Jim: You wrote it. I read it. We could record it.
Katie: We've done more with less, that's for sure.
Jim: We have.
Jim: Pulling stuff out of our orifice for two years running. That's right. That's welcome to Knit A Spell.
Katie: This shit never ends. Woo!
Jim: Someone asked me over the Christmas break, what do you guys talk about?
Katie: Rude. clearly don't listen to any of our episodes. What don't we talk about?
Jim: I was also like, we do research we research stuff and whatever.
Jim: And they were like, you do? And I'm like it's not like it's Harvard or something. Katie knows a lot about crafting, I know a lot about the craft.
Katie: Yeah. Together we can fill in the gaps.
Light From Lantern presents: Knit A Spell.
I'm magical maker: Katie Rempe.
And I'm the maker of magic: James Divine.
Join us as we stitch together the symbiotic relationship between crafting and 'The Craft'.
Katie: Speaking of gap filling, it's the third week in January, and you know what that means? All of your troubles are gone. Everything from 2022 has magically washed away, and all of your abundance and goals are about to knock on the door.
Jim: Yeah, because for the last three weeks I have been eating fabulously. Just vegetables and no bread, no carbs. So reasonable. Yes, I have been going to the gym every single day. I have been just, I've seen Jim every day.
Katie: You looking in the mirror?
Jim: That's right. I have. Yeah, it's been celery juice and, I have been writing and journaling and meditating and,
Katie: oh, man.
Katie: Yeah, it's been, and so much sleep. I've gotten so much sleep.
Jim: It's been 27 hours of New Year's resolutions in my 24 hour day.
Katie: And that is exactly why we wanted to talk about ditching resolution season because Jim, when have you ever made a resolution that actually worked out?
Jim: I'm resolute. About my resolutions.
Katie: Yes. I no flexibility.
Jim: I will tighten my grip around my resolution.
Jim: Resolutions suck.
Katie: Yes, they suck.
Katie: I have never. Resolution season. In fact, my favorite anecdote to tell about this time of year came from a radio show. It was a person who would go to, speaking of Jim, the gym all the time, and hated going in January because quote, all of the January Joggers.
Katie: Meaning all of the people who show up at the gym for the one month a year for that subscription that they're paying the whole year for. And then, by February it's like getting better. And then by March, maybe one or two.
Jim: The January Joggers.
Jim: Are you a January Jogger? No one intends to be. Our intentions are pure, but yes, the body is weak.
Jim: So let's dig in. Have you made resolutions and then failed at them? Show me on the doll where the New Year's resolutions have hurt you.
Katie: I've certainly fallen in the trap in the past. I've been the January Jogger, who hasn't?
Jim: You have willpower and discipline, and that's what you're gonna conjure up after three months of imbibing, since October. But really before that, let's all be honest, because autumn time, right? Yeah. So for three months, we've been gorging ourselves.
Jim: And dealing with the weather and everything else that's been happening, eating our family. Eating our family, eating our feelings.
Jim: Maybe that was a Freudian slip.
Katie: I was gonna say.
Jim: So why doesn't the fire of transformation take? There's actually science, there's psychology behind all of these things, and both of us thought it would be really great to dig into this.
Jim: So why do our New Year's resolutions fail?
Katie: Speaking from personal experience, certainly I've made goals that were too big. Unachievable, even if I had every day of the year to do them.
Jim: You mean 27 resolutions in 24 hour day doesn't work
Katie: No, doesn't.
Jim: But I don't think that, losing a hundred pounds in 2023 is too big of a goal.
Katie: Potentially, if there is a plan to go with that, maybe.
Jim: Okay, you're cringing.
Katie: Also, consult your doctor. I don't know if that's a safe weight loss goal in a year.
Jim: Right. I said that as a red herring because I think a lot of times we put something out there as. Have you researched it? Have you looked at it? Is it a safe weight loss goal? What are the standards for what is reasonable? What actually is weight loss? If weight loss is your goal, is that a vanity goal? And what is the research say is weight loss that is sustainable. And can you love your body the way it is?
