A Simple Two-Step Ritual to Prepare Your Mind for Your Best Creative Year

As creatives, our minds are often crowded places. Ideas overlap, unfinished projects compete for attention, and the desire to begin anew can feel heavier than inspiring. Before setting intentions or making plans for the year ahead, I like to pause and prepare the inner landscape first.

This simple two-step ritual helps me calm my mind, create space, and gently close one creative cycle before opening another.

Step One: Finish Something Small

This first step is deceptively simple: Finish something small.

By finishing something small, I truly mean small.
Perhaps one of your hats simply needs a label sewn into it, or a piece just needs to be photographed and put away properly.

Finishing something sends a clear signal — to the universe, and to your subconscious — that space has been freed. Even the smallest act of completion can feel symbolic and deeply satisfying, like opening a window in a crowded room.

Freeing up even a tiny dot of space in an overloaded creative landscape can feel surprisingly liberating. It creates momentum, clarity, and a quiet sense of readiness for what comes next.

Step Two: Give Unfinished Work a Resting Place

Now, for the projects that aren’t ready to be finished—or perhaps the ones you simply don’t yet know how to finish (I have quite a few of these in my own studio, too): Don’t let them linger in your daily line of sight. Instead, gather them gently and place them on a special shelf—somewhere out of everyday view—or into a special box.

This isn’t abandonment. It’s a conscious pause. An act of care that gives both you and the work a little breathing space.

This step is a form of creative decluttering, and perhaps more importantly, an act of self-forgiveness. You are acknowledging that not everything needs to be and can be resolved right now. Each unfinished piece is given a respectful, peaceful resting place until you decide whether — and when — to return to it.

This is a quiet way of saying goodbye for now. A temporary closure. A soft ending that makes room for new beginnings.

You don’t need grand resolutions to prepare for a creative year. Sometimes all it takes is one small completion, and one compassionate pause — to step forward with a calmer mind and clearer energy.

For me, this is a powerful way to step into a new year. But this ritual isn’t reserved only for this time of year. You can return to it whenever you feel tired, overwhelmed, or creatively cluttered—whenever you sense the need to free up space, soften the noise, and make room for something new.

Now it’s your turn!

Do you have a little end-of-year or beginning-of-the-year ritual, a way you keep your creative energy flowing when things get hectic? Drop it in the comments—I’d love to hear what works for you! Sometimes just talking about it can take a bit of the overwhelm away.

Remember this…

Never judge yourself harshly for an unfinished or “failed” project. Every piece has a role in the creative process.

Creation is not result-based; it is transformation-based. What truly matters is not the outcome, but how the work changes you along the way.

Unfinished and unsuccessful projects are part of that transformation. Without them, you wouldn’t be where you are now—artistically and personally.