Looking back at the past year is not just a nostalgic exercise; it's a powerful tool for personal growth and future success. This thought-provoking episode delves into the significance of reflecting on the past year and how it can positively impact your life. Reviewing accomplishments, overcoming challenges, and learning from mistakes can propel you toward a brighter future. Take advantage of this opportunity to gain valuable insights and set yourself up for success in the coming year. Join me as we explore the transformative power of looking back at the past year.
Looking back at the past year is not just a nostalgic exercise; it's a powerful tool for personal growth and future success. This thought-provoking episode delves into the significance of reflecting on the past year and how it can positively impact your life. Reviewing accomplishments, overcoming challenges, and learning from mistakes can propel you toward a brighter future. Take advantage of this opportunity to gain valuable insights and set yourself up for success in the coming year. Join me as we explore the transformative power of looking back at the past year.
Welcome to the Off Balance, the podcast where faith, family, and business collide. Your host, Dr. Brooks, is a certified master life coach, transformational speaker, and author. Join her each week as she explores the journey of overcoming adversity by developing resilience. Get ready for empowering conversations.
Inspiring stories and practical insights that will help you navigate the delicate balance of life's challenges It's time to find your strength and reclaim balance in faith family and business This is off balance
Hello, I am dr. Brooks A certified master life coach, transformational speaker and author. I teach women to overcome adversity by developing resilience. I do this by taking each client step by step through my proven system. What system am I talking about? So I am the author of a book. Six pillars of resilience and each pillar is a competency when activated, it will aid you in developing resilience.
And so I am so excited that you are tuning in today. Today's episode is all about a resilient new year. I want to make sure that you have the strategies in place that will help you. Tackle the new year. And so the first thing that we're going to talk about is reflecting. We want to reflect on this past year.
Reflection is so important. The reason why reflection is important is because it causes you to, to do a little self awareness. Basically reflection, it allows us to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves, our values, beliefs, and motivations. And so basically by taking the time to reflect on your experiences whether those experiences was positive or challenging, you can develop a greater self awareness.
I think self awareness is so important because it's a key component of emotional intelligence. A lot of people like to say they have high emotional intelligence, but though they fail to self reflect. And so you don't want to, you know, review the things that happened in the past, or if you don't want to think about those things, then that can actually impact your emotional intelligence.
Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. You know, emotional intelligence, it enables us to make informed decisions, understand our actions, situations, and foster a stronger sense of identity. And so we have to make sure that we are self aware. Self aware is the first step to developing resilience. And then what we want to do is we also, we want to learn from our experiences.
Reflection provides an opportunity for us to analyze and learn from past experiences. If we examine both our successes and failures, we can identify patterns, we can understand the factors that contributed to the outcomes, and we can extract valuable lessons. I am a big believer of learning from past experiences.
This learning process is essential for personal and professional growth. It also allows us to make more informed choices, avoid repeating mistakes, and continually improve on our decision making skills. And so, When you reflect, you have the ability to look at things that you didn't know as you were in the situation.
So sometimes when we're in a situation, we don't have insight. But when we look back, if you ever hear someone say hindsight 2020, that's what they're talking about. They were able to sit and reflect. And they were able to look at the situation now that they have gone through it and they can look at it in order for them to learn from their experiences.
And so reflection allows you to one, become self aware and two, to learn from your experiences. And then the third thing reflection does is it can help you clarify and align your goals. Reflection plays a And so basically what I want to do is I want you to take the time to reflect on your long term goals, as well as what, what steps you will take towards achieving those goals, and that will allow you to assess if you're on the right path or not.
This process is. Basically introspection, which allows for adjustment to goals and strategies. You always want to ensure that you remain relevant. And meaningful. So like when you are pursuing your goals, those goals need to be relevant and they need to be meaningful because you don't want to waste your time pursuing things that are not in alignment with your current aspirations.
Sometimes we can start off and we can have an idea in mind. We can you know. Say, I want to do A, B, C, but then something happens in us. Maybe we have a moment of growth, or maybe we have a change in direction. And you have to adjust and re strategize because you don't want to pursue something that you're no longer interested in.
And so that's why introspection is very important. It also helps you to set realistic and achievable goals based on a deeper understanding of your desires and your capabilities. Like I said, sometimes. We can outgrow situations, we can, you know, change our minds, we can, you know, have desires that are different from when we first initially set the goals, especially if you're talking about long term goals.
A lot of the times we can really change our course and so we have to make sure that we reflect and once we reflect, then we will be able to make sure that our goals are met. And are clear and they're in alignment. And so we are going to do, I am going to actually walk you through a guided reflection exercise, and I really like to do this exercise because it is going to help you to be able to assess your achievements.
You got to reflect on lessons learned and you're going to look at those areas for growth. And so the first thing that I want you to do is I want you to find a quiet space. You're going to find a quiet space, a comfortable space where you won't be interrupted. And I want you to sit or lie down in a relaxed position.
