Good morning my dears,
How are you all today? So I’m recording this December 2023 as the year comes to a close…and some of you will have not quite had as great a year as you would have hoped. And so this episode is specifically for you.
If you are in the online space right now, you will probably be being bombarded with social media posts from other business owners bragging about their success and their accomplishments this year, which can be particularly hard to stomach, when you have not achieved what you wanted.
And, of course, depending on their business – and especially if they sell consulting or coaching, their posts are usually followed by a promise to teach you the exact 3 step formula or process that they used to create their success that will guarantee you getting there next year…
And if you’ve been lucky enough to not see many of those posts, but you are in the online space, then you will most certainly be seeing invitations to various Strategy workshops, Year planning workshops and programs starting in the New Year…promising to set you up for a great year next year…
And I, myself, will certainly be running some sessions to help you get started in the New Year, as well as kicking off Time Masters in January, so if you do know that you either need to work on your messy business next year, you need to work on your time, your productivity, your hustling and lack-of-a-work-life balance, or you just need to work on getting out of your own way…make sure you are on my email list so you don’t miss out…
But before you desperately sign up for that coaches program, promising you the world, or before you rock up to the strategy sessions to map out next year, and even any sessions that I offer, you will want to do a pause and reset, which is what I am going to teach you in this episode – in my end of year review process.
And I want you to do this, and you will want to do this for two reasons.
1) We don’t usually want to be making important strategic decisions in our business from a place of frustration, or disappointment, or defeat, or despair – and that might be where you are currently at, and how you are currently feeling, if you haven’t had a great year and you haven’t taken the time to pause and reset yet…
And 2) We also want to make sure that whatever happened this year, doesn’t happen again next year.
And that’s not to say, that next year is going to be a guaranteed success – but if there were obstacles this year that resulted in us being where we are at, that we can prevent from being the same obstacles that we face next year, then we don’t want to skip over them and just rush ahead to create the same strategy next year. And this is what I see time and time again…
Starting the year or the quarter with intentions, and goals and expectations, and a strategy, that all falls flat within the first month. And that might be an ambitious goal, or a strategy involging being consistent at your weekly marketing activities, or a plan to get ahead before you next launch, or it might be an intention to actually have more of a work-life balance from now on…whatever the intention, the goal or the strategy…a couple of months in, the same struggle that happened last time you tried it that caused you to fail or stumble, happens again.
So to make sure that doesn’t happen this year – I want you to take a pause and reset with this episode.
And even if you are listening to this episode at some point in the future, and it is not at the end of the year, or the beginning of next year, but you still aren’t where you think you should be, or you’ve had a tricky few months, the concept of needing a pause and a reset, and the benefit of doing the exercise that I’m going to share with you in here, before you move on, still applies to you…
So let’s just say wherever you are in the year, the past few months, the last six months, even the last year – hasn’t gone according to plan.
You thought you’d be further ahead by now.
You thought you would have already achieved x,y,z or made a certain amount of money in your business by now.
You thought you’d be feeling different than you are – maybe more confident or sure by now…
Maybe you even thought you’d have blown your own goals out of the water by now…because secretly, at the beginning of the year, you had high expectations for the possibilities of extraordinary success this year.
And yet, you are not there.
Maybe you even feel like you have gone backwards in your business.
Maybe you have less assets or smaller cash reserves now than you had at the beginning of the year.
Maybe you have less confidence than you had at the beginning of the year.
Maybe you feel more burnt out than you did the previous year.
Either way, you are not that happy with where you are, compared to where you wanted to be.
And next year, or certainly, the next few months, you want to be different. Better.
So before we jump straight into our strategy for business or plans for the New Year – the pause and reset process that you need – has 3 steps.
So the first step is called Neutralise. The second step – Theorise. The third step – Optimise.
So the first step – Neutralise. This is where we want to take the charge out of where you are at, emotionally. We want to neutralise and reset your nervous system state to a calm, neutral, grounded state.
And the reason we want to do this – is because it’s almost impossible to come up with great problem solving ideas and creative solutions, when we are in a heightened nervous system state. When we are in fight or flight or freeze. When we are swimming in negative emotions and thought cycles. Have you ever heard the saying – when emotions are high, intelligence is low?
