Ep #39: Prepping for a Great New Year
episode summary
Happy New Year! Instead of pressuring yourself with thought like "this is a brand new year, and I have to scrap everything and make tons of new years resolutions" - I'll offer a different approach.
I'll walk you through how to focus on what went well in 2023, because you're already doing so many things right.
Keeping your habit going takes much less energy than starting a brand new one.
Then we'll take a look at what was hard (hello, parenting teenagers!) and learn to ask "how can I use this hard time to my advantage this year"
We'll review what you've learned in 2023, and how to use the combination of good and hard times to create a great plan in 2024.
Featured on the Show
Your Best Year workshop
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
For the full show notes and transcript, head over here.
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CHAPTERS:
1:00: Your Best Year Workshop Overview
2:22: Reflecting and Planning the New Year
6:45: Highlights and Reflections of the Year
19:23: What to take into next year
listen to the episode:
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Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. Hey friends, happy new year. I hope you had a great celebration If you're listening to this on the actual first hope you had a great celebration last night and you're not too groggy today while listening to this podcast. But if you are, you know, just relax, sit back, relax and listen.
00:28
Today I'm going to be talking about, oh, pretty much all the reasons why I love a new year. It's interesting because in one way, it's a fresh start, but it's also time to pause and just remember all of the things that you're already doing right. So today I'm just going to walk you through some ways to kind of frame up the way that you're looking at your own new year and to focus on a lot of the things that you are already doing right and the things that you did well last year. Before I get into all the details, I wanted to remind you that I'm offering a workshop. It's going to be on Tuesday, january 9th. It's at noon central time. If you are interested in joining and you are booked at that time, you can watch the recording. This class is going to be a workshop style, so you'll have a workbook and you'll be doing the work as we're talking through the concepts, but the basic idea is you come in having a vague idea of what you might want to do in 2024 and you leave with a solid plan. So you understand where you are in life. You understand where you are for this year, what your theme is we're going to pick a word of the year Within that which areas you want to focus on. So maybe balance is a big area where you want to focus, maybe physical health, something like that and then what your goals are underneath that, and we'll work toward making only the essential, most important things as goals and we will flesh those out. We've got a whole page about each goal. If that sounds good to you and you'd like to be guided through creating your 2024 plan, I would love to have you join me. The link is in the show notes. The class is called your Best Year and it is $24. So I would absolutely love to see you there Now.
02:21
If you're like me, you maybe woke up this morning thinking, okay, it's New Year's Day, I'm starting a whole new year and here are all the things that I need to do this year. That are just brand new things. I also always have this urge to like clean out every closet and cabinet and give away half the things that I own on New Year's Day. It's such a great chance for a fresh start. But before you do that, I would encourage you to do a couple things, and I'm going to talk you through each one. The first one is to look back at your 2023 and ask yourself the question of what did I do well, what are some of the things that I really enjoyed doing that went really well in the past year? And then ask yourself which? We're going to go through an example of exactly how to do that. And then you're going to ask yourself what were some of the things that I struggled with last year? And then we're going to take both of those and think about what are some of the things I learned last year? What do I know on the first day of 2024 that I did not know on the first day in 2023? And how can I take that with me as I plan my year? Let's first focus on what went well in the past year. Here's a great way to think through that.
03:32
The first thing that I do is I get out a piece of paper and a pen and I flip through my photos for the year. Now, throughout the years I'm taking pictures which if you're a mom you'll probably take 12,986 pictures, like I do, and I try to. I don't always succeed at this but I try to, like at the end of a vacation or some fun time that I've had, go back and just put a heart favorite on my absolute favorite pictures from that experience. So if I can just go look through my favorites folder, I can usually say, oh my gosh, yes, I totally forgot that that was this year that we did that fun thing. So I will look through all of my pictures and write down things on the list from that. That helps me remember trips. My handsome man friend and I do a lot of little getaway trips, like just quick weekend trips, sometimes driving trips, and I was like, oh yeah, we did a lot of fun stuff last year. I forgot about that. So that helps. And then the other thing that I do is I look through my calendar. I have one version of my calendar where I can see personal and I can see work stuff, and so I can sort of see and remember the things that I did throughout the year.
04:42
Another thing that I'll do is I will take a look at the books that I have read, and the reason why I do that is because I want to really ask myself what were the good things that I learned this year too, because to me, it's a win when you get a new perspective on something or you meet someone who gives you a new perspective. So I'll look back to on the books that I've read or think about interesting people that I've met throughout the year. So just write them all down and remind yourself of trips you took, people you spent special time with, accomplishments that you had at work, little things that just made you feel really good. Special little moments count as much as the big ones, in my opinion, and once you've got that whole list so I'm looking at my list right now I start to see trends. So, for example, one of the best things that happened to me that I would consider a huge win in 2023 is I got to spend real time with a lot of people who I really love, like my very best friend from high school. She already lived in Orlando and she was moving to Paris, and so she came back and spent a whole weekend with me at my house. It was just the two of us in my house and we had the most wonderful time and that was such a special time for me. And the same is true as I look across all the things that I wrote down as great things that happened to me that my good friend Leah came to visit me when my podcast launched. I went on this women's business retreat and got to connect with all these great women. I went on a spa weekend for my birthday with my mom and my sister and my sister-in-law. I got to go to the Taylor Swift concert with Josie, my daughter, and my very best friend and her kids. So much of the things that make my good list are my connections with people. So that makes me feel good because I made time to spend time with people who really are special to me and they did the same, and for me that is a huge, huge win.