Katie: Those are great perspectives to have. Yeah. To break down the motivation.
Jim: So the goal is too big. And I may not have a perception that it's too big. So understanding that it's too big is a big thing. Yes. What's another one?
Katie: The goal is too vague. Let's say I want to learn everything about knitting this year. I have no knowledge of knitting, but this year I'm gonna learn all about knitting everything. Perfect. Done. I don't even know what all those things are.
Katie: I'm not sure if that's possible.
Jim: I had that. I wanna learn knitting. Yeah. Learn knit.
Jim: That didn't work for me. No.
Jim: Because I actually had too big of a goal, which is I wanna knit a scarf. And then I learned, oh my gosh, knit. Challenging. Yeah. But, cause I had that goal and then I was like knit a swatch knit and that was like wonky and weird and Right. It was too vague.
Katie: Another problem often is the plan is lacking action to keep it long-term motivational.
Katie: Let's say you're like, okay, I'm knitting ,right? And so you do your swatch but there's no plan of what to do next because, We don't know enough about the thing yet to make an a plan of action.
Jim: What does this watch allow me to do? I see this with people that wanna start a business. Yes. They say 2023 is a year for me to start a business. , I think I saw someone post this on Facebook. They're like, 20, 23. I'm gonna do these five things and. Oh my gosh. That is a lot of things.
Jim: And they're all these huge things. And I'm like, I hope you have structures in place to achieve those in just one year. Because without a plan of action to actually build a business or to do something like that, you need a plan. That's a structure. Yes. To build that on and finally needs something to grow on.
Katie: Yep, exactly. A good example is, let's say you have a goal. You're a person who wants to learn how to knit because your goal this year is to make the wedding blanket for. Wedding, so now you have to, in one year, wow. Let's say learn how to knit, figure out what pattern might be within your scope, and how not to burn yourself out considering you're learning as you go to give yourself that grace to enjoy the process of learning.
Katie: And remember that you're not just doing it to create this end product, probably. You're also doing it as a motivation to learn the actual craft. So learning the craft is the point. The end goal from learning is that you have a blanket.
Jim: Boy, that is, yeah. There's all kinds of stuff that could potentially go wrong with that.
Jim: Which is if I'm overly committed to a result. Or if I don't have enough space between the change I want and the knowledge I want to give gift.
Katie: It can be really frustrating for people who have no idea. Decide they want to start knitting by seeing a really intricate pattern on the cover of something and they're like, oh, that I wanna learn how to do that.
Katie: That's a journey. And in some cases newbies are the best people to do that kind of stuff because they don't know what they don't know. And sometimes they can learn easier. But also in other cases, if you're up against a timeline and other people's expectations that you're putting on yourself, all of a sudden, That's where it becomes less fun and then all of a sudden that thing you're doing joyfully to expand yourself and grow and give to other people is totally taking from you and making you a monster around everyone.
Katie: And asking for help from people who know. They will help you reasonably meet your goals and help you succeed along the way.
Jim: Yeah really great.
Jim: I think about how if the goal is too restrictive. We've talked in the past about the lust for results. Yes, can make it overly restrictive in your spell work, but also in your goals.
Jim: And if it's overly restrictive, then you're just gonna strangle yourself.
Jim: Do you know that you love knitting? And is that something that you're willing to commit to because it's taken, my husband is a crocheter and it's taken him years to get to a point where he can crochet something that is like a s shawl. He's been working on that blanket that he started at the beginning for three years.
Jim: I think I often underestimate how big goals actually are. So my coach tells me often if your goal seems too small, it's probably the right size.
Katie: That is good advice.
Jim: It's free coaching to you, by way of my coach.
Jim: So resolute resolutions. We know they don't work. Generally, we know that human beings don't do well with change.
