At the End of the Year, Sit With a Question

As the year draws to a close and a new one begins, there is a familiar cultural pull toward answers: resolutions, plans, goals, fixes. We are encouraged to decide who we will be and what we will do next — often quickly, decisively, and with confidence.

Recently, I listened to an NPR interview with Krista Tippett, host of the On Being podcast, that offered a very different invitation. The episode was titled “Forget New Year’s resolutions. For 2026, sit with a question instead.” What she shared felt both deeply countercultural and quietly necessary.

Krista reflected on the importance of learning how to sit with questions, especially in times of rupture and transformation. She referenced the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who wrote:

“Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart… Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.”

Rilke suggests that when a question is big enough, we don’t rush to answer it — we live it. To hurry toward an answer, he says, would be to deny the gravity of the question itself. Instead, we stay with it and allow it to slowly, quietly work on us.

This reflection landed deeply for me, because sitting with questions — rather than solving them — is at the very center of mind–body and somatic coaching.

In this work, we don’t rush to insight. We don’t force clarity. We don’t treat life as a problem to be fixed. We create space to listen — not just with the mind, but with the body and nervous system. We learn to ground, to notice what is subtle, to feel into what is emerging beneath the surface.

Krista also posed a few simple but profound questions that feel especially fitting at the turning of the year:
What in the way you are living feels energizing? What feels depleting? Are the things you are struggling with right now the right things to be struggling with? What would feel life-giving?

These are not questions we answer once and move on from. They are questions we return to — again and again — allowing our bodies, not just our thoughts, to respond.

I’ll be honest: this way of being does not come easily to me. I come from a long tradition of living in my head. Sitting still, slowing down, and holding space for subtle sensations can feel uncomfortable. At times, I get impatient. The signals from the body can be quiet, fleeting, easy to miss.

I suspect many people feel this way — and that it’s one reason some are hesitant to begin somatic work. What if I don’t feel anything? Is it working? Where are the results? These are understandable questions in a culture trained to measure progress quickly and visibly.

But what I am learning — and what Krista’s reflections so beautifully named — is that some of the most meaningful change happens precisely when we resist the urge to rush. When we allow ourselves to sit with not-knowing. When we trust that something real is unfolding, even if it is not yet loud or clear.

As I close out this year and step into the next — and as I prepare to launch my coaching practice — I find myself less interested in resolutions and more drawn to this quieter practice of living the question.

What wants to emerge?
What is asking for attention?
What would feel truly life-giving now?

Perhaps that is enough to begin.