Taraki Punjabi Women's Forum reunited in January 2025 for a workshop on Manifesting for the Year Ahead..
The topic of the January 2025 Punjabi Women’s Forum was Manifesting, and it provided the perfect opportunity for us to explore beginning 2025 with intention.
Manifestation has become somewhat of a buzzword within the wellbeing space because of its connection with positive thinking, but we wanted to challenge the idea that manifestation, like positive thinking, is something that you ‘just do’ or ‘just have,’ or something that requires little effort. What we understand it to be is getting clear on what you want, so that you can take aligned actions to create that reality for yourself. Seeing manifestation, then, as an empowering and fun process rather than a waiting game or a passive experience of intention setting and then expecting everything to fall into place, meant that we could support participants with questions and prompts around how they wanted to move forward into 2025, taking stock of the lessons of 2024 and enquiring into how they’d like to create a different 2025.
The Punjabi Women’s Forum is a great starting point for this, because it’s a brave space where the invitation is to lean in and explore how each prompt lands for us all individually.
It was beautiful to witness during the forum the power in reclaiming our time and energy as Punjabi women, and it was reminisce of the groundbreaking show: Sukh Ojla’s The Aunty Years. The show talks with depth and emotion about how previous generations of Punjabi women didn’t have the choice to not be people-pleasers, couldn’t take time to replenish themselves and weren’t even afforded the opportunity to think about what they wanted in life, let alone manifesting it. As Punjabi women, we are rewriting history, and this forum felt really special and important because of this.
Facilitating this month’s forum were Rehmat, Amrit, and Navneet.
The first part of the discussion was around what we’re hoping to manifest in the year ahead. Participants were invited to share their thoughts as well as any resources that have been helpful for them. We shared a tool called Year Compass – a way of plotting the year that’s passed and the year to come. The journal prompts to evaluate the previous year can be extremely beneficial as a starting point for manifestation. Some other things that were shared were prioritising activities that ‘fill us up’ – things that replenish us rather than deplete us. Spending more time with friends and family was one of those replenishing activities for many of the women.
A common theme was that 2024 taught many of us about uncertainty, and learning to live with an element of it. Finding strength in difficult situations, accepting that things may go wrong, and leaving behind people-pleasing, which depletes our time and energy. One attendee mentioned that she doesn’t want to suffer unnecessarily anymore, and at some level all of us could relate to that; so much of our suffering is created by us as a reaction to an event or situation. Acknowledging and hearing negative voices out, addressing where they come from, but recognising that they aren’t true and have been absorbed from past experiences, was another key takeaway. Other ideas included being more loving to ourselves, slowing down, having more confidence in ourselves, and replacing bitterness with consciously enjoying life. Journaling and mindfulness were also popular themes, alongside setting boundaries, saying no, and letting go of the need to be ‘perfect.’
The next part of the discussion focused on how we would make our intentions a reality. This part invites us to think about the steps we’ll be taking to reach our goals. Breaking intentions into smaller steps makes them feel more achievable. One participant shared something that really resonated – we could be living the best days of our lives and not appreciating the now. It’s so easy to focus on the past or the future and forget to anchor ourselves in the present.
Navneet shared the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique, a mindfulness exercise that helps focus on the present moment through our senses, which can be supportive for anxiety, stress, and other challenging emotions:
- Look: Name five things you can see.
- Feel: Name four things you can feel.
- Listen: Name three things you can hear.
- Smell: Name two things you can smell.
- Taste: Name one thing you can taste.
Other suggestions included being more intentional with goals and motivations, creating vision boards to have a visual reminder of goals, monthly check-ins, and surrounding ourselves with supportive people. Boundary setting and celebrating small wins also emerged as important practices. One attendee wisely noted that it’s unrealistic to maintain the same level of excitement and motivation throughout the year—our energy ebbs and flows, and that’s okay. You can always revisit or create new goals anytime; there’s no need to wait for a specific moment to start afresh.Our final discussion centred on staying positive throughout 2025. We explored habit stacking, which involves adding a new habit onto an existing one to make it easier to implement. For example, repeating affirmations into the mirror after brushing your teeth. Gratitude journaling and creating compliment lists also came up as ways to shift perspective and build positivity. Trying new habits, refreshing old ones, keeping faith, and reframing challenges as opportunities were all part of the conversation.
Finally, we talked about privilege—recognising how fortunate we are to be able to reflect inward and prioritise self-growth.The forum provided a much-needed space to reflect, learn from one another, and explore how we can support ourselves and each other through 2025 and beyond. Knowing that we are one of the first generations of Punjabi Women to prioritise ourselves in this way was profoundly touching. Each of us left with something valuable, whether it was a tool for staying present, a reframe, or a plan for 2025. It was an honour, as always, for us facilitators to hold space for those who joined.
You can sign up to future forums here.