And so we don’t want to plough ahead with trying to take sudden action to get us out of this hole we feel we are in, or try to plan out our next steps or strategy or year – from this negatively charged emotional space. We want to neutralise it first.
So this is how we do this…
The very first thing I want you to do – is be honest with yourself about where you are, and where you wanted to be.
Sometimes the worst thing we can do is brush off our own disappointments, or pretend that everything’s ok when we really are feeling the pain of failing at meeting our own expectations.
So I want you to sit down with a cup of tea and a piece of paper and pen, with a quiet few minutes to yourself, and write down the facts of your situation, honestly.
What exactly was your expectation? Or goal?
And where exactly are you right now?
And ideally we want these facts to be actual facts – things we could prove in a court of law. So number of sales, or money in your account, or number of leads on your email list…
Where did you expect to be by today’s date?
And where are you now?
Once we have got that clear, and on paper in front of you, I want you to see what comes up – emotion wise.
What are the emotions you have when you see your expectation vs. reality?
So one word emotions – like frustrated, disappointed, crushed, bitter, resentful, shocked, defeated, numb…
What comes to you when you look at the data in front of you? What do you feel?
And I want you to take your piece of paper – and write each emotion that you can identify, one emotion per line.
And take your time.
We just want to allow the feelings that come up naturally when we think of our goal versus where we are – to be there.
Just notice them – in your body. Acknowledge them. Write them down.
The next thing I want you to do – once you’ve got them all in front of you…
Is go to each line – with the emotion written down on it – imagine you could pick it up off the paper – and breathe it in – like it was a scent that you could inhale, but that when it enters your body, you feel it…
And once you have that first emotion – ask yourself the question – why am I feeling this? Why am I (insert feeling)? So for example, why am I disappointed?
And then I just want you to write a stream of consciousness – all the things that come out in that answer. It might be one sentence, or two, or many. But I want you to write them all down – next to the emotion that you are asking about.
Then move on to the next emotion on your page. And repeat.
And I want you to do this for all of your emotions.
Now this is a pretty terrible experience – I won’t lie – because what we are doing – is really allowing ourselves to feel. We are allowing ourselves to get close and personal with all of the crappy thoughts that we are having about our reality versus our goal.
And they won’t feel good.
You might be writing things like you had hoped to treat your family to a dream holiday or vacation this year, and you didn’t make the money to.
Or maybe you were determined to have a better work-life balance this year and that hasn’t happened…
Whatever comes up around that, whatever thoughts you have about that, and whatever you are making it mean about you – write it down.
Once you have done that for each of the emotions – the next step is to read back over them, but as if you are looking through an objective lens.
And we are going to do 3 passes over in total.
So the first pass/the first read through, I want you to pause at each thought you have written and ask – “is it true?” “Is it really true?”
“And would everyone in the world agree with you about this?”
“If not, what actually is true? And if it does feel true? What else might be true here?”
So if I take the example above – say you’ve written down that you feel like a failure, and crushingly disappointed – because you had hoped to treat your family to a dream holiday vacation for Christmas – and because you didn’t make the money you wanted, you can’t.
And let’s say when you’ve expanded on that – you are making that mean that you failed your family, you let them down, you are a terrible mother.
That is what you are telling yourself about where you are at right now.
If you ask yourself is it true? Really true? That you let them down? And are a terrible mother because of this? And would everyone in the world agree? And what else is true?
You might get to the place of – yes, I did fail on delivering this promise. I let them down on this one thing. But I have managed to keep them safe and well still. And we’ve done a ton of other fun experiences this year. And not everyone would agree that this makes me a terrible mother…
Ok – see how we are sort of picking at the worst assumptions and stories we are telling ourselves – and neutralising them somewhat – making them feel a little less painful…
The second pass through – the second time you read through – you want to do it through the lens of “is it hurtful?” “is this thought a hurtful thought to think?”
And because sometimes our brains are sneaky as to our own self-critical nature – and we think we aren’t being that mean to ourselves, when we really are – a useful question to ask yourself – is “would I say this to a friend or person I care deeply about?”.
So is telling myself that I let my family down hurtful to me? And it might be obvious – yes that pains me to think that. Or you might have to think – would I ever say to someone who didn’t meet her financial goal in her business – “you know you’ve let your whole family down”…?