And so after you find your quiet place and you get yourself in a comfortable position, I want you to focus on your breathing. I want you to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. I want you to inhale slowly through your nose. Hold for a moment, exhale gently through your mouth. And I want you to allow yourself to become present in this moment.
Now that you are in a quiet place and your breathing is under control, I want you to reflect on the past year. I want you to think about the past year and all that has happened. I want you to consider the highs and the lows, the challenges and the victories. I want the memories to surface without judgment.
I want you to acknowledge them and hold them in your awareness. This is not the time for you to beat yourself up, for you to be overcritical of yourself. I simply just want you to reflect on this past year. Now I want you to celebrate your achievements. I want you to focus on your achievements. What are you most proud of accomplishing this year?
It could be personal, it could be professional, it could even be a shift in your mindset. I just want you to take a moment to celebrate those successes. I want you to allow a sense of accomplishment to fill you. Sometimes we are so busy with our day to day lives that we don't take a moment to celebrate our accomplishments.
We tend to focus on our failures or, you know, when we didn't quite meet the mark. But there are so many things that you accomplished over the past year, and I want you to celebrate those achievements. Next, we are going to learn from those things that challenged us. So now I want you to think about the challenges you faced.
What were the lessons you learned from these experiences? I want you to reflect on how you've grown and what strengths you discovered within yourself during this difficult time. I know for me, I was really challenged this year when it came to time and when it came to seeing things through. Like, I started a lot of projects this year and what I noticed was I was losing momentum.
And so I was challenged with procrastination. I was challenged with. You know, a little laziness and so I really had to figure out what was causing those things in my life and I had to learn how to get through those. So I just want you to take a moment and reflect on the challenges that you face. Now that you have reflect, I want you to identify what brings you joy.
I want you to consider the activities, relationships, or moments that brought you genuine joy and fulfillment. What made your heart light up this year? These are the valuable insights into what aligns with your true self. And so I just want you to think about it. Even though you were challenged, there was something that brought you tremendous joy.
Whether that was, you know your job, your children, your family, your health, whatever it was, what, what lit your heart up this year? What brought you joy? Next, I want you to clarify your values. I want you to reflect on your core values. What principles guide your decisions and actions? Are there any values you want to prioritize in the coming year more than others?
I Want you to understand your values and how they can provide a foundation for setting meaningful goals. So, whatever you set goals, you have to put your values at the forefront because this will ensure that the goals that you set are true to yourself and you're not setting goals. Simply because, you know, it's a trend or it's because it's what everyone else is doing, or even because it's what others want you to do.
You have to make sure that your, your goals align with your values. And in order for you to ensure that they align, you have to clarify your values. So I want you to take a moment and think about what your values are. And I want you to make sure that they guide your decision making. Next, I want you to envision your ideal future.
What does your future look like? I want you to close your eyes and imagine yourself a year from now. I want you to picture your ideal future in a vivid way. Where are you? What are you doing? How do you feel? Envision the life you aspire to live. And by doing this, what, what happens is you will envision yourself and then you would have to Ensure that the goals align with getting you to the place that you envision.
Sometimes what we want. And what we do don't align and so when you envision your ideal future, it will help you align those goals to make sure that they are getting you to the future you and not holding you hostage to the current you. Sometimes we'll allow circumstances to dictate what goals we set. So say for instance if you want to go to school but you don't have the resources, so you may not create goals that align with you obtaining that degree.
Because you are allowing your current resources to limit you. So don't allow your current situation to dictate your goals that you set for yourself. Set your goals by your, your ideal future. By where do you see yourself in the future. And then based on that, those goals can be short term goals or long term goals, but I really encourage you not to let your current circumstances dictate what goals you're going to set for yourself because you will find yourself in the same place, in the same cycle with no movement.
And so please don't allow your current situation and circumstance to to kind of guide your goal setting because the whole thing of goals is to get yourself to your ideal future. Next, I want you to set positive intentions. Based on your reflection, I want you to set positive intentions for the upcoming year.
What goals do you want to achieve? How do you want to feel? I want you to frame your intentions in a positive and empowering way. Like, if over the past year, you had more bad days than good days, What caused those bad days? You know, what situations caused you to be stressed? What situation caused you to be down?
And then I want you to figure out strategies to help you navigate that this upcoming year so that you will have more positive intentions, more positive days. Believe it or not, we have the ability to command our days. We have the ability to decide how we are going to handle people, places, and situations.
And so, yeah, you can't control other people reactions and motives, but you can control how you react to them. You can control how you feel about them, if you respond, engage, whatever the case is. So I want you to set positive intentions for yourself. Next, I want you to express gratitude. Express gratitude for the lessons, growth, opportunities that the past year has provided.
