Happy new year Courageous Pals!

I hope you’ve had a restful and joyful holiday season. I’ve been doing the Seven Days of Rest as a gentle hibernating introduction to the new year and it’s been a very nourishing start to 2026. In fact, the Seven Days of Rest is how I first started doing Yoga Nidra (almost) daily through 2025, something that really helped me stay grounded and in touch with my inner sense of peace through a turbulent year. I don’t think I’ll shock anyone by saying I think there will be yet more turbulence ahead, so whatever you can be doing to top up your resilience reserves and find nourishment for your courage can only be a good thing. To that end…

Courage Pie (to go): Curiosity

For this month’s new on-the-move edition of Courage Pie (to go), we’ll be talking about Curiosity. If you can, join us at 1 PM tomorrow, 14 January, outside Canopy Kitchen at Edinburgh Futures Institute for a gentle walk (or wheel) around the Meadows. Sign up via Eventbrite to be notified of any last-minute adverse weather location changes! Can’t make it? Grab a courageous pal and use the Questions to Go below for a reflective walk of your own.

Curiosity is the first step towards change, it gives us the power to think beyond who we are now and into who we might want to become. People often use the new year as a time to set resolutions - great! But what they’re less good at, usually, is thinking about what those resolutions really mean to them: why they want to change in this way, and what they are willing to adjust in the pattern of their lives to fit in this new piece of the puzzle. Curiosity is also a powerful tool along the way to change. When we don’t do the things we said we would do, instead of berating ourselves, being curious about what we did instead and what made those other choices more palatable or important can give us powerful clues to what we really want and how to get there. Sometimes it’s the resolution that’s wrong - and sometimes we have to overcome a limiting internal belief in order to meet our goals. Either way, curiosity is our friend in discovering how to make change happen.

Questions to go:

• Do you believe that you can have the future you want to create for yourself this year? What makes you answer in the way you did?

• If you were to follow your curiosity, where might it take you?

• What does curiosity actually feel like to you, in your body? When do you feel it?

• How do you, or might you, invite that sense of curiosity into your life? 

• When things go wrong for you, do you tend to berate yourself? Blame others? What might happen if you sat with your sense of curiosity instead?

Is there a Courage Pie topic you’d like to discuss in the future? Reply to this email!

Science Behind the Slice

Horstmeyer, Alison. (2020). A phenomenological investigation of the multi-componential process of state curiosity within the context of humanistic coaching. Saybrook University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.

Taberner, Kathy. and Taberner Siggins, Kirsten. (2015). The Power of Curiosity: How to Have Real Conversations That Create Collaboration, Innovation and Understanding. Morgan James Publishing.

Coming up…

Feeling all January-ed out? Join the wonderful Jane Macdonald of Solas Yoga and I for some guided visualisation, gentle movement, and journaling exercises to shake out those January blues and get ready for the year ahead! Sunday 14 January at 3 PM at OMH Therapies in Edinburgh More info and sign up here.

Celebrate!

I’m very pleased to say that just before Christmas I passed my ICF Associate Certified Coach exam! 🥳💯 And just to show that previous Courage Pie topic the inner critic never fully leaves you, I originally misread my score as achieving the bare-minimum passing standard rather than the top-passing grade, making my jubilation all the more enjoyable when I realised! 🤩 🥂 We all have self-doubts at times - but sometimes what we think is a weakness turns out to be our greatest strength.

Wishing you warmth and joy this January.

Very best,

Caitlin