Then it becomes really quite clear – what is hurtful and what is not…
And the third pass through – I want you to ask yourself “is it helpful?” “So would what you are saying to yourself – would this get your friend or person you care deeply about to take progressive action forward?”
So maybe you think it is true, you did fail on delivering this promise, and that is what I would say to someone I love – you failed on this one thing…
But would telling them that – help motivate them to move forward? Would it make them feel good about moving forward and trying again?
And if not – what would you tell them about that thing instead?
Probably something along the lines of – you failed on this one thing – and it’s no big deal. Your family are still proud of you for trying – what a great lesson in resilience and having a go – this is giving to your kids. You can try again next year. It isn’t your fault – you were juggling a lot this year. You just misjudged the timing…You’ve learned so much.
See how just with a little bit of exploring, a little bit of self-coaching – you can neutralise some really sh*tty thoughts and a pretty sh*tty feeling experience.
We aren’t thought swapping here to something that doesn’t feel true. We aren’t making it up. We aren’t lying to ourselves. We aren’t pretending it didn’t happen.
We are just seeing that achieving our goals is not always black and white. And we are having some compassion for ourselves.
We are moving from having dirty pain – I’m not sure if you have heard that term before (but it’s essentially pain that we are inflicting on ourselves – additional suffering that perhaps isn’t necessary or helpful)…we are moving from dirty pain to just being left with clean pain (which is the natural disappointment we will feel when we hope to achieve something and we don’t). That clean pain is just part of the human experience. And we want to get to the place where we are just really feeling the clean pain emotions. And allowing them to be there and processing them through.
And letting the dirty pain dissolve – by letting go of some of those unhelpful, harmful narratives we are telling ourselves. As Haruki Murakami once said “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
So if you have done that step of the process all the way through…and you are now feeling less triggered, or less intense emotions about where you are at…
Then you can move to step 2 of the process.
If you are still feeling intense emotions though around it, particular despair, or desperation around being where you are at – then I want you to do one more exercise before you move on to Step 2. I want you to find okness with where you are at. So in this very moment, right now – how are you ok? How is your family ok? What do you have right now? Whatever you need to pull out or think – to make yourself feel ok with where you are at right now – that’s what I want you to find.
So even if your goal was to pay off your debt this year – and things didn’t go to plan, and you still have 30k on a credit card – which you don’t think is ok – maybe you are panicked around it – right now – how are you ok? Make your brain answer that question. And it might just be ok today. How am I ok today? I have food in the fridge today. I have a job today. I will get paid later on today. I have a roof over my head. I have skills I can offer someone. I have friends who I could ask for help. I have clothes that can keep me warm. Look for what you do have, and why you are currently ok – even though you are not where you want to be.
And if you are struggling with this – maybe your body is super activated – then use some simple grounding techniques to calm your body down. So take a nice deep inhale through your nose, and exhale twice as long. Do that three times. And then bring your attention to the chair you are sitting in. The support it is giving you. The feeling of it underneath you. The feeling of your feet on the floor. The solidness of the floor. Just slowly move your attention from one solid thing around you to another. As you keep breathing nice and slow. Maybe place your hand on your chest and feel it as it rises and falls. Your other hand on your belly and feel it as it moves in and out as you breathe. Remind yourself you are safe. That you are ok.
And then start to look for all the ways you are ok again.
And then when you are in a calmer more grounded state. Then we move to step 2 of the review process.
So step 2 is Theorise. We want to theorise why there is a gap between where you are now and where you want to be.
We want to objectively theorise. Without blame, or judgement or shame.
Which is harder than it looks.
But I want you to try – just jot down 3-5 theories minimum as to why you didn’t create the reality you wanted. Keep going if things keep coming to you.
Consider external things, and internal things.
So external things are things that are outside of you – this might be the economy, family circumstances that popped up that impacted on your time, or your energy or state of mind, maybe a competitor, some legal issues, timing, you ran out of money so had to stop marketing, bad luck…etc.
