Eleanor's letter: Not manifestation - but Planifestation!

I’m writing this on a grey old day – I swam, in the rain, and walked up the hill to warm up, and the brightest part of the landscape was the yellow of the willow tree branches against the dreek!

It’s hard to remind ourselves that the days really are lengthening, that spring will return. The sense of winter gloom is not helped by the deluge of New Year New You “inspirational” content all over the internet.

If I read another post about manifesting your dream life for 2026, I might scream. I also think much of this stuff is ill advised, as we are definitely not in a period of the year when a radical clear out or a self-denying extreme diet is a good idea.

It’s time for wintering and shedding

As the bleak countryside shows us, this is a time for Wintering. (When the NOON team got together this past week, we talked again about how much we love that book.) Hunkering down, hibernation and holding on till the return of the light. The Year of the Snake ends on February 17^th – now is about sitting calmly in the dark, early nights, deep thinking and ideally shedding what no longer serves us (those snakeskins gotta’ go).

It also feels like a moment for dreaming what this year might bring and thinking about what seeds we might sow to bring that about.

That reminds me of a conversation we had at the NOON retreat in Wales last year. We’d walked several miles along Offa’s Dyke, arriving at an ancient Inn. Sitting in its cosy snugness, eating excellent steak (my family are all vegetarians so I remember steaks!), the chat turned to manifesting, which everyone agreed is quite the current buzzword.

The Queenagers, however, were unconvinced.

Yes to dreams…but not just dreams

We all agreed that you have to dream (“…you’ve got to have a dream, if you don’t have a dream, how you going to have a dream come true?” as the Rodgers & Hammerstein song goes). But merely sitting quietly, envisioning yourself on a tropical beach with a fat bank account or with a swanky new job or business or partner or toned new body is not – we all agreed – going to make it happen.

Sorry about that.

There’s lots of guff around writing your desires 3 times in the morning, 6 times at lunchtime and 9 times at night, the so-called 369 rule. But however many times you write it down, that action alone is NOT going to make it a reality.

You’ve got to marry your vision with a plan

The vision is necessary, of course: It gives us something to aim for. But a vision without a plan is going to remain a pipe dream. That’s where the manifesting blah on social media gets it wrong.

Sure, dream, have a vision, really think deeply about what you want and what it might look like – I’m all in with that bit of manifesting what our life COULD be and look like if we were courageous enough. I love asking people the question: What would you do if you weren’t afraid? Because that question sparked me into action on creating NOON.

But what brings dreams to fruition is hard work and a plan. Which is why at NOON we are all about Not Manifesting, but Plan-ifesting.

How Helen did it

Take Helen – who is about to launch a brand new NOON Circle in Dedham, Essex, in February (mark your calendar if you live round there). She’s a highly successful businesswoman who got to the top of her industry through “hardwork, application, strategy and lots of speaking truth to power”.

Last year, like many of us have been at NOON, she got made redundant – out of the blue. Lucky for her, it happened right after she’d been on a weeklong NOON retreat. So she was in a good headspace to deal with the blow. Using some of her payout, she took herself on a once-in-a-lifetime global trip (here she is on a hang glider in South America).

Now she’s got several consultancy gigs, which mean she works less and earns about the same as she did before.

Yes, redundancy can be a good thing

“The redundancy was a big blow at the time, but now I see it as a gift; it has allowed me to construct the life I want. I am much happier,” Helen says. But as she and many of the others pointed out: None of this happens just because we sit in our bedrooms and dream about it. Helen’s reinvention took courage, action and lots of proactive reaching out to people and putting herself out there.

Lots of people have ideas, and dreams. But the truth is that most dreams remain just that. What do they say? Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.

We have to back the power of our dreams with a corresponding commitment to action.

It’s all very well – and necessary – to think about where we want to end up. But if we are going to get there, we have to work backwards from the goal to where we are now. We have to construct a plan that gets us from A to B.

It’s ok to not know your destination

It’s not necessary to know it all in advance – no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. The nature of plans is that they always change. But we have to get on with doing if we want to bring change into our lives.

I’m a great believer in my granny’s old maxim: God helps those who help themselves. The more we can do, practically, towards making our dream a reality, the more likely it is to come true.

Take another story of a NOON Queenager who had her heart set on being on a public board. That was her dream this time last year. Well, dear reader, she got it!

How another Queenager made it happen

That’s because having had the dream, she chatted up the recruiter.

She went on a 3-hour each way roundtrip to see first-hand one of the company’s projects. She talked to 5 people who had worked at the company. She did 4 interviews – and after each one emailed a succinct one-pager summing up the ideas she had put forward and why she should get the gig.

“I wanted this job so much,” she explained. “I’m a great believer that if you want something, you leave no stone unturned. I didn’t know if everything I did would get me the job or not, and I knew I would be gutted if it didn’t come off. But I wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror and think that I did everything that was in my power to get to this outcome. That is all we can ever do in life: try our best.”

Powerful stuff. She’s right.

The new version of Manifestation: Plan-ifestation

A vision, plus a plan, plus perspiration and dedication = Plan-ifestation. It’s an incredibly powerful tool. In fact, it’s the only tool that ever works.

I know this is true both as a journalist and editor (I always encouraged myself and everyone around me to make that extra phone call…it was usually going the extra mile that got the scoop). But I also know it as an entrepreneur.