Gratitude opens the door for more positive experiences to come. Sometimes we get so caught up in what's going wrong that we don't appreciate what's going right. And so I just want you to express gratitude over everything that went right for you this past year. Because I know some things went right. Of course, we all had ups and downs, and we all had highs and lows, but we also had some really good things that go well for us, and we had victories in a lot of areas.
So just make sure you express gratitude. And then I want you to slowly return to the present. Take a few deep breaths, gradually bring your awareness back to the present moment. Open your eyes when you feel ready. This exercise is designed to help you gain insight, celebrate your achievement, and set positive intentions for the future.
I want you to feel free to adapt it. To suit your preferences and needs. So if any of these steps you like, or any of the, if any of these steps were too hard, you have the ability to be able to go back, listen to this episode over and over again, until you can adjust this self reflection exercise to help you to ensure that you are on the track that you need to be for this upcoming year.
Now that you've done your, your guided reflection, It's time to set empowering goals. I want you to be able to to set Resilient goals. What is a resilient goal? So say for instance, if you want to launch a new business, rather than expecting everything to go smooth. We already know that when you launch a business, there are going to be challenges.
There are going to be unexpected expenses and even competition. So when you set your goals, you want your goals to include strategies for adapting to changing circumstance your ability to continually learn and focus on personal and professional growth throughout the journey. And so basically that's what a resilient goal is.
A resilient goal already encompasses strategies to help you overcome challenges because we are going to experience adversity. And so you have to have strategies in your goal setting to help you to be able to overcome those. Because if you don't have strategies, what I know for sure is you would give up on the goal.
Let me share a little bit about my experience in my experience obtaining my doctorate degree. And so I went and I, I wanted to obtain a doctorate degree and it was so interesting because God told me that I would get this degree in three years. I enrolled in a university, everything was kind of bumpy, but you know, I was on track.
A year and a half in the program, I was administratively withdrawn from the program. What does that mean? I was kicked out of this program. And I was a year and a half in, I knew God told me three years. But I also knew that, that it was going to be hard, like I knew it was going to be hard. So when I got kicked out of the program, I did not let that stop me because I knew what God had told me and I knew that it was going to be hard.
And so what I had to do was readjust the timeline and readjust the strategies to obtain a degree. So I did not allow the challenge to prevent me from earning the degree. I enrolled in another school, long story short, I eventually graduated, and it was so interesting because I graduated three years. In that program, so hindsight, looking back, I was in the wrong school.
And so God had given me a school and instead of me going to that particular school, I went to a different school. I actually talk about this a little bit in my book, Six Pillars of Resilience. And I also talk about it on my YouTube channel. So if you would like to know more about my experience and what happened, definitely check those two things out.
And so just make sure that you set. Resilient goals. You want to make sure that your goals take into consideration challenges, adversity, you know, life happening, you know, life does happen. Some things in life we can't control. So just make sure that when you set your goals, you think about those things realistically.
You want to use a goal setting framework. The one that I use in my professional and personal life is the SMART criteria. You want the goals to be specific, measurable. Achievable, relevant, and time bound. You want to think about your short term and your long term goals. And so just make sure that your goals are smart.
You want to make sure that those goals are structured with life in mind. They are structured in a realistic mindset. And that way, if you kind of fall short, you don't beat yourself up. You give yourself room for adjustment. And so make sure you are using a goal setting framework. Again, the one that I use in my personal and professional life is SMART criteria.
Those goals are to be specific. Measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. You don't want to leave open ended goals because when life happens, you will never achieve them. So you want to make sure that you do put a time bound on those goals, but not in an unrealistic way that will cause you to become discouraged.
You want to identify your potential challenges. What obstacles will you face? Like what obstacles, I'm a woman and so I know what obstacles women face for me personally is juggling multiple roles. I have to balance my career, my family, my personal life. Like I have so many things that I have to balance.
And so I have to make sure that when I set goals that I think about that I'm a wife. I think about that I'm a mom. I think about that I'm a caregiver. I think about that I'm a professional. I'm a coach. There are so many roles that I play. And so I have to make sure that I take those in considerations because the different roles also present different challenges or the potential for it to be a challenge.
And so just make sure that you consider that. Consider if you have support or not. You know, sometimes in my life I found myself with limited support. My husband was active duty military and so the majority of the time he wasn't here. To help me be a parent. And so you just have to think about those things.
And so just make sure that you consider your support. When you are aligning these roles or when you are aligning your, your goals, make sure you consider what are the challenges that I may face when trying to achieve this goal. And that way, when you identify those potential challenges, you are making this goal be a resilient goal because you take, you took into consideration the challenges that you may face.
You want to, you want to make sure that you. Really address anticipating challenges. I cannot say this enough. You have to make sure that when you are setting your goals, that you are real and you recognize that there will be challenges. Like there are going to be challenges, we don't live in this fair and tail world where there are no, there are no challenges, there are no trials, there are no tribulations.
