A Creative Exercise for Winter
Lean into this season to compost 2024 and nourish the New Year.
As we near the end of 2025, one thing leaders can do to build connection and fuel team culture into 2026 is holding space for real reflection.
This creative exercise for winter is great for celebrating the wins and evaluating what needs to be shed to nourish a high performing, highly creative team in 2025.
Winter is full of lessons.
If you’re like me, you’re evaluating the last year, wondering what worked, what can be let go, and what’s to bloom still. I’ve designed this simple creative exercise to work with winter (like the animals we are) to emerge in the new year with intention.
Winter’s stillness has many lessons for us to learn and grow from.
Let’s begin.
1. Start by getting grounded.
Find a comfy chair preferably by a window so you can see outside. Grab a warm bevie. Your favorite pen and journal.
Close your eyes and take some deep inhales. Feel the quality of the air go in and out of your body. Notice the temperature, texture, and where it goes inside of you. Feel your feet root to the ground and let your body relax.
Imagining you are the winter tree stay with your breath… bare, still, complete.
2. Journal Prompts
After a few minutes, 3-5, pick up your pen and journal on the following prompts:
NAMING. If you only had 3 words to describe 2025, what would they be?
COMPOSTING. What went well this year? What did you learn about yourself that you’d like to take with you in 2026?
SHEDDING. What didn’t work this year? What do you need to shed to allow you to to be the best version of you in 2026?
STILLNESS. Our lives are moving faster and faster, where did you find stillness this past year and how can you integrate it more in 2026?
DARKNESS. Where was there darkness in your life this year? If there was one lesson to be learned what would it be? How can they be integrated in 2026?
3. Visualize
Start by calling into your awareness an image from winter that gives you energy. This could be snow, bare trees, snow falling….
Draw that image on your paper. It does not need to be good!
Answer the following prompts:
What about this gives you energy?
What qualities does this possess that you want to embody for 2026?
Once you have finished these consider the question:
How am I going to remember this?
To remember you might take your image and make a painting or cards to give to friends. You might make a poem or mantra. Or you might write it on a sticky note and put it where you’ll see it.
As humans, we get amnesia easily. I feel this whenever I walk into Target and lose track of every intention I had. It’s important we create something of our new knowledge to solidify it in our bodies.
Comment any aha’s or reflections. I love an intuitive hit.
If you are facilitating a year end offsite or celebration, you can integrate this exercise and adapt it to meet the needs of the team and organization. If you’d like to jam or bring Play Street to your team head to playstreetstudio.com to connect.
Happy wintering,
-Mo