06:45
I also noticed that I had some wins with my kids. It was a very interesting kid year for me and I didn't really realize it as much until I wrote all this down, but one of my kids turned 16 and one of my kids turned 13, and parenting teenagers is totally different. What used to work as a mom just doesn't work anymore. So it was a year of learning, but I had a lot of fun times with my kids. I got to take them to see the Grand Canyon for the first time, which was an amazing experience. My son started driving. My kids go to school without me driving them. My son drives himself and my daughter takes the bus, and I just I mean forever since my son was like two years old, I've been taking him to school and picking him up, so that was just really kind of an amazing change. But there's just so many ways that they're mature and grown up and it's just really fun to spend time with them in a different way. I also got to take tons of cool trips this year, which is always a very important highlight for me, especially in the winter. I live in St Louis, where it's really cold, so I try to go on a trip to somewhere warm in January and February and March and then go somewhere else cool in the summer, and I was able to check all of those boxes too.
07:59
Workwise, I launched a podcast. My goal was simply to launch a podcast and produce an episode every week, which I have done, as you know. I just got the final review from Buzzsprout, which is where I host my podcast, that it was listened to in 78 countries On listen notes. It's in the top 2.5 percent of podcasts. I just feel like that was a huge win, bigger than I could have even ever thought of. I launched a group coaching offer and I'm coaching my first group now. Tons of my clients had success stories. I redid my office and it feels amazing. What that tells me about work is that, even though I've been doing this for about six years, I'm still changing and growing and learning new things, and that feels really good to me.
08:47
The last area that's really an important one to me is my own physical and mental health. Physically, I went to my gym. Let me tell you exactly 121 times because it tracks in the app that we have to use to log in. My brain wanted to offer that that wasn't very many times, that that's twice a week and that that's not that great. But I'm telling you now I went to the gym 121 times and I'm padding myself on the back for that. If you have things like that, where your brain wants to tell you, it's not great, it is great, it's 121, more than zero. I also competed in a fitness competition at my gym, which was totally intimidating, and I did it and I'm so proud of myself for doing it.
09:33
I took great care of myself in terms of I got a mammogram, I went to the doctor, I went to my OB-GYN, I went to the dentist, I went to the dermatologist so I did all the things for good physical and mental health. From a mental health perspective, I read tons of self-help books. I coach myself almost every day by journaling. I'm great about meditation. I worked with two different coaches this year who taught me different things, so I really gave time and energy to that as well. So if you guys are like great Michelle, good job. Thanks for telling us all the things that went well this year.
10:13
Just even telling you about this, just it makes me feel in good energy and reminds me of all those things. But I had to take the time to look back at my calendar and look back at my pictures and sort of survey the past year to find all that. So I highly recommend that you do that too. The reason why this is such a thumbs up score is because once you've taken the time to do that, you can think about what is it in my life that is good and working, that I can just keep doing so. For example, last year I gave you the specific situation where my friend came to visit me. So I probably won't have that same visit with that same friend, but it just lets me know that I'm doing something right. I'm making time for friends and people who I really care about.
11:01
I don't have to add that to my new goals for this year list. I'm just going to keep on doing that In my gym. Yes, I would like to try to get there like three times a week, and I didn't average three times a week, but that's okay. And this year, if I want to try to average three times a week, I just keep doing what I'm doing. Maybe I add one more day, but these are things that I don't have to start from ground zero.
11:23
Workwise, I can tell by the things that went well that I've got a passion for my job. I'm going to keep going and keep growing. Same with my kids, I learned a lot this year. I'm just going to keep going and keep learning from that. So all the things that are on your list of things that went well are usually just things that you get to keep doing. It doesn't take a lot of energy. That's not true. It takes a lot of energy to do all the things that I said, but not the energy it takes to start a new habit. You can just keep your habit going. I'm just thinking right now of one of my clients who's amazing about reading and she reads, like I don't know, a hundred books in a year or something. That's not going to have to be a new habit for her. She's just going to keep doing that as an example. So once you've written down all of the great things that happened to you last year and the things you want to keep doing, we're gonna focus on looking at the hard parts of 2023. So, again, just make a list, just look back and remember what was hard, difficult, something you had to get through.
12:24
When I look back at mine, the hardest part of my year was my son was going to a school that wasn't a great fit for him, so I took him out of that school before the school year was over and ended up finishing the year homeschooling him. My parents helped me a ton Thank you, mom and dad but he was home with me every day the stuff that I had to teach him was not stuff that I remember. Can you guys remember your high school classes? No, no, I could not remember my high school classes, so I had to teach it to myself. And that was right around the time when I was trying to launch my podcast. I already had a full book of clients and, you know, just managing my regular life, so that felt really Hard at the time.