How I Plan-ifested NOON

If we want to start a new chapter in our lives we need to chuck all our energy at it. Over the last few years, I said “Yes!” to conversations, or coffees, or meetings, even when I wasn’t entirely sure where it would lead. On top of that, I trusted that people were coming into my life at particular points to help me achieve my vision. I didn’t know that my idea for NOON would work. But I believed that midlife women needed a different story, a supportive community and were different to those who had gone before. I also believed that Queenagers deserved joy, fun and to be SEEN.

In our NOON January planning meeting last week we realised we’d hit an audience of 100k over our different channels. Additionally we have 25 NOON Circles around the country, with more on the way. We did 2 landmark reports – about Queenager Entrepreneurs and also Divorce for midlife women – with major brand partners. And the book I wrote about my own midlife journey of reinvention and that of other women, Much More to Come, was a Times bestseller. (More importantly, I know it has helped many of you to be optimistic in dark times. Every day I get an email or note from someone telling me the impact it has had in their life.)

None of that happened just because I had a dream; it happened because the dream was backed up with a plan, a team and huge amounts of effort!

I totally believe that we make our own luck when we open ourselves up to what is being offered to us. But that is not a passive process, it’s an active one. Making a success of an idea, making it manifest in the world – by which I mean taking it from an idea to a reality – starts with a vision. But it’s made flesh with a plan and hard work.

So my advice if you are in a point of change is to use this dreek time of year to dream and envision what you might be and become. And then work back from the vision, creating practical steps that can be taken today or tomorrow or whatever fits your timeline.

On my desk I have a Post-it note that says: “What am I doing today to get me closer to who I want to be?” It reminds me that Vision + plan +carrying out said plan = possibility of success.

So don’t simply rely on the snake-oil “vision setting for 2026: the energetics of abundance” (the title of a pitch which just landed in my inbox). Think about what you want and make a plan to go get it. Which is to say, get Plan-ifesting. It’s the only strategy that works.

And in the meantime…

…snuggle up in front of a fire or a radiator, have a hot bath, go to the movies (not Marty Supreme though, the Timothy Chalamet ping-pong movie which I found loud, long and an ego fest, full of sound and fury signifying nothing…).

Or curl up with a good book. My best read of last year I think was Dream State by Eric Puchner, but the Booker winner Flesh will also keep you going for a couple of days, too. It’s very easy to read and thought-provoking…full of men who are emotionally passive and stunted. An eye-opener!

 👇👇​​​​​​​👇​​​​​​​   I loved these books: Good ones to snuggle down with now

Davina’s resource for Plan-ifestation

We are so grateful to Davina for her support for NOON. And right now she’s running her Begin Again Reset month – which has good stuff to aid Plan-ifesting. It’s 5 weeks dedicated to different areas of wellness to help people have the best start to their 2026.

Each week Davina sits down with a guest on her Begin Again podcast to help navigate through all the noise that comes at this time of year, to share helpful advice and tools that are simple and not overwhelming.

Here she is talking to Ella Mills of Deliciously Ella (psst – she’s also my sister-in-law) about how to do a 10-ingredient reset in your kitchen.

Did you miss my appearance on Davina?

You can also catch up with my episode on Davina’s podcast, where we talked about how women can overcome societal expectations, navigate the fear of change, and embrace midlife as an opportunity for growth and joy.

LAST DAY to enrol in Rebrand Yourself™

In the meantime, if you could do with a bit of reinvention, if you want to tell a new story about your life and yourself, take the plunge and sign up for our Rebrand Yourself™ in Midlife Course – registration closes tonight!

I’ve added an extra bonus live session with me on Golden Threads – the part of the course where we use my method to identify the parts of your experience, life and personality that make you unique and amazing. There are 4 live sessions in total, plus all the lessons, the worksheets, the special group WhatsApp where we share and support each other and templates so you can deploy your new story or rebrand across social media, in conversation, at job interviews and much more!

Don’t miss out: Book Rebrand Yourself™

Culture alert! A special free NOON private view

Fancy a bit of culture and contemplation?

We’ve got a special FREE NOON private view of a fantastic photography exhibition by NOON Advisory Board member Amelia Troubridge – get your ticket here.

Amelia has an amazing body of work that been featured in The Times Magazine, Tatler, Vanity Fair, Dazed & Confused, Condé Nast Traveller and many more illustrious publications. It’s been displayed in the Design Museum of London, exhibited at the Wallace Collection and auctioned at Christie’s. She’s also photographed amazing Queenagers such as Olivia Coleman, Harriet Walter, Tilda Swinton and Sharon Horgan, among many other women and men.

This exhibition features her photographs of indigenous leaders in Brazil and features a panel with me, Amelia and Tiffanie Darke, former Style Editor of The Sunday Times who now runs a campaign and newsletter called It’s Not Sustainable, urging us to buy less fast fashion.

Tiff and I both used to commission Amelia to do rock and celebrity portraits in our old journalism days. She has incredible anecdotes (I’m sure we’ll hear a few!). We’ll also be talking about our midlife shift into purpose and fun.

Best of all, tickets are completely free (tell your friends!) and available here.

Come and say hello.

All the best

Eleanor