Jim: If we look at neurobiology change is associated with pain when there's change and learning is of type of change. It fires the same centers of the brain as pain. And so change is hard to stick with. So smaller changes are easy and you know what the analgesic to pain or to change is and learning.
Jim: Joy. Fun. Yeah. And curiosity. Yeah. Oh, fun is fun. Yeah.
Katie: There we go.
Jim: And so we find that balance of pain and learning and change, the pain of learning, the pain of change with fun. And we allow for that grace with balance of fun. And we do that with curiosity. And this is why children learn when they're playing cuz playing is fun.
Jim: And that's part of the learning. So the analgesic for that change and that learning that we're doing with our intentions. I like the word intentions more than I like. Resolutions. Is the fun and the curiosity and the interest. So that's why when people are learning hobbies, they're learning to knit.
Jim: It's because they love knitting and they find knitting fun. You can relate. Yes. Crafts are fun. Languages are fun. My husband goes to the gym because he loves to do it. It's fun for him, not because it's a chore or a have to. This is really important.
Jim: What is the thing you love to do? That's what there is to do.
Katie: Yes. And turning things into new habits or inviting in different ways to do old habits are easier when they're stacked with things you're already doing. So let's say you want to. Do more reading, in the next year than maybe every morning when you make your cup of coffee while it's brewing.
Katie: You stand there and you read your book for that five minutes. It's a small change to wrap up into something you're already doing. So maybe instead of looking on your phone for that five minutes, you're guilting through that book. And guess what? You'll actually read a book that year.
Jim: Yeah. Or you'll listen to an audio book or you'll find a way to do it that works with you and that's fun. Please let yourself read something that you enjoy. Oh yeah. If life is too short to continue with books, that are terrible. Oh,
Katie: that is great advice in my opinion. I wish I had realized that sooner because I remember complaining about a book that sucked and my mom was finally like, why are you reading it?
Katie: You have all of these other options!
Jim: And I thought there's someone in my household who will finish a book, it's my husband, he loves to complain about it! I think he likes to do that as much as he likes to read it.
Jim: that's some of us that's part of the experience.
Jim: I'm right. , will you stop reading it if you don't like it that much? But he'll keep reading it all the way to the end and then be like justified in his complaining. Doesn't query. He was never gonna get any better. I think it's an Aquarius trait.
Katie: Huh. Interesting.
Jim: I know, right? Oh, okay. After the break, let's talk about what works instead of resolutions and how we can stick with some of these intentions and some of the tie-ins with magic.
Katie: I resolutely promise to stick with you during the break.
Katie: Hey Knit A Spell fans. Join our Patreon for just $13 a month to gain access to extended episode comments, episode outtakes, behind the scenes and bonus content, magical making tips, monthly polls to influence future topics and guests and interact with your fellow patrons. Plus, you'll be supporting one of your favorite podcasts.
Katie: Join today to gain access to our entire post history. Visit patreon.com/lightfromlantern to learn more and sign up! Jim and I look forward to seeing you there.
Jim: Your hands are the map to achieving anything you want in life. But it's hard to read that map in just one reading.
Jim: My coaching packages allow me to work with you over time to build towards your goals.
Jim: We bring in life coaching, executive coaching, leadership coaching we bring in tarot, palmistry, a little bit of astrology, all the mystical and the practical together, and these amazing coaching pathways that my clients are on already really help propel people towards their goals.
Katie: Learn more about Jim's new Packages! Visit thedivinehand.com to learn more.
Katie: And we are back.
Katie: Let's talk about better ways to use this energy of this time of year.
Jim: Yeah, and I'm glad you said that because we are in the energy of the January joggers, so how do we harness all of that jogging energy? The energy is there, the resolution energy is there, and that's in the ethos.
Jim: And we as magical people can utilize that energy towards change. January is named for the God Janus. And that is the Roman God that has a face on two sides. And it's the divine idea of doorways and liminal spaces that we talked about last time, right?
