Episode #33 Transcript
A Decision-Focused Year-End Reflection (that's also FUN!)
INTRO: This is the Decision Masters Podcast. I'm Kirsten Parker, the Decision Coach for Overthinkers. When you feel good about your decisions, life feels good. You get to be present in your days and excited about where you're going. I'm gonna help you build your decision mastery. So it's easy to know what you want, navigate uncertainty and handle any feelings that happen. Whether you're in the middle of some overthinking angst right now or you simply love feeling in charge of your choices, you're in the right place. Clear confident, decisions are right around the corner. Let's get into it.
KIRSTEN: Well, happy New Year's Eve, Eve, Eve, buddy, if you happen to be listening to this on the very day that it comes out. If you're listening in the future, well, hello in the future. I hope you're super enjoying your flying car. I'm gonna do a little something different. Today we are going to walk through an exercise. We're gonna get a little nitty gritty, because it's the end of the year and this is a prime time to want to reflect but feel too dang tired and/or distracted to actually do it. And I don't want you to miss out on this opportunity to pause your busyness and really take in the fact that you just made it another year. You just lived a whole ‘nother year! I'm excusing my own terrible grammar by making up the word “nother," cuz you just lived a whole— now I can't say it. A whole nother year.
And we want that to count. We do not want to perpetuate the habit that we all have that's super common, that's super human—it’s okay, we're not judging—but this habit to just keep going, keep our heads down and never ever pause to savor the life you are working so hard to live. Okay? So let's just take a teensy sec, and if you're driving in your future car and you're flying around the sky, that's okay. You can still do this. Press pause when I ask a question and really think about it. I mean, keep an eye on the road, but if you can do it with a pen and paper, that's ideal. It won't take that long, it won't be that hard, it won't be a ton of work. I promise this is a year end reflection that you will actually enjoy, that's gonna activate some mental muscles that you might not have used before.
Because we always talk about decision making here, so this is a year end reflection through the lens of decision making. Yum. And to make it easy, I've obviously made you a downloadable, so head on over to kirstenparker.com/33 and download this PDF. It's just gonna make everything easier, and that's what we want. We want it to be easy enough that you actually do it, and don't miss out on all of the solid gold that there is in properly reflecting on this year that we really do wanna count in the story of your life. We want you to lift your head up for a second and be like, Oh, the view here is so nice, I am so grateful to myself for working so hard. So kirstenparker.com/33, get your downloadable and I'm just gonna walk you through it, right fricking now. Let's go.
So when you get your downloadable, you'll see an image of the life wheel. This is a life wheel that I made up that I like using. Feel free to change the categories. What I want you to do is start reflecting on the wins. If you know me, you know I love starting with the good stuff. What are we celebrating? And since we have such an effective negativity bias at play all of the time we don't really have to work that hard to find out what didn't go well this year; what am I disappointed by, what am I frustrated about, what am I angry at? So let's just assume that those nuggets won't be hard to find. The answers to those questions we will not have to work for.
We usually have to work a little harder to find out what went well. What did I enjoy? What did I succeed at? What did I learn from? The good stuff. So I would love you to take these life categories or make up your own. Just don't overthink it and don't make it so complicated that you don't actually do this. My life wheel categories are health, wealth, friendships/connection, romance/partnership, home/family, career, growth, and fun/play. Those are the categories of life that I enjoy checking in on and just seeing what's going on, what's getting my attention, what am I feeling good about? So start moving your mind through these categories, one at a time, to reflect on: what are the wins from this year in this category?
Now, here's what I want you to remember. You are in charge of what a win is. No one is going to be grading this. No one is going to read this and then let you know, "That's not a win. You're not allowed to be excited about that. You shouldn't celebrate that." There are no Year End Reflection Police coming for you, okay. And my clients and I talk about this all the time, really taking ownership of how we are defining all of the terms in our life.
I find personally when I do this reflection, I need something visual to help me. So whatever works for you, make it easy. What I do is I open up my Google calendar and I move it to month view, cuz I cannot freaking remember what happened in January, all right? It's just been a year, and that was a long time ago. But we don't wanna miss out on the very real life that really counts, if you want it to, that happened in January. So whatever makes it easy for you. Some people like opening up their photos, and you can jump to January 2022 and just scroll through. Other people have written calendars that can be helpful, memory prompts, whatever is gonna make it easy for you.
If you are like my amazing client Nina, who shared her brilliant practice with us back in episode 20 of writing down your wins at the end of every month, then you can just go to where you have collected those. That's a practice that she actually learned from me in our coaching, and then I stopped doing, and she's been doing it this whole time. And I was so freaking jazzed and energized by that, it helped me pick that habit back up. Now I just put a post-it on the end of every calendar so that when I get to the end of the month, I'm like, Oh, this is my post-it where I fill it up with wins.
So if you've been tracking your wins, then gold star, just go to your collection of wins. It'll make this exercise really easy. And if you don't do that, if you haven't been doing that, that's okay. I stopped doing it, I told you. You can run with that idea and start doing it next year if you want. Make it easy. Look back and record your wins systematically. Holy moly, what difference would that make in your life? Go listen to episode 20 if you want to hear Nina's thoughts.
