Jane Galloway is an award-winning coach and speaker, and founder of Quiet the Hive. She works with midlife women to help them ditch the guilt, choose themselves and reconnect with the woman beneath all their responsibilities. Her aim is to make sure the women who work with her have a “Holy cow! What a ride!” kind of life, rather than an “I wish I’d been braver” one.
The summer is dreamy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s the never-ending school holidays and there are still deadlines and ever-growing to-do lists, but there’s also an ease to it too. It’s lighter evenings and slower mornings. A bit of spaciousness. It brings the kind of pause that lets your mind wander somewhere it might not normally go.
Hands up anyone who finds themselves dreaming bigger in the sunshine? Long walks on the beach unlock a different kind of thinking. Lazy conversations over a glass of something lovely with friends remind us of what matters. There is something about that summer slowdown that helps hear ourselves again, underneath the noise of all our other responsibilities.
But not this time. This summer I want you to take five minutes (right now!) and actually answer this:
If nothing was off limits, what would you love to create, do, feel or experience in the second half of the year?
Don’t stop at one thing. Let your answers flow. Don’t edit. Don’t second-guess. Just get it down and notice what comes up.
That single question is the start of what I call the Daydream and Do Method, and it sits at the heart of a free playbook I’ve created for you. It takes you from that first, honest daydream, through to picking the three to five ideas that give you genuine butterflies, right down to one tiny, doable step you could take this week for each one. Not 'write the book’, just ‘write 200 words’. Not 'leave my job’, just ‘dig out my CV’.
There’s a bonus section in there too, all about giving yourself permission to have a summer that includes you, not just everyone else.
So, grab an ice-cream, pull out the picnic blanket and head to your favourite outdoor space with your notebook and pencil (failing that, full permission to put an imaginary meeting with me in your diary and slope off to that cute cafe near you instead!).
Scan the QR code below for the full Summer Reset Playbook (and a few other useful resources), and let’s turn this summer’s daydreaming into the actual second half of your year!