Jim: And so this idea of January or January is we are at this threshold and so we can use this idea to say, okay Psychologically, I have a blank slate. This newness of the year. We can start something new.
Jim: And this is a powerful idea. We could actually do this anytime, but because there is this social agreement that it's a new year.
Jim: We've wiped the financial slate clean. We're starting new. We have often, we're starting a new congress, we're starting a new governmental system. A new cycle in so many ways. Okay, so we're in this energy that's there. Great. Let's do that so we can use this possibility to unfold magic and work towards that.
Katie: So tell me about change.
Jim: Yeah, so resolutions don't work when people make changes to their behavior and things outside of us. If I'm trying to change things outside of me I don't have any control over. I don't know if you've noticed. I don't really have control over Katie.
Katie: Yeah. I feel like I barely have control over Katie, so I guess.
Jim: So external control is a myth, really. , right? I can influence maybe a little bit, but I don't really have a lot of control over. Kids, grandkids, spouses, you know the weather, right? Yes,
Jim: I have influence in some ways. But what I have a lot of control over, or what I can influence tremendously is my inside. So I have the ability to change what's on the. And that will change what's on the outside. That will transform what's around me.
Jim: And if we think about the word resolution or resolute, it contains no flexibility or fluidity. And so it implies this firm decision. And if you don't have flexibility and fluidity, it's really hard to hold an intention. Yeah. So I think the first response that's counterintuitive is to lovingly embrace ourselves.
Katie: Yeah, what you are right now is perfect, and what will be in the future is your future self.
Katie: Not for you to worry about at this moment necessarily.
Jim: What do we want for other people. That's a good way to that I like to look at it is I, would I ever want a person who I really love and respect to be different than who they are? I love Katie just the way she is. How would I look at her? Why do I look at myself that. Why would I want me to be fundamentally different than who I am so I can start to say, focus on what I want instead of being resolute against what I don't. And yes. Then what? We can set fluid intentions.
Jim: Yes, for the new year, right?
Katie: Because you just never know what's around the corner. And as we have talked about before, you might have an idea of exactly what you want, but there's something better around the corner that you never thought about. And if you're not paying attention to it and are just going down your one path, how do you know that you didn't know that this add-on could have added a whole extra thing.
Katie: That's right. It's that fine line between. Focusing your attention because that really is how you get things done. And then you have to actually do the thing to make it happen, at least to some degree. Yeah.
Katie: Which, going back to that idea of lighting the flame of the whole resolution season.
Katie: If you make a fire and you put too much wood in there and you just stuff it full of things, the fire will never take, it will just choke out because there's not enough air, there's not enough room for it to catch and go.
Jim: Yeah. So the transformation of fire needs air. It needs the knowledge and the space of knowledge and intelligence to fuel its flame.
Jim: And so are we giving it that space or are we just stuffing it full of more transformation? More transformation, without giving it the space of knowledge.
Jim: I think the other thing is change is not constant. So when you talk about the path, Katie does the path always go evenly up and to the right? ?
Katie: None that I've ever seen.
Jim: So what, two steps forward and one step back?
Katie: Yeah. I think that's a popular song. Yeah. But progress is still progress.
Jim: Even if it's three steps forward, two steps back, one step forward, three steps back.
Jim: I think if we look at the balance overall in the big picture over time, if we're making more steps forward than we are back over the big picture, even if in the little picture we're incrementally going forward to back and forwards and back, that's normal. Yeah, that is normal. That's how every change happens.
Jim: We have this myth that the path continues steadily at this perfectly manicured slope, but it doesn't.
Katie: If anything, I've learned, it's more like a pendulum, so it gets like crazy for a while and then. And then goes crazy in another direction and then stop.
Jim: We can also look at some liturgy. Inspired by Doreen Valente, there is a portion of the charge of the Goddess, which is a much longer poem, but part of it really speaks to this, which says:
Jim: And you who seek to know me, meaning the goddess, know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the mystery. The mystery being for if that what you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.
