I am here with you at the New Year Eve (I am from Sydney). A lot of you perhaps preparing to cook or to shop for dinner tonight. If you celebrate in the restaurant, you will already know what the New Year Eve Menu is, either 3 or 4 course.
So this sparks me an idea that I created 4 course Dinner Menu – Style of To Do List for you and this is an invitation to Joy.
There's a particular heaviness that can settle into our planning practices especially when you return to work after holidays.
The should-driven task lists.
The optimisation frameworks.
The relentless pursuit of peak productivity that somehow disconnects us further from the embodied wisdom that knows—innately—what truly needs our attention.
What if your daily planning could be an act of play?
Not frivolous play.
Not bypassing the real work that calls to you.
But the kind of play that restores your nervous system to a state of safety and delight—the very state from which your most aligned decisions emerge.
The Somatic Truth Hidden in Playfulness
I created the Magical Dinner Menu To-Do List as a radical departure from traditional planning.
Not because there's anything wrong with elegant systems or sophisticated frameworks. But because sometimes our nervous systems need permission to approach our work with lightness.
With curiosity.
With the kind of ease that children bring to everything they touch.
The template invites you to compose your day as courses in a magical feast:
Entrée - What makes your fairy wings flutter?
Sides - What helps your garden grow?
Main Course - What's your most powerful seeding today?
Dessert - What would feel absolutely delicious?
Whimsical? Yes.
Deeply somatic?
Also, yes.
The Body Knows Through Delight
Here's what I've witnessed: when we give ourselves permission to engage with our work playfully, something profound shifts in our capacity to discern true alignment.
The template still asks the question: "How does this feel in your body?"
And now you're noticing whether a task makes you feel sparkly. Grounded in the jungle. Light as a fairy. The language of expansion and contraction remains—we're simply approaching it through a different doorway.
Your nervous system doesn't distinguish between "serious" somatic awareness and "playful" somatic awareness.
It only knows: Am I safe? Am I resourced? Am I meeting life from expansion or collapse?
Sometimes the most direct path to that awareness is through unicorns and waterfall reflections.
An Invitation to Experiment
This isn't about replacing your current systems.
It's about giving yourself permission to notice what happens when you approach your daily planning from a place of genuine delight. When you let go even temporarily of the productive, optimised, serious version of leadership and simply ask: What would feel magical today?
Print it.
See what emerges when you give yourself permission to plan your day as if you were composing an enchanted feast by a jungle waterfall or simply sitting in the park.
The work doesn't become less important.
Your relationship to it might become infinitely more nourishing.
Last but not least,
Happy New Year - 2026!
Ready to add some magic to your planning? Download the Magical Dinner Menu To-Do List and discover what happens when productivity meets pure joy. 🦄✨
P.S. Your nervous system will thank you. So will the part of you that remembers how to play.
Kind regards,
Lilian