43. Hoping for Your Best Year Yet? Start With Your Year-End Review

If you want 2024 to be your best year yet, your year-end review contains the clues for how to make it happen!

Tune in to hear Laurie explain how to harness your answers from the year-end audit discussed in last week's Closing Time Series, and in particular, what you want more of (and less of) in 2024 as well as the one decision or change that could be a total game-changer.

Get ready to turn those year-end review insights into 2024 action!

SHOW LINKS AND MENTIONS:
Closing Time: Why Complete a Year-End Review? (Part 1)

Closing Time: Initial Impressions of 2023 (Part 2)

Closing Time: The Best 11 Questions for an Effective Year-End Review (Part 3)

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Let's agree that 2024 is a year that we change that approach. This is going to be the year when we ask for what we want. And we do more of the things that bring us happiness. and joy. And we're intentional about doing more of that. In the next year. Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm Laurie Reynoldson, former award-winning attorney turned high performance coach for midlife women. I designed this podcast is your go-to place for weekly midlife inspiration, step-by-step actionable coaching and candid conversations about mid-life relationships, career moves, money, menopause, and so much more. So take out your reading glasses and notebooks. My friends, because the School of Midlife is in session. Hey there. Welcome back to the school of good life podcast. It is 2024. Can you believe it? I hope everyone had a very happy new year. Um, good holiday season, all of that good stuff. And you're ready to hit the ground running in 2024. In today's episode, I'm helping you set yourself up for your best year ever. This episode builds on the closing time series that dropped last week. If you haven't already listened to the three short episodes. Go back and listen to those. Um, I will drop a clickable link in the show notes here for you so that you can just go listen to them. But in those episodes, I walk you step-by-step through how to do a meaningful year-end review one that will lay the foundation for an incredible year ahead. There's also a 14 page workbook that helps you complete the year-end review with questions to answer or topics to journal on and more so if you haven't already listened to the closing time episodes. I'd suggest you pause this episode and go listen to those first. Download the year-end review guide, work through the questions, and then come back. And listen to this episode, I promise you'll get so much more out of it. Plus you'll understand what I'm talking about here today. Okay. Onto today's episode. Let me start by saying that. I don't really buy in to the new year. New me, bullshit. And here's why. You cannot change your life in one day. don't get me wrong here. Your life can absolutely change forever in a day. If you happen to lose a loved one or get a medical diagnosis that changes everything for you. You. There could be a day where you make a big decision to end a relationship or a marriage, or leave a job or move to a different town. So definitely decisions that you make in a day can definitely alter your life forever. But for most of us, That day doesn't come, just because it's another gear on the calendar. Right. So to say that you'll magically become someone new because you're writing your appointments and a shiny new planner will, in my opinion, that's just not how this all works. Aye. To me, I feel like we're a little too precious with the beginning of a new calendar year. But if we really think about it, it's really just one more day. With that context and my personal bias in mind. I want to help you figure out how you can make 2020 for your best year yet. And. It's up to you. You can start today or next week or next quarter. I mean, hell some of you may have even started yesterday because it was January 1st, but regardless of when you decide to start. The concepts will work whenever the timing works for you. And I think it's important also to underscore that there are no prizes for starting first or fastest when it comes to creating your best year ever. In fact, I personally believe that the first week of January is the absolute worst time to start building new habits or working on a huge big goal for the new year. Y, well, for most of us, we've been on vacation the past week. And for some of you, maybe even longer than a week, And before vacation we'll you were up to your ears and holiday prepping and celebrating, not to mention all of the year end work to do's that you had to complete. So. You haven't worked a regular week in some time now. And because of that. Ask yourself. Does it really make sense to get back to work this week? then back into your normal routine with the kids going back to school. Back to your usual exercise routine. You probably need to go to the grocery store. So do all of that and start creating new habits and working on new goals. I say no. And I'd also bet if you're being honest with yourself, that that is exactly how you have started every other year up to this point. You think it's the beginning of the year I've got to start now. Because so many of us think that it's go time on January one, that, you know, We need to get started. Right. Fricking now. But think about it this way. Think about it like a freeway interchange. You've got an acceleration lane. Leading onto the highway. So you have plenty of room to take your speed from zero to 65 to 75 or 80, whatever the speed limit happens to be on. The interstate near you. And you've got that acceleration lane so that you can get up to speed before merging into the freeway traffic. So that you're already up to freeway speed. Consider this week and maybe even next week, depending on your schedule and how things are working out for you, but consider this week. That you're on the acceleration lane. You're building up speed. You're building up to freeway speed. So in my opinion, Your goal this week, shouldn't be to take on a new project or start building a new habit. But getting up to normal speed. And part of getting up to normal speed in the acceleration lane is figuring out what you want to do and accomplish this year. How you want to live your life in 2024. It's. This