13:06
And the question you want to ask yourself is how can I use this to my advantage in 2024? What did I learn that can help me in 2024? And for this one, what I would say is that time's over. Now he goes to a school that he loves. Thank goodness, he seems very happy there, so it's not like, oh, I'm gonna learn that I can homeschool while working Practically full-time.
13:29
No, that is not what I learned, but what I did learn is something that felt absolutely impossible, was doable, and I considered moving out the launch of my podcast so that I didn't have to be overwhelmed. I made a promise to myself that I would not launch the overwhelmed working woman from a place of overwhelm. So I was like I'm just gonna keep calmly planning my schedule and working on all of these things every day. I'm gonna work during the normal hours that I work and I'm gonna see what happened, and so by just doing that and keeping my head down, I was not like up till midnight I was not pulling my hair out. I don't want to keep doing that. I didn't want to keep doing it, but I have the strength to pull through in a tough situation and that really makes me happy for whatever it is that I will face in 2024, that I know Okay, there's parts of it that might not be fun, but that I can do it. I also had a hard time with just teen parenting in general. I learned so many lessons about the way to treat teenagers, how to give them a little leeway while still keeping track of what they're doing, etc. So that was really helpful and that is something that I will have to get to Doing in 2024.
14:45
And sometimes something on your list of things that sucks for 2023 will give you an idea for a new year's goal that you want to have. So, for example, if I I don't know I'm making this up, but let's just say I ate terribly and I felt really lethargic most of the time. So what did I learn from that I probably would learn from that that I could change, and that that's something that I want to change. So, as you're looking through the things that were hard, just notice. Is there a lesson here I can take with me? Is there a goal somewhere in this that I can just choose to put on my list for 2024? And if you want to put on your list for 2024, sign up for that class, because that's exactly what we're going to be doing. Okay, the last area that I like to review at the end of the year is just some of the things that I have learned.
15:37
I like to read a lot of books, so for me, it's things that I have learned from reading books. I listen to a lot of podcasts. So what things did I learn from podcasts? Or maybe I've met someone who's new to me and I learned a ton of cool things just about them or from them which, by the way, gets to happen to me all the time with my clients. I love learning new stuff from my clients. For some reason, this year I was very big on reading biographies, and I also love to listen to Armshare Expert Dax Shepard's podcast, where he does in-depth interviews with people. So I feel like I learned a lot between my clients and the books that I read and the podcasts that I listened to about other people's lives.
16:19
I read Minka Kelly's biography. She was on Friday Night Lights. I didn't even really watch Friday Night Lights but I just picked up her book because I heard it on Dax Shepard's podcast and it was amazing. She had a very hard life. She and her mom basically rented a garage in an apartment complex because they couldn't afford the apartment. Her mom was worked as a stripper and was often gone at night, didn't always have food, didn't always have support from her mom. Hard, hard life which she obviously made good on. Another one I read was Spare, the book about Prince Harry. This is a guy who came from Everett, so if Minka Kelly came from nothing, prince Harry came from everything. He still had a lot of hardships due to not getting like love and those kinds of things in his life.
17:08
I read the book I'm Glad my Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy, which was her story about her mom and their complicated relationship. I read Jill Dugger's book about growing up in a very religious household. Anyway, I was just on a kick to read all kinds of biographies this year and it just was such a great reminder to me. Two things I took from those books. One you never know what somebody's been through. So you see Minka Kelly, for example. She's absolutely beautiful, she's been very successful as a TV and movie star and yet she came from this super hard life and made good on it. Prince Harry, you just look at him and think you're the prince. How hard can it be? It can be real hard. It can be real hard. So that was the one thing. And then the other thing is all these people who have written these books have had to go through a healing process In order to be able to talk to them. So it just drove home the importance of therapy, coaching, vulnerability, talking to people who you love and offering that to other people as well. So I loved that.
18:15
Probably my biggest self-help book, favorite of this year was called Essentialism. The general concept of that book is that you have to choose to manage your time by only doing things that are absolutely essential to make the highest contribution towards the things that really matter to you. So, for example, let's say you do I don't know 17 different things at work, but there are like three or four things that really drive your whole business. The point is, do those three or four things and drop the rest. Same with family, kids, friendships, etc. Just take the time to figure out which ones are the most essential and really lean into those and let go of the rest.
18:59
So think about what have you learned, read, heard this year that changed your life, and how will you bring that into 2024? I know that Essentialism book has already affected me and I am going to be very essential even about my goals. I'm not going to make like 10 goals for the year. I'm probably going to have between three and five goals for the year and I'm really focused on those. So happy New Year, friends.
19:23
I hope you'll take the time to do that type of summary. If you sign up for my your best year course, where you will do the workshop and come out with a blueprint, a whole plan for your 2024, part of the pre-work, which is videos and is in the workbook, is doing something very similar to this of what I just walked you through. So if you want to do it in that format, join the class, you'll get the workbook and you can think through all those things before the class and then in the class, will use the information that you found when you took a look at your 2023. Okay, cheers to a wonderful new year. Thank you so much to everyone who helped me make this podcast a success in 2023. And let's keep that going. Have a great day. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.com. See you next week.
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