I hate new years

Episode 26 - I Hate New Years (EDITED)

Thu, Jan 04, 2024 9: 07AM • 23:40

Thu, Jan 04, 2024 9: SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Thu, Jan 04, 2024 9: write, goals, life, year, exercise, retreat, journaling, goal setting, business, day, great, reflections, place, lovell, work, feb, deadline, financial, dreams, inspire

00: 01

00: Do you want to live a life of freedom and adventure? Are you wanting more than the daily grind? Me too. Welcome to the Emma Lovell show, a place where we talk about living a life you love now, I'm your host, Emma Lovell, and my number one value is freedom. I've spent the last 14 years running a business and traveling the world. And now I take my husband and toddler along for the adventure to it's possible and I know you can create a life doing what you truly love as well. This podcast will inspire, motivate and encourage you to go after your dreams to create a life you love until you get now don't wait for a time and or someday in the future. I'll be sharing episodes weekly about how I harmonize business travel and self care. I'll also bring on incredible guests to share their journeys, wins the challenges and how they're creating a life they love. Let's jump in and get dreaming. This is a space for you to manifest a life you love.

01: 03

01: I would like to acknowledge and recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first peoples of this place now known as Australia. I am grateful for the continuing care of the land waterways and skies where I work live, listen, learn and play. From here on you can bear country and from wherever you are listening, I pay my respects to the elders past and present.

01: 26

01: Hello, lovely and welcome to today's episode, it is going to be a short one for once. And I'm going to open with Happy New Year.

01: 35

01: Also, I hate New Year's. I know it's such a big statement to make and be polarizing perhaps. But I really hate New Year's. I think over the years it's caused a lot of stress, it's causes a lot of hype, there's a lot of letdown is a lot of emotions. And it's not about the parties. Those Those have been mixed as well as the celebrations have been mixed. But I just think that we are creating this false deadline. And this ultimatum sort of time where we either get to be successful or we don't. It was a good year or it was a bad year. I mean, how can we say that? I honestly I feel emotionally, I've had one of the hardest years of my life. 2023 has been one of the most challenging years of my life, the grief that I've experienced the

02: 34

02: I don't know, financial stress the business, you know, keeping the business going. But then in the same respect. I've had some of the best things this year. I can never say I have a bad year now with my darling fin in my life.

02: 54

02: I think I'm freezing a little bit. There we go. If that went a bit funny, and I have my darling fin my baby boy every year is amazing with him. Seeing him grow, seeing his life.

03: 07

03: Had some huge wins. I've spoken at conferences, I have launched new offers, I held my first ever international retreat, I went on a trip that I didn't think we'd be able to go on but had the most amazing time with my family. Despite the grief and the challenge and the awful situation that is my nephew being terminally ill. I felt closer to my brother and my sister in law than ever. And I love them so much. And it's helped us to focus on what's important.

03: 40

03: But you know, all this time last year, literally it was a year ago

03: 46

03: we found out that my nephew has a terminal illness and that he only would at that stage that week we found out we would might have like four years to live.

03: 58

03: We found out the following week, he would have one to two years. So it's been one year.

04: 03

04: We know that he's on the decline now. But you know, I had all these grand intentions for 2023 was gonna look like and on day two of the year, there was a helicopter crash on the Gold Coast, which is tragic. And it's been the one year anniversary of that, to me was how so rational today

04: 22

04: which obviously shook, ruined some people's

04: 27

04: lives in the way and

04: 31

04: was just devastating. And it was awful to experience and my husband was very involved with the rescue. And then just the day later, like I found out that my nephew was terminally ill.

04: 43

04: So any plans went out the window. But thing is I just don't feel like we should have this one time of the year where it's a time where we set goals. The one time the year where we get ourselves our lives in order. I think it's a great time to reset

05: 00

05: I think it's a great time, you know, I'm doing some decluttering in my house, deciding what I don't want anymore, and what I would like to bring in doing some of that work. But, you know, I'm journaling on goal setting, I'm manifesting every single day.

05: 15

05: You know, things change, life changes, plans change, I did a complete rebrand, which is, you know, something I really need to celebrate.

05: 24

05: In August of this year of last year of 2023, my business direction changed really completely.

05: 33

05: You know, I was focusing on personal brand. And now I talk about how you can bring together business travel and self care to live a life you love, which is really living in alignment with what I do, doesn't mean that I can't help people with their personal brand and how to promote themselves, I can do that as a business coach, to how I've got to where I am today, after 14 years of business, but you know, it was a big shift, it was a big energetic shift was a big change. And so all this content planning, I mean, I had a podcast, went out the window I had

06: 06

06: your website went out the window, I've got a website there that I've got to close down that that's completely redundant. Now, I've got to decide what to do with all that old content, whether I keep it or not.