And then internal things – things directly to do with you – maybe you had health issues, maybe your confidence got knocked, you had some resistance to selling this year, you had doubts about your offer, some mindset wobbles, some fear come up, maybe you lost motivation, or belief, or you didn’t take enough action, or you think you lack a certain skill set or knowledge, you slipped back into old habits, you quit, you made a decision that took you in the opposite direction of what you wanted…etc.
What do you think is responsible for you not hitting your goal? Or achieving what you wanted?
Create your list of theories. And there is nothing off the table here. It is all valid.
And then looking at that list – what do you think are your top 3? Your main reasons?
Circle those three.
That is what we are going to work on moving forward.
The third step in the process – is called Optimise. Where we want to optimise our chances or it being different and hopefully better next year.
So we want to take those theories and first of all consider – are they in your control? Because some things won’t be. For example – maybe you had a health issue just come out the blue and there was nothing you could have done to prevent it – and it took time and energy away from your goal or your business.
Or maybe you had to take care of a parent or someone else in your family – and that put a time and energy strain on your other activities.
Where things are out of your control, what you want to do – is first estimate how likely they are to occur again…so you can see if it’s worth you taking the time to strategise and work out how to work around this circumstance…
And then if it is likely to happen again – whilst you can’t control the actual circumstance, you can control our response to it. You can create strategies to help you manage it, help you manage your emotions around it, your time, your energy around it.
So for anything that isn’t in your control, but is likely to happen again – come up with a strategy on what you need to do, what you need to think, what you could put in place to better support yourself in that situation – that would mean it doesn’t compromise your overall goal or plan for the year ahead.
For anything else that is in your control, the same thing applies. What do you need to do in order to support yourself to not have the same obstacle again?
So if it was mindset struggles in your business, how are you going to overcome them? Do you have a coach that you can reach out to, to work with in the next few months to address them?
If one of your theories as to why you didn’t achieve the success you wanted, or the work-life balance you wanted, is that you burnt out because you were trying to do too much, can you create a plan or business strategy that involves less projects, fewer commitments, that has more space and time for you to recharge in- and if you don’t know how to do that – how to simplify your business, streamline your systems, hire in support, constrain yourself, enforce your own boundaries and stop yourself from overworking – have you got a plan for learning how to do that? Shameless plug here – Time Masters will help you do that.
But essentially we want to have at the end of this step is a strategy for each of the obstacles that you have theorised were in the way of you achieving what you wanted. And that strategy to have action steps that you can then take in the next few weeks – so reach out to that coach to get help. Or ask your sister can she help with your parents, for example.
And then once we have that. We want to finish this last step with finding and tapping into our own resourcefulness around where we are going.
Because whilst it is very easy to start with a bang, start the New Year with a bang, each Monday with a fresh start feeling…it is also very easy to quickly slip back into old habits, old patterns and thinking that you won’t create what you want – because you didn’t over the past few months.
We are very good at using our past to define what we are capable of in the future.
And so we always want to bring our brains back to focusing on how awesome we actually are. How resourceful we are. How next year could easily be different. And so what I want you to do – to finish this review exercise – is take ten minutes to think about, and look for, and write down – all the things that you have done in the past few months, or the past year – all the achievements you have made, the progress you have made, anything you could be proud of, the resilience you’ve shown, the lessons you’ve learned, the insights you’ve had…
Write all that down.
Because even when we don’t achieve what we want, even when we are in our darkest times, and struggling the most – there is gold to be pulled out. There are lessons in our failings. There are resources that we can see in ourselves – that we can’t actually access when we are winning.
So this exercise will bring them all the top of your mind. And as you write them, I want you to allow yourself to swim in the feel-good emotions that come from thinking about them.
And then allow yourself to make the mental connection to how these lessons, and this progress, and these insights, and this resourcefulness that you can see you’ve had this year, will help you next year.
And THEN you are ready to make your strategy for next year. To make your plan. To set your intentions. To set your goal. With it informed by the lessons you have found and the strategies you have come up with to tackle your obstacles, within this review.
Ok – that’s it for this week. I really hope you do this exercise. This will be more useful to you than any strategy day or session you attend – without a shadow of a doubt.
Let me know if you struggle with any of it – or let me know if what comes out of it – is that you need to work on your time – just DM me the word TIME MASTERS on Instagram.
Have a great week.
Recent Comments