What If Bare Minimum Was Freedom?
The essential practice for making it through the end of the year intact.
a glimmer of MAGIC from a full-plate weekend ✨
Ahem, ahem.
Before I begin, I want to let you know about a really simple 1:1 year-end offering I’ve created: A Year-End Reflection Session with Cath. [title’s not my best work, but it’s actually pretty to-the-point!]
This is the session for when you need someone who actually gets it to help you make sense of the year that just happened and get clear on what matters most as you move into 2026.
Think of it as: part exhale, part clarity, part permission to stop white-knuckling your way through it all.
We’ll spend an hour together (plus pre-work that helps you arrive ready) creating space for you to:
Process what this year has actually asked of you (and what you’re ready to release)
Get clear on your essential organizing principle for 2026 (not goals, not resolutions, but the essence that will actually guide you in the year ahead)
Find 60 moments peace in the midst of the holiday, year-end chaos
Hear yourself think (maybe for the first time all year)
This is what I do best: I help you see what you already know but can’t quite access, especially if you’re running on empty. I help you find the thread. So you can weave a gorgeous tapestry around what’s most essential.
I’ve put this little special offer on sale through Friday December 12 (25% off the normal rate), and I’m taking just 4 people for this between now and year-end. If you’ve been feeling like you need someone to help you sort through the noise and find your footing, this is it.
It’s like a warm, virtual hug from me to you, with a touch of rigor to keep you clear and aligned👇
Now, onto the immediate burnout relief…
The Bare Minimum Is Not What You Think It Is.
This is not an unfamiliar place for me to be. Maybe for you too.
It’s that creep toward mid-December that is all at once overwhelming, exhausting, and somehow insurmountable.
Maybe you’re trying to make holiday magic happen for kids on top of the relentless daily expending of mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual energy that IS parenting.
Or you’re trying to perform your worth at work — hit those sales goals, meet year-end deadlines, show up at your bonus meeting ready to advocate for yourself, strategize your most profitable year yet for 2026 all while it’s dark at 4:15pm and your body is sighing for hibernation.
Maybe you’re doing both.
Or maybe the holidays just amplify the loneliness. The grief. The awareness of what you thought your life would look like by now. Maybe you’re just tired of performing joy when what you actually feel is heavy and low and like you’re barely keeping your head above water.
Or, you know, fill-in-your-blank-here.
There’s this moment where the question arises: “How the absolute fuck am I supposed to make it through to January?”
When the Cup Runs Dry
In my day job, I just wrapped leading a 200-hour yoga teacher training — a year-long container of deep personal transformation work with 18 humans. It was gorgeous. Intense. Magical. The kind of lift that requires everything you’ve got (like a lot of wonderful things do).
And now? Now I’m just starting to feel my cup filling back up 4 days later. I’ve got like a 1/8 cup right now.
Because here’s what else was happening while I was holding space for wonderfully vulnerable and present, open-hearted adults: parenting two kids through travel basketball season, attempting holiday merry-making, running a business, and you know, the normal Tuesday stuff like getting everyone off to school (assuming school is open, which it has not been lately, thank you Upstate Winter).
I’ve mostly found myself zonked. Depleted. Running on fumes.
I know it’s kind of disappointing when the professional yoga and meditation teacher lady says, “Oh yeah, definitely, I still get burnt out.”
But I’d never sell you some sexy promise that says you can prevent burnout completely. When you have a full life filled with work and people you love and the normal ups and downs and challenges and heartaches of being any old human — sometimes your cup runs dry.
The good news though? I can now recognize when this is happening, identify what caused it, and practice really basic self-care that slowly fills my tank back up.
The Bare Minimum (A Reframe)
So here’s where I am right now: full-on BARE MINIMUM MODE.
And before you think that means I’m self-flagellating or doing some shame-spiral about “not doing enough,” let me gift you with my #1 mindset shift reframe.
Bare minimum is not me beating myself up for not doing enough.
Bare minimum is freedom, baby.
Here’s what the blessed Anne Lamott says: “Perfectionism is the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.”
After YEARS of trying and “failing” at the whole “do it all, have it all, be it all” thing (ESPECIALLY at the end of the year), I started using these extra-burdened, extra-high-pressure moments to whittle it down to what’s actually essential. Not the bullshit urgent. Not the performative busy. Not driven by what I perceive anyone else’s expectations might be of me.
No, my dear — just the essential.
For me, that looks like: Go to bed as early as humanly possible. Meditate. Even 10 minutes will transform me right now. Do 95% less than my capitalist/perfectionist programming tells me I “should” be doing. Go incredibly slow. Utterly sloth-like. Spend time doing simple tasks like reading, chopping vegetables, folding laundry, returning library books. Drink water.
I slash my to-do list down to almost nothing.1 I practice what I call “good enough, that’ll do.”
“I Am Good at Taking Care of What’s Essential.”
This is the “bare minimum reframe,” the refrain I return to again and again again: I am good at taking care of what’s essential.
Not everything. Just what’s essential.
And here’s the revolutionary part — YOU get to decide what’s essential. Not the culture. Not the social media doom scroll. Not what you did last year or last decade or maybe “one day, when…”
You, today. This You, right here, right now. You, my darling.
This is not about lowering standards or giving up. This is about recognizing that when we’re already running on empty, trying to do everything perfectly is what will actually make us miss the whole damn thing. (The whole damn thing = this “one, wild and precious life.”2)
Perfectionism keeps us away from our lives.
So I pause. I do the bare minimum.
The refrain evolves from “I should” to “good enough, that’ll do.”
A fucking freedom song.
Your Essential Organizing Principle
The thing that will get you through December isn’t more productivity hacks or better time management.
It’s getting clear on YOUR essential. The organizing principle that will keep you from burning out and actually help you be present for your life, as it is in this moment.
My organizing principle right now? Simplicity. And being available for joy and magic and rest and ease.
That’s it. That’s my North Star. Everything else gets filtered through that question: Does this serve simplicity? Does this make me available for joy, magic, rest, ease? No? Then it’s not essential right now.
You are a human being. And the world needs us to be so, so human right now.
The jig is up. No one is perfect. Let the “bare minimum” become your freedom song now too. FALALALALALALALLALALALAALA babe.
Behind the paywall: A 7-minute guided audio meditation to help you distill down to YOUR essentials — your organizing principle that will help you make it through December without burning out or losing yourself. This practice will help you identify what actually matters most right now and let everything else fall away.
xo Cath
And if you need some 1:1 support👇