06: 18

06: Yeah, there's a lot that changed a lot that throughout 2023. And had I just set goals and set plans in place and said, This is how it's going to be?

06: 28

06: Well, it just wouldn't have worked. So what I wanted to tell you today is like there are multiple times in the year that are great times to reset. And, you know, there's different calendars. So there's the calendar year that we follow in Western society, which is, you know, January to December,

06: 46

06: and obviously got the big celebration of Christmas and, and, you know, new year can be seen as a celebration time, which would like to, you know, a celebration of reflection time. But understanding it's going to bring up a lot of emotion and you're probably going to come into it quite exhausted after potentially celebrating the holiday season with family and friends and, and just the way that the world markets that and tells us how we're supposed to behave in this time as well. As opposed to seeing that our life continues on past that first of January. You know, midnight, life continues. And it doesn't change dramatically from 11pm till 1am. The next day.

07: 25

07: Though, the other times of the year that are great, and which I've been looking at more is like we've got Chinese New Year, which is a celebration time as well, Lunar New Year, for a lot of places in Asia. Then there is the astrological calendar, which is actually around mid Feb, which I found a really beautiful energy and a really great time for me to set goals. And I hosted a retreat at that time. And I think it's a perfect time, which is awesome. Actually, I will be in India this year.

07: 56

07: On Valentine's week Valentine's with my gorgeous Christine Coonan, who I'm co hosting the sheaf rates retreat with. So that's that's an incredible time to be there and to be thinking about what else we want to do for the year.

08: 10

08: The other times are their financial year. So and that's different again, in different parts of the world, I believe some parts of Asia, it's April,

08: 19

08: I think America might be a different time. And then we're here we do financial year, June and July. So businesses have this like being goal setting. And you know, your your finances are done around that time. So there's just what I'm saying is there's multiple times in the year that we can set goals, we can make plans, we can revisit, we can review. Making these grand sweeping statements about what the year is going to be based on one date is crazy, really.

08: 48

08: But I don't not believe in goal setting, of course, and I just wanted to share today a few exercises that I like to use that can help me to get back on track, or to get some ideas out of my head or to, you know, to setting plans in motion.

09: 03

09: So the first one is my I am exercise. It's a favorite of mine. I don't think I've shared it here before. But basically, there's a journal prompt and I will be releasing, please comment or write to me or talk to me. I have a free resource called Nine journal prompts to help you live a life you love. So we'll get that up ASAP. If you subscribe to my newsletter, you'll get it. And it basically says

09: 31

09: take the timer so that the journal prompts, things that you just write in a journal to kind of pull out the ideas and pull out the goals that you might have. Because it's hard sometimes to just sit there and go, What do I'm on. But if you start to write, then it can come. I've decided to start doing morning pages which is an exercise by Julie Cameron who wrote the artists way. I basically have done something like that over the years, but I'm doing it in a more formal way. So each morning I'm writing three

10: 00

10: ages, but the im exercise is grab a piece of paper and do it on your phone or a note if you want to pen and paper tends to be better. And set the timer for five minutes, put on some music if they if you like or have some quiet, you write i m dot, dot dot, and then you go. And what comes out could be about who you are, I am a mom, and I'm a this and either that. Or it might be that it's I am tired, I am writing this exercise, I am frustrated. And it tends to be that then the words start to flow. So mine usually comes out as a bunch of words, I am this and that and that. And then it flows into sentences, but it however you want it to come. And it's really interesting what comes out of that. So starting with the journal prompt, I am,

10: 49

10: it tends to be that yeah, I find there's a little goal that comes out there.

10: 55

10: Then another one I love to use is what if so it's a journal prompt, and it says what is dot dot dot. And you can take this two ways. So again, we set the time of five minutes to really, it's a great one to get out of your head to start the goal setting process. And it says what if, and it's like, two ways you can go. It's like, what if all my dreams came true? Like what is the best things happened? But you can also take it to like, Okay, I want to like buy a house. That's my goal. And then you can take it for the bad things that could happen. So what if I don't buy the house? What if I don't get enough money? What if the bank won't give me a loan? What if

11: 35

11: the house gets flooded?

