As the year comes to an end, it’s essential to reflect on the year and prepare for the one ahead. I share five ways to prepare for 2023 right now, so you can start off the new year on the right foot.
Themes discussed in this episode
- Ending the year feeling accomplished
- Create an ongoing commitment to learning for 2023
- Take action on the changes you want to make
- Prioritize rest in 2023
- Visualize what you want in the new year
Episode Highlights
Timestamped inflection points from the show
1:15 – End the year with a feeling of accomplishment: Write out your accomplishments of 2022, no matter how personal or small. This will help you end the year with confidence and set a great tone for the new year.
2:00 – Commit to learning in 2023: Create a commitment to ongoing learning, so you can improve your personal and professional skills, your knowledge of business, and your overall performance.
4:00 – Take action: If there are life or career changes you’ve been wanting to make, now is the time to take action and finally make them a reality.
5:45 – Make rest a priority: Rest is essential for creativity, productivity, and quality work.
9:10 – Visually represent your goals: Whether you make a vision board or write it out in a journal, take the time to visualize your goals and clarify your plans for the new year
Top Quotes
2:00 – There’s a lot of things that get done in those three hundred and sixty five days, but we don’t always appreciate them. I suggest that you start off with that 50 things list. That will leave you with confidence, with a feeling of encouragement, and some pride in what you did.
3:00 – Even reading 1 business book a month puts you into a brand new category of lifelong learners, and it will improve your personal relationship skills, your knowledge of business, and your ability to perform well.
4:30 – We’re all more critical of ourselves than anyone else is, so if you have a dream of a new job, take action on that
8:40 – If you are well rested, you will naturally accomplish more.
12:00 – Letting your mind flow and just writing what comes to you will help you clarify what your plans for the new year should be.
Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Work, Accomplishment, Commitment, Writing, Thought, Talk, Year, Subconscious Mind
Announcer 0:00
Welcome to work mom says, don’t be an idiot. And now here’s your host. Work, Mom.
Lori Jo Vest 0:12
Hello, everybody, thank you for joining me for episode 23 of work mom says, Don’t be an idiot. I’m Lori Jo Vest your host. And I am here today to talk about five things you can do right now to start the new year off, right? Everybody’s always looking at you know, dieting, and exercising and all these things as being, you know, the things that you’re supposed to do to start the new year, and you’re supposed to make resolutions to lose 40 pounds and all that. But I don’t know that that is the way that works.
Obviously, so many people break those commitments. And so I have a couple things that have worked for me that I would love to share today. And I hope they’re helpful for you, too. So first things first, ending the year right is always important. And what I mean by that is, you should have a feeling of accomplishment, there’s things you did this year 2022, that were probably pretty darn awesome, you may have forgotten about them. So what I’m going to ask you to do is get a piece of paper and a pen and write out 50 Things that you accomplished in 2022. And that may mean getting out the calendar. And looking back at what happened in January, you’ll be able to tell by appointments you had and people you saw. So you’ll want to get that calendar out, sit down for about a half hour might take you longer, and just write out the things you accomplished.
I’ll give you a few examples. If you adopted a dog, that is an accomplishment. If you learn to make bread, that is an accomplishment, if you started getting up half hour earlier every morning, so that you could take a walk with your partner, that’s an accomplishment. If you got six new clients, whoa, that’s amazing. That’s really great. If you started writing your book, whatever it is, you did, and there’s a lot of things that get done in those 365 days. But we don’t always appreciate them. So I’m going to suggest that you start off with that 50 Things list that will leave you with confidence with a feeling of encouragement. And you know, some pride in what you did. And that’s you know, that’s how you should feel as you look into the new year, what you want to make happen in 2023. So number two on this list of five things is create a ongoing learning commitment. And I know that sounds like bluff, boring, but what that really means is make a commitment to things that are going to teach you more about yourself about life, about your career, all of those things are relevant to the things that happen at work, so I’m going to push all three of them. That might mean adding a few new podcasts to your rotation.
If you’re a podcast listener, or making a commitment to read a certain number of books, I have a friend that committed to reading 50 books in one year, that’s a lot of books. Even one business book a month puts you into a brand new category of ongoing learners. And it will improve your personal relationship skills, your knowledge of business, your knowledge of how to perform well. So create some kind of a commitment to ongoing learning. And then follow it if you fall off the wagon for a month, get back up on it, keep going. Because it really is something that once you get used to doing it, you’ll never give it up. And lifelong learners are also usually high performers. That’s what I found.