So this is what I want you to remember. You're in charge of what a win is. Something that you fricking succeeded at, yes, write that down. Something that you failed at, but handled well, survived, learned anything from, write that down. Something that you were brave enough to try in the first place that resulted in a failure, write that down. Bravery, courage, willingness to fail, willingness to try. Any moments you enjoyed. I count those as wins because that's what I wanna define as a win.
I went to Philadelphia for the first time this year, and I met all of my husband's family. I think we'd already been married for a year by then, but I hadn't met so many of his family members because we met in Covid, so we didn't even have a wedding we invited people to. And trips across the country for things were not happening. So I count that whole experience as a win. So think back to what experiences, what moments, what enjoyable life situations did you put yourself in the middle of? Count 'em as a win if you want.
Giving yourself permission to do something or to have something that you wouldn't have in the past? Win. Creating an opportunity for someone else? Win. Allowing yourself to receive something? Win. Saying no to something that was misaligned for you? Double win. Mm. Not beating yourself up when you could have: huge fricking win. I also remember when I first started that practice that I was telling you about of writing down your wins every single month, it was because I was starting my business. And raise a hand, or raise an eyebrow if you're driving your future flying car, if you have ever been at the beginning of something when it feels really hard to count any successes on more than one finger.
Whether you've started a business or not, I know you have been in a place, and maybe you've been there this year, where what other people might easily classify as successes seem few and far between. I did not like living in that story. I didn't like feeling month after month of, I don't know, not making a hundred thousand dollars, or whatever I thought I should be doing at the beginning of a business. I didn't like living in that phase where, month after month, I was like, “Well, I failed again. Well, I'm still not succeeding.” That's a crappy story to live in the middle of, and it's not frickin true. So when I started that practice, I was like, Alright, what do I wanna decide was a win this month? And I found some stuff. It wasn't like, "signed 10 clients, made a million dollars, got invited to Oprah's show," or whatever. But it was stuff that actually made a difference in how I felt, in the momentum that I was creating, in the life I was experiencing. It's stuff that really counted as long as I decided that it counted.
So that is what I would love you to do. Decide what you wanna count as a win. Make it easy. Open up your photos, open up your calendar, whatever you gotta do to move your mind through the months and write down your wins. And if you don't wanna move your mind through the month-to-month, if that sounds tedious and terrible to you, don't do it. Skip that. Just think about the life categories and just imagine what happened this year. Okay? You have to make this easy for yourself cuz otherwise you won't do it, and I really want you to do it. And I think you do too, because you bothered listening to this episode.
So what are your wins in the health department? What are your wins in wealth? What are your wins in the life category of home or family? What are your wins in terms of friendship and connection? How about your career? What are your wins in terms of personal growth, or spirituality? And then what else? What have we left out? What else do you need to claim as a big fricking fat win that didn't fit into any of those categories?
Then I want you to get into some decision mapping. I want you to write down your wins so that you can now reference them and answer this question for any of the standout wins, or all of them if you're feeling super ambitious: What decisions did I make that created this result? Now, warning, it is easy to discount our own role in our happiness and success. We can think, That was a fluke, somebody else made that happen, that wasn't me. And this is where I want to lovingly challenge you to think about how this win, this opportunity, this experience, could not have happened without you making the decisions that you did. It might feel a little crazy pants. It might feel a little like you're manipulating the story, but I promise you, if you give yourself just the straight old facts, if you literally say, “Well, yeah, I guess this wouldn't have happened if I didn't decide to put myself in the room with that person who offered me this opportunity,” you can't argue with that. We're not taking credit for anyone else's role in your experience, but we are taking credit for your role.
Because we have to stop denying that we are responsible for the good stuff in our lives. I don't know about you, but if you are like my clients and me, you might be very excellent at taking credit for mistakes and failures and things that don't go how you want. You might even take extra credit. You might even say things that aren't fully your responsibility are really your fault at the end of the day. So I would love for you to start taking credit for all of the results. Let's not just take credit for the things that could have gone better for our growth areas, our areas of improvement. Let's take credit for all of the fricking fracking amazing, powerful, successful, juicy, delicious results that you experience in your life. Because when you start paying attention to how much power you really have in what you experience, you start using more of that power on purpose, and that's what we want.
So take a second now to scan through your wins and see what stands out as something that's like, Ooh, that was a really good win, or that was a really yummy experience. And just be honest. What decisions did you make that created this? Make it a simple question. I invite you to assume I'm right, just believe me for a second, that you really did create that. If that was a puzzle you were trying to solve, like, Gosh, okay, how did I create that, if that's true? I want you to answer that question.
So now that you have some visual evidence for, I am actually quite responsible for all of the good stuff from this year, that's amazing. Now I want you to check what decisions stand out. What decisions were pivotal points for you in creating your best or most impactful experiences this year? Write 'em down.
And then I want you to consider a potentially wacky question. Don't worry, I'll help you. What emotions were you feeling at the time you made those decisions? Getting in touch with the emotions that drive our pivotal decisions is a game-changing skill.