11: 37

11: You can take it in the negative direction. And the great thing about that is like once you see it on paper, you can find ways to work through the solutions. The What if great means shows you all the possibilities of what opportunities mostly my clients find there's a mix that comes out but it's just a way to explore your mind. What if

11: 55

11: what someone that will hound you until you do the things that you need to do and absolutely stand there and support you 100% It is no doubt in my mind that it is Miss Emma Lovell anyone that has him in May Kona does better. She'll be your biggest cheerleader. Whatever she touches and creates is just magical things about em. She is extremely generous with her knowledge and expertise. And the second thing is that she will hold you accountable long after your in person experience, which is great. If you're not working with them. What the hell are you doing?

12: 30

12: The third one is? Wouldn't it be cool? If?

12: 34

12: And this is really a dreaming? One? Obviously. Oh, wouldn't it be nice if i Nice? Wouldn't be amazing. It wouldn't be cool. If wouldn't it be wonderful? If whatever word works for you there? Wouldn't it be wonderful? If I ran a retreat and sold all the spots? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we sold my investment property this week? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we went back to Mexico for our one year anniversary, which is actually the 29th of Feb because we got married on a lake here. Wouldn't it be wonderful if my son loves his new school and his new class and excels in it?

13: 11

13: What a lovely thing to do. And out of that, again, you can you can hear how it comes up, you're like, Oh, these are things I want, you know, wouldn't be wonderful. If I could take a holiday clue you want to take a holiday. So those, it just pulls it out of your mind. So I always recommend to do some journaling, with some prompts to start to get that for mine going.

13: 34

13: Another exercise I love is a reflection exercise. So we want to look at what's happened. And again, it can be done at any time of the year. You know, it could be last few months, it could be the past year from wherever you are, it could be the past five years, whatever. But look at it, and we want to go and we want to go to a place of gratitude and celebration and a place of learning as well. So the categories that you can do this for our business,

13: 59

13: personal, health, financial,

14: 04

14: you might add in spiritual and other

14: 08

14: there was another education or learning so you can choose some topics that probably business, personal.

14: 16

14: Health, and financial,

14: 20

14: business, personal health and financial, great areas, if you want to just do those four, and then in each one, I'd recommend writing down. You don't want to write an exhaustive list, try to write three things or if you come up with a couple extra, that's awesome. And if you can only come up with one thing, that's fine. But we want to write in there 123 things that you did well or you're proud of that year. So three things I'm proud of my business three things I'm proud of personally, three things I'm proud of, with my health three things I'm proud of with my finances. Then we move on to

14: 56

14: you know what you would like so looking at those reflections, there you go, Okay, well, what would I

15: 00

15: like in those areas, and we always know with goal setting, it's better to be smart with it. So like, you want to be, oh, gosh, I can't even think of the acronym right now. Always think measurable, achievable, something and timely. I can't think it's specific is the first one, specific, measurable, achievable,

15: 20

15: changes, and then timely. So having a time on it. So going in three months, I would like to feel so with health as well, I was writing this in my journaling this morning, it's more like the person you want to be. So what would a healthy person do? What would a strong person do? What would it energized person do? That's where I'm trying to think about it. And even if, in trying not to as well,

15: 44

15: changing the language when you notice when you write things down, so I'm not going to work hard. That's not a goal. I don't want to work hard. I would like to achieve success or I would like to achieve, you know, 12 people coming on my SriLanka retreat with ease. You know, because then I'm setting myself up for that i like it was easy to get 12 people on, it was easy to get six people on. So why is it not gonna be easy to get another six people to come, you know, actually have eight. So there you go even easier. For spots.

16: 16

16: I'm looking at the posted on my wall. Anyway, I'm going to write down those goals again for myself. And, and then the final step of that. So we've got our reflections we've got then our goals that come from those reflections. And then the final step is to go in each of those areas. What's stopping me? So what's going to stop you? And this is a bit like the wouldn't it? What if? And it's like, well, what's stopping me being a healthy person?

16: 41

16: Is it everybody else? Is it my choices is what's stopping and going to bed early me.

16: 49

16: And when you do look at it, you'll find that you have excuses, you'll have reasons why you can't meet those goals. But if you write them down, then you can find a way around that. So what's stopping me getting four people on this retreat, we're not talking about it enough, not promoting it enough, not following up people who are interested. That's what's stopping me. So

17: 12

17: that's a really great one. And then finally, one of my favorite exercises, and I will actually share my own one in a few weeks.

17: 21

17: That's your letter to your future self. And so I've done this a few times a few different exercises. I even did it with us mompreneur, and they actually posted it to us, which was pretty cool. And I did it with Nick McClanahan as part of a business chicks retreat. And I've kept this exercise. And I recently did it with my clients, which is beautiful. So the way that it starts is, it's usually like kind of quite a detailed letter. So it might be three or four pages, I give yourself half an hour to an hour, we always write a shitty first draft or a stormy first draft as Brene. Brown says, so you know editing, just write, just write for an hour what you want. Again, it's really great if you've done some journaling, or if you've just sort of got some brain dump first.