Number three, consider the changes that you’d like to make in your life and the things that you would like to get done. What’s been hanging around what’s been hanging out there for a really long time. Did you have you know, did you mention to someone three years ago that you wanted to eventually write a book? Did you think about maybe going back to school and getting your master’s degree? Are you really dreaming of a job at you know, big company that, you know, you just don’t think you’re good enough for at that level yet. Stop yourself right there. You don’t know where you are. We’re all more critical of ourselves than anyone else is. So if you have a dream of a new job, take action on that take action on those items.
Because one of the things that that people frequently talk about is how they feel stuck. They feel stuck. They’re bored, they’re not motivated. Well, the solution to all of that is action. And if you give some thought to the changes that you’d like to see in your life, improving relationships, getting to know people at the job, getting to know your boss, documenting the work you do in a way that has you be able to go into your annual review with some numbers behind you, any of those things that you’ve been thinking about and haven’t done yet, make a list, start taking actions. Again, this will build your confidence, and it will build your productivity and your feeling of accomplishment, which then brings more accomplishment. So you see where I’m going here. Now, I’m going to take a hard right turn. And the hard right turn is take some time to rest, make a commitment to rest in 2023. I know hustle culture is the thing. We’re all running around trying to get as much done as we can. And we’ve got jobs and side hustles. And friends we want to see and things we want to do build in some rest time, as well.
Lori Jo Vest 5:48
One of the reasons I like to talk about that is based on some work by Benjamin Hardy, he’s a personal growth and I guess, goal achievement specialist expert guy. And Benjamin Hardy, great guy, really great work out there. And he’s the guy that will help you figure out how to get where you want to go. And he talks about how one of the barriers that’s in our way, as that we’re so busy with what we’re doing all the time, that we don’t take enough time for leisurely, creative thought, we don’t allow our subconscious minds to bring thought to the surface. Because we’re just constantly filling our brains with, you know, entertainment, or, you know, whether we’re reading or watching TV or watching a video. I mean, it’s, it’s a lot. And with our smartphones that we carry around with us, it’s really easy. If you’re standing in line somewhere, to pull your phone out and start watching videos or reading texts. What if when you were standing in line bored, you left your phone in your pocket, and you just kind of let your mind wander.
That’s where creativity comes from. That’s where subconscious ideas and thoughts can bubble up. The other thing he suggests is if you need to be a little more proactive about it, which I know I do, is that you spend 2030 minutes a week listening to binaural beats. Those are sound tracks that are created with sound waves, they sound kind of like music, but they’re more actually like a like spa background noise that’s supposed to relax your brain and cause you to relax. And it really works well. If you’re stressing out over something, put binaural beats in the background. If you want to let your mind rest, put some headphones on lay down on the couch for 20 to 30 minutes. And just let that kind of spa music roll over you. And you’ll notice that after 510 minutes, your mind will start bubbling up thoughts and things you haven’t thought of before and maybe thinking of things in a new way. So I highly recommend it. Keep a pen and paper handy. So that you’re able to scribble down those great ideas that you came up with, and, and make a commitment to allowing more of that downtime to because there’s a lot of talk about how you know we want to accomplish and accomplish and I’m guilty of that myself.
However, if you are well rested, you will naturally accomplish more. There’s a saying going around a mantra that people are talking about that slow down to speed up. If you’re slowing down and allowing yourself time to think and to rest, you’ll not only be more productive, but you’ll also be more accurate, less likely to make mistakes, because you’ll be calm and resting. And that internal environment is a critical piece of being able to accomplish great things which I know we all want to do. So my last item on my list, this is going to be a short podcast.
The last item on my list is planning. Make sure you take some time to after you’ve done these other things. To plan what you’d like to see happen in 2023. Really give it some thought what would you like to see happen? vision boards are a great tool. What I usually do with a vision board is grab a stack of magazines cut out a whole bunch of random photos and sayings and imagery that appeals to me with no thought as to why no one tension, no thought just oh, this is pretty I like it and pull out images. What I find works after that happens is I’ve got a big stack of images and I can start sorting through them. And I’ll notice things like for example, if I have a lot of outdoor shots, a lot of you know plush greenery trees that will tell me you need to get outside. If I have have, you know a lot of yoga meditation Zen kind of images, that tells me I need to do some more, you know, spend some more internal thinking, and meditative time. So it really can help you figure out with your subconscious mind and your creative mind what you really want in the new year. And another way to do that, if you’re not really much of a visual person, or just, you know, cutting and pasting things doesn’t appeal to you.
