I get it. Most leadership development experiences start with thinking. We’re used to beginning in our heads. But in today’s world where constant stimulus hits us from the moment we wake up until the moment we fall asleep, starting with the mind doesn’t actually give us access to our best thinking.

Movement and breathwork do.

Let me explain why…

If someone asked me to describe the New Moon Reset for Leaders in just a few sentences, I’d say this:

It’s a monthly two-hour workshop where we come together to pause, get grounded, move our bodies, reflect intentionally, and leave with a plan you can actually follow. It’s a reset point (built right into each month by nature!) to help you feel calmer, clearer, and more capable of taking your next step as a leader.

The older I get, the more clearly I see how deeply connected we are to everything happening around us. And not just in our teams and businesses, but in the natural world too. We grow up hearing lines in songs and poems about being tied to the moon and the tides, and as it turns out, there’s more truth in those metaphors than we give them credit for. Our systems respond to rhythms we don’t always pay attention to. The moon is one of them. And leadership, surprisingly, is another.

Thanksgiving week always pulls me into reflection. This year, I found myself thinking about a 40-day ritual that changed me more than I expected: my Kirtan Kriya practice from the Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training I recently complete.

What began as a requirement quickly became something I learned to lean on. Not in a meditation corner or in a perfectly still room, but in real life moments like between meetings, on walks, in the nail salon, and often in my car. Somehow, that made the practice even more meaningful. It met me exactly where I was.

If you’ve found yourself nodding along at any point during this series… if a phrase opened something for you… if a definition helped you finally put words to something you’ve been feeling… then you should know: this entire journey was inspired by Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown.

This book is one of the most powerful guides to emotional literacy I’ve ever encountered. Brené maps out the emotions that define the human experience, not to categorize or control them, but to help us navigate them with clarity, compassion, and courage.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve explored the many places we go when emotions show up at work. In the moments when we feel stretched, inspired, uncertain, or human, we know something is happening internally, but we aren’t always the best at explaining those things verbally to the people we work with (or even ourselves).

In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown writes that naming our emotions doesn’t give them more power, it gives us the power of understanding, meaning, and choice. That idea has guided this entire series. Because when we can name what we’re really feeling, we can respond with clarity, empathy, and courage And that changes everything about how we work together.

Sometimes at work, things just don’t line up the way we expect them to. A situation feels off, or our emotions don’t match what’s happening around us. We might be experiencing multiple feelings at once like pride and sadness, relief and regret, clarity and confusion.

This “place” is where we go when things are nuanced, layered, and not quite what they seem.

In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown shares a comparison I love that really helps illustrate this “place” in a work context. If you’ve ever worked in a kitchen, you probably used the terms being in the weeds and being blown to describe when things were feeling uncertain or too much.

When you’re in the weeds, you’re stressed - the orders are piling up, the clock is ticking, but you’re still managing to plate dishes and keep things moving. It’s intense, but you’re functional.

When you’re blown, you’re overwhelmed - you’ve lost track of what’s next, you’re running on adrenaline, and you can’t see a way out. You’re not just under pressure; you’re buried by it. Things often come to a complete standstill before the kitchen can come together to find a way through.

Falling short is part of being human. It’s also part of being at work. We set goals, chase deadlines, make promises and sometimes, despite our best efforts, we miss the mark.

Whether it’s a project that didn’t land, a mistake that affected others, or just a sense that we could’ve done better, these moments can stir up complex emotions. Too often, we rush past them, focusing on what to fix rather than how we feel. But slowing down to name what’s happening inside gives us the power to learn, connect, and grow without shame.

We spend much of our lives at work. And that work doesn’t just involve completing tasks, but navigating relationships, teams, and cultures. And whether we realize it or not, so much of our energy each day goes toward searching for connection.

When we feel connected at work, we show up more authentically. We’re more creative, more collaborative, and more resilient. But when that sense of connection is missing, we can start to question our value, our place, and our belonging.

When things don’t go as planned, most of us know the feeling before we can name it. A meeting derails. A project misses the mark. A promotion doesn’t come through. The gap between what we expected and what actually happened can bring up a rush of emotions and if we only call it frustration, we miss the full picture of what’s going on inside.

In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown explores the emotional landscape of these moments and helps us build language for the “places we go” when plans unravel.

At Nimble Up, we believe people are people are people. You don’t suddenly become a robot when you clock in. And yet, in professional settings, many of us were taught, directly or indirectly, that emotions don’t belong at work. We’ve been encouraged to repress them, disguise them, or reduce them to vague answers like “fine” or “good.”

But emotions are always with us. They shape how we think, how we connect, and how we perform. When our emotional wellbeing is strong, it shows up in small but powerful ways, like being able to name and talk about how we’re really feeling. Not only does this help us personally, it also builds healthier, more effective workplaces.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve explored the 8 dimensions of wellbeing at work, including how each one shows up on the job and what to watch for when things feel out of balance. You might be asking yourself: Where do I go from here? Which dimension should I focus on first to make the biggest impact in my work life?

This check-in is designed to help you discover where to focus your efforts and just as importantly, how to celebrate the dimensions in which you are already excelling.