18: 03

18: Because then that sort of comes into this place of your letter. Anyway. So the letter then says, you imagine that in a year, I think my internet's freezing again, Ah,

18: 17

18: awesome recording podcasts with crappy internet. So you sitting there, wherever you are any, so where would I like to be in a year. So in a year's time, when from when I was writing that letter, I was going to be back in India, again, on a retreat, having just hosted a fabulous retreat,

18: 34

18: planning my next retreat, and feeling amazing. And so I started in that place. And then it's like, well, how did I get to India again, and what was I doing there?

18: 44

18: And then it's going through each area of your life, the the business, the personal, the health, the financial, and sharing in detail, and I'll I'll share my letter because it will share, you know, and that's quite vulnerable, because I've got financial goals in there. I've got client goals in there. But I want to be transparent with you and inspire you to be able to do the same. So

19: 06

19: yeah, you write this letter to your future self. And the thing is, don't just stick it in a drawer with your goals with any of your goals. Don't do this exercise and stick it in a drawer and put it away. And then find that piece of paper at some point in the future. The letter to yourself, you can post to yourself, it's interesting, but I like to have it out. I like to look at it every month. I like to put it on my vision board. I like to write down you know, post it's all some of those actions that I can see. Because we have to be working towards our goals every day. And I watched amazing video yesterday I think his name was was James wells. About

19: 46

19: 30 minute What difference 30 minutes a day can make a he's like a book was written in 30 minutes a day, which is so true. So many people say that.

19: 55

19: You know, in right now sitting here, you might be like, how do I how am I going to do that? And I can tell you right now

20: 00

20: I'm gonna write a book this year. I'm so excited.

20: 04

20: And I have a deadline for that it will, it's going to be within the year, but I have a deadline of August. So

20: 10

20: how am I going to write right now, I don't know how I'm going to write it. But I've started. And there's things that are coming together. And that's the only way we can do it.

20: 21

20: I've set a deadline, I've said what I want it to look like. And it's starting to come in to fruition. I've had this goal roughly for 17 years, I've wanted to write a book since I got back from my first trip. But now it feels like it's really in motion, and it's the right book.

20: 40

20: So I've got goals around that. And I can work on that every day. Sometimes it'll be a few minutes, sometimes it'll be half an hour, but I think about it every single day. And that's what you do when you have a goal that you love. So

20: 55

20: once you've got all those as well, from those areas, when I said those different areas you like pick one goal, pick one thing, don't, don't have 10 things. One thing that your health could improve one thing that your finances could improve one thing your business that you at the end of the year, you can say I did that in my business, I wrote my book in my business, I met that financial goal, I do go to bed at 10 o'clock every night I which means I have better sleep, I'm a person who is well rested.

21: 25

21: Yeah, I hope this has been helpful. As I'd say maybe it's a strong word, I hate knees, because I hate the pressure that it puts on everybody. And I just want you to know that you can pick this episode up at any point, you can write to me anytime about your goals. And if you're struggling to do that, I cannot help you with an hour of power in my hour of power, we can work on your goal setting together, we can go through these exercises together. Or we can do the reflections together because it can be challenging to do it yourself. I did this beautiful workshop with these exercises for one of my clients, Ray pastores for his virtual Christmas party and took his client or his staff members through this exercise. So if that's something that you're interested in, or you would like me to present to your group on it, I can absolutely do that. Please do reach out to me about goal setting, business coaching, Hour of Power, any of those words, I'll know what you're talking about. Or you can book a call. But I really wish you all the best. For this calendar year ahead. I know that we'll be talking and checking in throughout the year because you listen here and I love that. Thank you for being here.

22: 32

22: I will be sharing my reflections in the next sort of month in my newsletters as well. So make sure to subscribe to that on my website Emma lovell.au. And yeah, Happy Happy New Year. Happy calendar New Year. Happy January. All the best for 2024 Wishing you prosperity, health and kindness in your world. Thank you for listening.

22: 57

22: Thank you for listening lovely one. I hope this has inspired you to dream big and start creating a life you'd love today. If you love what you're hearing, don't forget to follow and rate on Spotify and rate review and subscribe on iTunes. It helps other awesome people to find this podcast and get motivated and inspired as well. Want to stay connected comm and join the live a life you love group on Facebook or connect with me on Instagram. Emma lovell.au The same as my website. But all the details are in the show notes lovely. I'll see you next episode for more inspiration, motivation and freedom seeking. Go out there and live a life you love