Jim: So it's a perfect idea that if you don't find what you're looking for inside you, you'll never find it outside of yourself. So this is in a lot of the magical ideas in and of itself.
Jim: Dr. Wayne Dyer was often quoted as saying, when you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice. And it's this idea that what's inside you? What's inside the orange is orange, right? Is orange juice. So it's the same idea that what's inside is what is there.
Jim: So this is where to start, is focus on self-love. You will do self-loving activities. Focus on self-acceptance. You will do self-accepting activities. So that's my intention. My intention is how I choose to be in the coming year. How I choose to behave, how I choose to vibrate, how I choose to have the energy around me.
Katie: Yes. I believe it was the Goddess RuPaul who said, if you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love someone else?
Katie: Can I get an amen?
Jim: Amen. Also another goddess we worship. Yes.
Katie: And that's, the magical theology or, beliefs there again, if you don't have it from within, how can you give it?
Jim: Right. Yeah. It's repeated over and over many sages.
Katie: What better way to wrap up an episode such as this one than to perhaps share some of our own intentions for 2023? What do you think?
Jim: Oh, sounds awesome.
Katie: Yes. All right. I can go first if you like. You go first. Okay. So one of my intentions for this year is I want Knit A Spell to get 1000 subscribers on the Light From Lantern YouTube channel.
Jim: That's an external control and I'm all about this. Yes. What is our in? What's our internal intention to make that happen?
Katie: I will be advertising that we have our amazing video footage that I'm not even sure half of our awesome listeners know about right on our YouTube channel.
Katie: It is so much fun, and I want other people to be getting all of the amazing experience from our show by watching.
Jim: My intention to support that is, we do some really hilarious things that sometimes end up on the cutting room floor and we're gonna start including some of those on YouTube, just for YouTube subscribers.
Jim: That's what I'm really excited about cuz it's some of our creativity and our hilarious outtakes. So that'll be specifically on YouTube.
Katie: Oh yes. And it's such a fun medium because we can be a little more wacky in the editing department.
Katie: So if you've only been a listener to this point, you've never checked us out via video. Yeah, it's a great time to check out, especially our newer episodes. I've been doing a lot of fun things in there and they are definitely worth a watch and certainly worth subscribing so that you never miss an episode.
Jim: Jimbo the elf was a nice touch.
Katie: It was so nice of him to drop by. I know. It's like such a busy schedule of that time of year. Maybe next year we can have him back.
Jim: Maybe, he might command a higher
Katie: price.
Katie: I'll try to R S V P ahead of time and see if, we can get all of his rider and things that he would require.
Jim: All of his catering.
Katie: Correct. Yes. It must be exactly 98 degrees because it is too damn cold at the North Pole, thanks. Yeah, I get it.
Jim: So I think the other thing I really want to do for 2023 is live with, I do want to spread that self. Love and abundance of love. So that's what I hope we continue to bring our joy and love like we keep doing.
Jim: Yes. So that's what I wanna do with you throughout this season. Yes. And you'll get that no matter where you listen to us or however you interact. That's true.
Katie: A delight as always, and yay. I look forward to, I can't even believe I'm saying this. Wrapping up January next week with our final episode of the month.
Katie: What?
Jim: We'll see you next week, Katie.
Jim: See you then. Everybody chow.
Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a friend, leaving a review on iTunes and Spotify or following Knit A Spell on Instagram.
You can also subscribe to the Light From Lantern YouTube channel to enjoy full episodes of Knit A Sepll and see our happy faces.
You can also learn more about readings, classes, and events going on with your favorite Maker of Magic James Divine by visiting thedivinehand.com and subscribing to his newsletter. Then follow Jim's fun and interactive Instagram account @DivineHandJim.
Keep up with Katie the Magical Maker by subscribing to her newsletter at lightfromlantern.com.
You'll receive a free knitting pattern as a thank you gift, then follow Katie on Instagram @LightFromLantern for even more magical making tips.
See you next week. Next week.