And so just make sure that you are addressing that and that you have practical strategies to help you develop the resilience to be able to still pursue the goal, regardless of what happens, you are going to pursue the goals. And so in my book, like I said, Six Pillars of Resilience, I have six pillars to help you develop resilience.
And so I really encourage you to go on amazon. com, purchase that book, because when you activate those six pillars, you will begin to develop resilience. And when you develop resilience, you will be able to overcome any challenge. Any adversity that comes in your path because you have a strategy to do so.
And so I encourage you to do that. I also encourage you to create an action plan. We have to have an action plan. We have to be able to break down our goals. We have to discuss the significance of the goals. You know, sometimes we have to break down our goals into smarter, smaller, more manageable steps. I know we all dream big, but sometimes dreaming big can be a hindrance because if you don't accomplish that goal, you can be so critical and hard on yourself.
One thing I learned is we have to give ourselves grace. Oh my God, grace is so important. I can't stress that enough. Grace is so important because grace will, will keep you going. Grace will, will cause you not to be so critical of yourself. Grace will make sure that you know that even if you don't make that goal in a time frame that you plan, that you are still more than enough, that you are still capable and that you are still worthy.
And so you want to make sure that you give yourself grace. You want to make sure that you. You have an action plan and that action plan, like I said, you want to make sure it includes the grace to break down the goals and make them more manageable. You want to make sure that the grace that the action plan gives you grace or time management and to prioritize for me.
I make sure that I set aside a day per week to work on my personal stuff and my professional stuff. So, you know, whether you want to say, Hey, I'm going to commit 30 minutes a day to work on myself, or I want to commit you know, two hours on the weekend, whatever the case is, make sure that you prioritize and that you have.
a Time set aside in order for you to be able to accomplish your goal. And you want to make sure that you address stress. Stress is so important to deal with. Oh my gosh, stress is so important. So you have to take time for self care. You have to take time to maintain a balanced life, whether that's you reading a book, you taking a nap, you going to get a massage, you going to therapy, counseling, whatever your self care looks like, make sure you do it.
That is so important. Sometimes we get, you know, we get. In a place where we feel bad for putting ourself first, but in order for you to achieve your goals, you have to put yourself first in order for you to be a good mom, whatever you are, whatever your roles are, in order for you to be good at those roles, you have to make sure that your, your, your mental health is, is great.
So just make sure your action plan includes, you know, effective time management as well as self care. Very important because we are, are stressful beings. The hustle and bustle of life can cause us to be stressed and so we just have to make sure that we, we set aside time and we take those things into consideration.
You also want to cultivate a supportive community, build a network I can't stress this enough. It is so important to have people that are like minded in your life, people that are going to support you, hold you accountable for achieving your goals. I want you to connect with like minded individuals.
On my website, brooksdemming. com, I actually have votes. And in those votes, I have people that are like minded, people that are all about building resilience, people that are about achieving goals. And so check out my website, join my community because I will definitely motivate you and I will ensure that you have the accountability partner that you need in order for you to achieve your goals.
I am a big goal driven person. And I know the importance of. Of achieving your goals. I know the importance and the feeling of success when you accomplish what you set out to accomplish, whether that is great or small, we have to make sure that we accomplish the things that we set out to accomplish. And so I just hope that you take away today the importance of reflection, the importance of creating resilient goals the importance of having a network, the importance of mental health, the importance of just giving yourself grace.
It is okay. It is okay to give yourself grace. Do we always hit the mark? Absolutely not. I know for myself, I have to re strategize all the time. But I understand that as long as I continue the race, I'm winning. It's when you give up on yourself that you can lose. And so I don't want any of my listeners to give up on themselves.
You are all capable. You are all worthy of having that life that is balanced, that life that you can have your faith, you can have your career, you can have your family, and they can all be one cohesive unit that works together. And not against one another. That's the whole point of starting this podcast, Can't have it all.
I know the world tells us we can't have it all, but we can. And so in order for you to have it all, you have to make sure that you prioritize, that you have time management, that you put all of those great things that you love, that you put them At the forefront and that you are constantly, you know, reflecting that you are constantly rearranging and that you make sure nothing is on the back burner.
And so, again, I just want to thank you so much for tuning in. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to tune in next week as we will continue to discuss how we can be resilient and how we are going to tackle the new year. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Off Balance. I hope you found inspiration and practical tools to navigate the delicate dance of faith, family, and business.
Remember, resilience is not just a skill, it's a mindset. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review. Your feedback is invaluable. And helps us reach even more incredible women on their journey to resilience. Stay connected with your host by visiting brooksdemming. com. As you go about your day, carry with you the strength you've discovered here.
Until next time, keep thriving, keep believing, and keep finding your balance.