The end game of a vision board is you take all those sorted images, and you put them on a, whether it’s a poster board or a canvas, and put them all on it in a way that is very visual and visually represents your goals. And then you put that up over your desk or in your bedroom, somewhere where you’re going to see it. So the idea of if that idea doesn’t excite you, you know, cutting and pasting, and ModPodge and all that stuff, then consider journaling. That’s another way to, you know, not typing on the computer. But writing out in longhand, can pull things out of your mind that you might not come up with otherwise. And there’s a lot of things on the internet, a lot of if you Google, you know, planning my future questions to help plan my future. You don’t, they’ll be out there. But you can do something as simple as by the end of 2023, I would like to have blank, and then just start writing 12345 mine might be, I would like to have you know, to have developed a fitness habit that I’m significantly stronger than I am now, I would like to, you know, be a little bit healthier than I am.
Now I’d like to lose a little bit of weight, not putting any numbers on it, but I have things that I would like to do. So by writing it by the end of 2023, I would like to have blank. And just letting your mind flow and just keep writing what comes to you will help you clarify what your plans for the new year should be. And then put those words, phrases, images somewhere where you’re going to see them so that they you can keep your attention on your intentions. That’s what most of us struggle with is putting our attention on our intentions. So those are my five recommendations for ways to start this new year off right.
I hope you have enjoyed this program. I would love to hear from you. At Work mom says.com I have a contact form that you can use to get in touch. Tell me what you’d like me to talk about. Who would you like me to have on the program? Would you like to be on the program? Do you have questions? Love to hear from you. Also, if you are listening on Spotify and iTunes and those other podcast platforms, please leave me a review. I would love to hear from you. Keep on keeping on. Make it a good new year and we will catch back up with you in 2023 with more guests. WTF moments and career advice that will help you play the emotional contact sport of business. I’m Lori Jo Vest signing off. See you next time.
Announcer 13:06
Thanks for listening to work. Mom says don’t be an idiot. For more information. You can email work mom at lori at work mom says.com That’s Lori at Work Mom Says.com. And remember, don’t be an idiot.
Who is our ideal listener?
This podcast is for young professionals, so they can learn to play the emotional context sport of business and experience less drama and more success.
The ideal listener is anyone struggling on an emotional level in the workplace. Work Mom Says it helps you learn to be strategic at work. This means you can look at the big picture without getting lost in the weeds. How can you be more logical and less emotional? Be strategic, and Work Mom Says can help you.
“I tell people to back up, put down the magnifying glass, and look at the big picture when you’re responding to something,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom. “In doing this, you will understand that what’s really upsetting you right now will be something you don’t even remember next week.”
What value can people get from listening to this podcast?
Listening to Work Mom Says can help you grow your mood management skills, grow your ability to reframe situations, and look at things from a strategic point of view. This makes it easier to go into a work situation and get the most positive results.
On Work Mom Says, we also offer tips and tricks for creating connected positive relationships that last over time. People will want you on the team if you can create connected positive relationships and work environments. You become an asset, and you will be more successful when you’re an asset.
“I also like to talk about developing traits like optimism, persistence, tenacity, stick-to-itiveness, sticking with things, and approaching every project with a curious mind instead of a fearful mind,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom
Why do I do this? A few more words from Work Mom
I do this because I naturally fell into the Work Mom role when I worked in the ad agency business and had so much fun with it. I also realized I had made just about every mistake there was to make. I don’t hold myself as a stellar example of truth and how you should be. I hold myself out there as someone who has been bruised, battered, and beaten up and learned some important lessons. I’d love to share these lessons with young people, so they don’t have to make those same mistakes or be the idiot I was.
I also want to help young professionals realize that many things our culture prioritizes aren’t really important. We talk a lot about what should be important and how to present your best face at the office so that you can succeed.
I’ve learned so much throughout my career, and it’s gratifying to share that with young professionals and help them avoid some of those mistakes and get to that success sooner.
Episode 23 – “5 Ways to Make 2023 Your Best Year Yet” appeared first on Work Mom Says.