Now, I want you to know that usually the negative emotions stand out. So if you quit your job this year, or if you left a relationship, or set a boundary, you might be very in tune with the negative emotions that werre driving those decisions. Like, frustration drives us to quit our jobs, anger drives us to set a boundary. For me, just being fed up with myself has driven me to do a lot of things that were scary and I had resistance to, and I kind of complained about the whole time, or I didn't execute it perfectly, but I was just so fed up with myself and keeping myself stuck that that emotion drove that decision. So that's fine. Let's be aware of those and let's write those down.
I also wanna challenge you to check for what other emotions might have been at play. What positive emotions were you feeling? And sometimes this sounds like, Well I was probably feeling empowered. I might have been feeling 5% empowered and 95% wonky other emotions, but I had to feel at least a little empowered, at least a little brave, at least a little courageous, at least a little self advocating. There must have been a tinge of that if it was ultimately a self-honoring decision.
And given that information from this little investigation so far, what kind of decisions do you wanna make more of next year? It's a super fun question, because it takes all the pressure off of needing to know, “what decisions am I gonna make?” We don't actually have to know that. What I want you to know right now, ending this year and going into next year, is what kinds of decisions do I wanna make? See what your highest wisdom says when you ask yourself that question.
And then I want you to do a little scan of 2022 and consider, without tons of judgment, what results don't you love from this past year? This is not an exercise in self-judgment, this is a year-end reflection, so let's just get the data available here. Not everything went perfectly, we know that. It was never supposed to and it never will, so there's no problem here, but let's just check. What are the not-wins that you want to note? Because when you note those honestly, you can ask yourself the next question, which is what kinds of decisions do you wanna make less of next year?
This is one of the most helpful questions I ask myself in these reflection moments, in these exercises. Because I do it with a ton of self-compassion from totally on my own team, like we're having a team huddle. And it's like, “Alright folks, what kinds of decisions are gonna help us thrive next year, get where we're going, what kind of decisions do we wanna make more of and less of?” Gameplan. No judgment.
And then I want you to ask— oh this is such a good one. How do you wanna treat yourself next year, regardless of wins/fails/etc? Because you know me, we do not buy into this conditional self-love, conditional confidence. We are going to ebb and flow as human people. Fine. Hashtag humaning. But looking back on this year and how you might have treated yourself this year, this is such a good opportunity for you to decide, how do you want to treat yourself next year? Fabulous information to know, don't you think?
Alright, final question, and this one might be my favorite. There's a whole page dedicated to it on your downloadable. Write the story of 2022 the way you want to tell it. Deep breath. This sounds like a big one. I promise, you could write a five sentence story with 20 words or less if you really wanted to. " I started my business. I kicked ass. I was the kinda wife I wanna be more of the time." That's 15-ish words if you put some together. That's part of my story of 2022. I want you to make this so simple that you don't avoid it. That's the goal of this entire exercise.
But your brain is gonna make up a story whether you participate or not. And remember, that ding dang negativity bias is probably gonna have a lot to say about what this story is. And I'm not encouraging you to paint a beautiful picture of a year that probably had a lot of ups and downs. So you can include in your story, “We suffered a loss and it was terrible,” or “I made a mistake that was really painful for me.” You can write that into your story with self-compassion, from self-compassion.
So I don't want you to sugarcoat 2022, but I don't want you to hand the story off to your negativity bias and give it the pen, like, Okay, you just write it, and that's what I'll remember forever. That's what I'll recycle every time I look back on this year, those are the memories that I'm gonna give bandwidth to, and the neurons that I'm going to strengthen because they're gonna fire more often in my brain. And I'm gonna convince myself the more time goes on, the more I think these thoughts, that the story my negativity bias wrote was the truth of 2022. That's not what we want. We want you to feel in charge of it. So include the ups, include the downs, include whatever you want. Make it super simple. Make it beautifully detailed. Write from your heart, write from your soul, write from your highest self. Have fun, but just write it. That's your homework.
All right my friend. You did it, even if you were driving in your hover vehicle. I hope that this reflection was delicious. I hope it gave you a new lens through which to look at your life experience and gave you some really great moments to savor, cuz you are working really hard at this life and we deserve to enjoy it. And I hope it gave you some really good information nuggets to bring into the next year.
So don't forget, if you listen to this whole thing and you got to the end, but you still wanna download the PDF and do the exercise in your handwriting or with your typing, I champion you, you are amazing, and you can get it at kirstenparker.com/33. I hope you have a wonderful new year. I hope you savor some things about this past year. And when you're ready for more help with all of this, you know that I'm here for you. Check out the Decision Masters program. The membership is open, and that's what it's for. To help you think intentionally about your past decisions, about the ones you're considering now, and about any future ones. You've totally got this. Happy New Year. Talk to you soon.
OUTRO: Hey, wanna know the number one thing you need to kickstart your momentum right now? (Obviously.) I know! That's why I created the Momentum Quiz. Head to kirstenparker.com/quiz to find out your number one momentum killer and get your personalized action plan to boost your momentum and get back on track. That’s kirstenparker.com/quiz. Have fun!