week and maybe next week, depending on when you're heading back to work and getting back into the swing of your normal routine. This week should be. Intentional and deliberate, and you should really concentrate and focus on how you're spending your time. And that's where the year-end review comes in handy. Hopefully, hopefully. Because you're still listening to this. You actually have completed the year-end review. And I hope you found it. Interesting. I've heard from several of you that you, you got a lot out of it and I'm, I love hearing that. You one, one woman said she'd forgotten everything she done and accomplished over the past year. Another woman said it was so helpful because she ended the year thinking. That she'd left a lot on the table, that there were so many things that she had hoped to accomplish in 2023, but didn't get to. But then when she went back and did the year-end review. She realized how much progress she'd actually made and hopefully. You had some of those same experiences. I think so often we have a tendency to focus on the negative. What we didn't get done, what we didn't finish or achieve. The wait, we didn't lose the book. We didn't write the trip. We didn't take whatever was on your to-do list. That is still on your to-do list. So looking back on a year-end review with a focus on actually what you were able to accomplish. It. Flips the mindset script just a little bit, which helps you be more. Excited. And. There's a little bit more momentum heading into the new year. So hopefully you found the year end review. Just as helpful as the, the couple of women that I heard from. And what you might be wondering now is how do you use your answers from the year and review to make 2020 for your best year yet? Well, that's all we're going to focus on today. In this episode. And to do that, we're going to focus on your answers to just a couple of the questions. I don't mean to play favorites here when it comes to the questions, because they're all insightful and they can all help you figure out what you want to do in the future. Inform so many future decisions. But there are a couple that are particularly helpful. With what we're hoping to accomplish in this episode. And that is of course. Using the year-end review to create a plan for the coming year. Those questions are number one. What do you want more of in the next 12 months? Number two, what do you want less of in the next 12 months? And number three. What is the one decision you could make or one action that you could take that would have the biggest impact on your life in the coming year. I'm going to take each of these questions in order talk about them and also show you how the answers to some of the other questions. Play into these three. Here we go. Question one. What do you want more of in the next 12 months? The questions that were on the review that relate to this. We're. When were you the happiest? What were you most proud of? What has brought you the most joy or created positive feelings and memories? So often. We take what we're given, right. We tend to deal with what comes at us, but we're not always so intentional about asking for what we want to do. Where we want to go, who we want to spend time with? Between us. Let's agree that 2024 is a year that we change that approach. This is going to be the year when we ask for what we want. And we do more of the things that bring us happiness. and joy And we're intentional about doing more of that. In the next year. Deal. Okay. For me, there are two. Big things I want more of in 2024. First more time with my friends, hands down, more time with my friends. When I went through my year end review this year, I was surprised by how little time I'd actually spent with my friends this year. In a normal year, there would be several girls trips. A lot of time spent with friends. And that could even be at the gym or out on a hike. But I didn't have a lot of those experiences this year. I had a lot of. Really incredible work trips. Or. You know, I did ever sing 29 0 2 9 again. So I met some incredible people along the way. But kind of my core friends, there just wasn't enough time spent with them this year. I was lucky enough to spend a weekend at a spa in Arizona with a childhood friend, which was the most one-on-one time I've spent with her since we graduated high school. So it was particularly fun to spend several days with the adult version of her. If you've got friends that go back to childhood and you haven't spent a lot of time with them as adults, then you probably understand what I mean. So that was great. And that was soul serving and a great way to refill the cop. This, this also kind of hit home to me. And it became obvious when. One of my closest friends flew into town for the funeral of our friend's daughter. It was absolutely terrible circumstances. But one of my best memories of the year was the super short time I spent with her after the funeral. We, uh, went to dinner. We had a glass of wine and just, she's one of those people that I can pick right up with every single time. Like we just. We can go. Uh, length of time without seeing each other or talking to each other and we just pick it up. Like we haven't missed a beat. And. Even though she was in town for the funeral and we met up. At the funeral, we just had this beautiful evening catching up with each other. It was super sad. You know, crying, but so happy to be together. And there is no question in my mind. I need more of that in 2024. More more time with my friends. The other thing I need more time with. Second is. More travel. Every morning as part of my morning, 5, 10, 5. I write down that I vacation annually in Europe and at the beach. Because I want two big vacations a year. I, my best self is someone who takes two big vacations every year. And for the last several years. I've actually managed to make that a reality or at least a partial reality. If I can't get both trips in that I've then I typically have gotten one big vacation in whether that's traveling to Europe or spending some time on a beach in Mexico. In 2023, there were no vacations. Sure. I traveled to Austin and Phoenix and Southern California for work. We made a quick trip to Las Vegas for Mike's birthday. I went to Jackson hole to volunteer at the 29 0 2 9 EverString event. We spent some good time in sun valley. So all good things. But in my book, Not vacations. We had to cancel our trip to London and Paris after Mike's mom fell and had surgery in the fall. We never actually got a tropical vacation on the books. So, um, 20, 23. No travel. No vacation travel. Um, We have already booked flights to Cabo and London and Paris in 2024. So it's looking like we'll do better with travel in 2024. In next week's episode of among other things, I'll share a little bit more about my process for getting things on the calendar in 2024. I see how all of these episodes build, you know, we start with the year-end review and then we go into how you can apply those questions. To create the year that you want. And then the next part of the series will be okay. So how do you get that on the calendar? How do you actually make. time for all those things? We'll talk about that in the next episode, when I. Walk you through how to block out your calendar. Um, so make sure that you tune in next week for that. Okay, moving on to question two. What do you want less of in the next 12 months? And the related questions that you can draw on from the year-end review are what have you done that has caused you the most stress or negative feelings? And I ask you when you were answering those questions to think of who were you with? What were you doing? And then another question was when were you unhappy? Why don't we look at these things? Well, obviously we want less of what ever is making you unhappy or whatever is stressing you out or causing negative feelings. And buy less. Of course. I mean, if you could completely cut those things out. Then that would be great. Um, I don't know if that is entirely realistic. I mean, there are going to be things that make, that made you unhappy or cost you stress or frustration and negativity that you just can't get rid of. But if you found. A pattern that you were experiencing some of those motions when you were around certain people. Then that may mean creating and holding healthy boundaries in 2024. It may mean finding a new job or career it, it could potentially also mean ending a relationship or a marriage or a friendship. Hear me when I say this, though. I don't want you to just start the year off by blowing up your life. If something's not working for you, it's possible that You just might need to adjust how you're approaching or showing up in certain situations. We've talked about this before on the podcast, but whatever you are looking for, you will find. If you're always going into work thinking it's going to be a terrible day. Or if you approach every interaction with your spouse, with the expectation that they'll let you down, that they're not showing up for you. Or if you start. Say a new eating and exercise plan by thinking that you'll give it a shot, but nothing really has ever stuck. Then you guessed it. How you're showing up what you're focusing on, how you're experiencing what's going on in your life. It has a lot to do with you. So don't undermine your circumstances. Even before they happen. Does that make sense? What do I want less of, um, this one, it was really obvious to me when I went through my calendar. I'm giving up control over my in-laws health. Because when I look at my calendar and how much time I spent and so much energy and frustration. I seem to be the only one worried about them living by themselves or by allowing my father-in-law to continue driving. I know that. That Mike and his brother are, you know, they're certainly concerned about it and they think about it too, but like it stresses the hell out of me. In fact, I'm currently working on healing. My second cold sore in two weeks. And why do I get cold sores? You guessed it stress. But. When I looked back over. Since September anyway. And, and the last several weeks in particular, the most stressful situations in the last quarter of the year, Involved. My in-laws. And their health and letting them stay at their home and not having, not moving them or bringing in full-time care because they don't want either of those options. But I want less of that stress in 2024. So I'm changing how I approach issues related to their help. I can't control the stupid things they're doing because they're the cognitive abilities are slipping. I can't control that they leave the house and they lock the door and they leave the keys inside. I can't control that they have no idea what day of the week it is. So they show up for their doctor's appointments on the wrong days, or, you know, three hours early. But I can absolutely control how I'm responding. And I've decided I want less stress related to my in-laws in 2024. Speaking of less things I want 20, 24. I also made a really interesting discovery when I was working through my year-end review this year. And in particular, when I was looking through my camera roll. And that's why it's so important to not only look at a calendar and the appointments and meetings and events of the year. But also look through your photos. So I've got my phone out and I'm scrolling through the photos. On my phone and I realized something. I started 219 days and yes, I actually went back and I counted. 219 days. I started by taking a before picture of myself in front of a mirror. Some days, it was the only photo I took. So what do I mean by a before photo? It's it's a photo that you would see in a Before and after transformation, you know, side by side pictures. So they're all of me and a sports bra and either tights or shorts. And to make the transformation seem more legit, like more than I had actually worked for it. I chose the very worst angles. I purposely pulled down the waistband down on my. Hips. So that I could highlight the belly bulge. I didn't suck my stomach in at all. Because again, I wanted it to be obvious when the after picture was taken, that there had been an impressive transformation. Except that there was no incredible transformation photo. No. Jaw dropping after photo because wall, I may have a menopausal belly bulge. You know, a chubby middle that no longer responds to the workouts. I've always done. Some belly fat that magically appeared in my fifties. I don't have a body type that would show an amazing transformation. Or if I did. I would have to give up every thing I love eating in my life to weigh let's say 10. Maybe 10 pounds less, maybe five, but it, I just don't have the body type that would show that kind of really, you know, award-winning oh my God. Amazing transformation between the before and the after photos. Here's what's so interesting to me about the photos. I started 219 days that way. So 60% of my days, I started by looking at myself in the mirror and focusing on what was wrong with my body. Not how strong my body is or how capable it is or help formidable. It was, I mean, it climbed a mountain 15 times in less than 30 hours in June. Right. I wasn't concentrating on that. I was concentrating on what was wrong with my body. 219 days. And really I went back even farther than that. Theo's pissed off about it too. Can you hear him? But. When I look back, I tend to start every year. With a similar type of a photo. And I've been doing this for years. It's interesting too, because I pride myself on taking a meditative walk every morning. I'm intentional about sending it my mindset. First thing in the morning with the morning, 5, 10, 5, and the best life daily planner and habit tracker. And yet. I am wittingly started 219 days in 2023 bite. Essentially fucking up my mindset before the day even started. So I'm doing less of that in 2024. In fact. I'm not even doing less of that. I am cutting that off completely. I, I refuse to do it. I'm no longer doing it. It is not serving me. And that's the power of doing a year-end review. I have been snapping those photos for years. And it never occurred to me how that was impacting my mindset or underscoring my limiting beliefs or. Just not really doing anything helpful at all. So that's what I'm not taking into 2024. What about you? What did you figure out by doing your year-end review? And that leads us finally, to question three. What's one decision you could make, or one action you could take that would have the biggest impact on your life in the coming year. What is one thing you could do that would change? Everything for you. It could be related to. If I, if I could go back, I would do this differently. Or the question about what haven't you finished yet? Or the question about what would you like to do over on. But maybe it's none of those. I think it's interesting to note that none of those questions. About what is the one thing that. Could make the biggest impact going forward. None of those related to what your biggest accomplishments were for last year. Instead the focus. Should be. On how you felt when you were doing certain things around certain people in certain places. The people and the things that made you feel good and happy and proud. And. When I talk about what's one thing that you could do in 2024, that would change everything for you. I'm not talking about something. To earn another gold star or another achievement. I mean, sure. It could be that. But here's what I have learned. Finally. And finally, I mean, It's taken me decades to learn this. But when you get your energy, right. When you get your mindset right. Everything else comes together. And so the focus on what's the one thing. That could make the biggest impact. I'll bet it relates to getting your energy right. Getting your mindset, right. And then those accolades and the gold stars and the achievements that you're looking for, those are just going to fall into place, which is. Beautiful. For me, the one thing that will change everything for me. And this will be no surprise to you if you listen to my birthday episode, but I'm going all in on school at midlife in 2024. I'll no longer be trying to manage two businesses. I can't. I just, I don't have the time. And. The willingness and the energy to, to do that. So instead of having one foot in. On school of midlife and one foot in on commercial real estate brokerage. I'm pointing both of my feet in the same direction and heading full speed ahead in 2024 with helping high achieving women create their very best life in midlife. There. God, there's so many cool things coming down the pike for you. I wish I could let you know all about them right now, but I tend to jump the gun when I announce things. So I'm going to take a more measured approach in 2024 and, uh, announce things as it makes sense to announce them. But. I am so excited about this coming year, and I hope you are too. And I'm curious. What about you? What's the one thing, the one decision, the one change that would have the most profound impact on your year. Don't you owe it to yourself to do that. To take a chance on yourself. I know you think you've got all the time left to do what you want to do once you retire or earn the next promotion or when the time is right for everyone else or. Whatever you're kicking down the road until someday. But here's the thing. At some point you need to take care of yourself. To look out for number one to do what's most important for you. You've already devoted a lot of your life to taking care of others, to focusing on everyone else. First. Why not make 20, 24 be the year of you. So, what is that one thing that one decision and the one thing that would have the most profound impact on your year? I'm curious. I would love if you would share with me. You can drop me an email. You can send me a DM on Instagram, you know where to find me. In next week's episode, we'll talk about how to plan your year to make some space and time to go after that one thing. In between now and then be sure, you know, your answers to these three questions so that you can take full advantage of the strategies that we'll be discussing in next week's episode. Thanks so much for being here. Take good care and I'll see you right back here. Next week when the school of midlife is back in session. Have you claimed your limited edition school of midlife hat yet? It's super easy to do. Just three quick little steps. First follow the podcast, wherever you listen to your podcasts. To take a quick minute and give us a rating. I would be so appreciative to have a five-star rating from you. And then third. Take just 30 seconds and write us a quick review. And then once you've done all of that, fill out the form in the show notes so that I can send you your brand new custom-made school of midlife hat. Think about it as my gift to you for being so supportive of the show thanks so much for being here