Repacking for the Journey Ahead
SUMMARY
Do you feel a bit stuck and unsure how you will make things different in 2024 to where you arrived at the end of 2023?
For some of you, when you are watching this, you are just about to go into the new year and for others, you’re in that first week already.
So, a lot of thoughts go through our minds at this time of the year, and they're not always positive.
Well, stick with me because this week, I want to empower you to start your journey in 2024 in a way that will allow you to get where you want to be at the end of the year.
Christmas and the holiday season is a terrible time for a lot of people. It's supposed to be a joyous, relaxing, and refreshing time.
However, the challenge is what most people do — who are human and emotional beings who have identities based around who they believe they're not as well as who they believe they are — is chasing those three universal fears away of not being enough, not being someone who belongs, and not being loved.
With all those things going on, when people stop and look at where they've come in their journey (particularly over a year), they can get stuck.
The challenge with that is if we step into the new year with that same mindset, and that only being the data that we bring into the equation, then we are not empowered to go where we need to go to do what it is that we need to do to become who we need to become so that at the end of 2024, it's a different story.
It's got four R's in it, and you've probably heard me talk about it before.
- Results: Where do I want to go?
- Reality: Where am I now?
- Roadblocks: What am I doing to stop myself from getting there?
- Resources: What can I employ to finally get those roadblocks out of the way so that I can go from where I am now to where I want to be at the end of 90 days and at the end of the year and beyond?
So, while most people are contemplating New Year's resolutions that they won't keep two weeks down the track or beating themselves up and thinking: “Well, it's a waste of time trying”, you and I are going on a different journey because we have already planned to get where we want to go.
TRANSCRIPT
Do you feel a bit stuck and unsure how you will make things different in 2024 to where you arrived at the end of 2023?
For some of you, when you are watching this, you are just about to go into the new year and for others, you’re in that first week already.
So, a lot of thoughts go through our minds at this time of the year, and they're not always positive.
Well, stick with me because this week, I want to empower you to start your journey in 2024 in a way that will allow you to get where you want to be at the end of the year.
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to start working with you for 2024 by helping you repack your bags for the journey ahead.
Christmas and the holiday season is a terrible time for a lot of people. It's supposed to be a joyous, relaxing, and refreshing time.
However, the challenge is what most people do — who are human and emotional beings who have identities based around who they believe they're not as well as who they believe they are — is chasing those three universal fears away of not being enough, not being someone who belongs, and not being loved.
With all those things going on, when people stop and look at where they've come in their journey (particularly over a year), they can get stuck.
They can get stuck in the negative.
“What I didn’t get done.”
“What went wrong?”
“What happened to me?”
“That wasn’t what I wanted to happen.”
The challenge with that is if we step into the new year with that same mindset, and that only being the data that we bring into the equation, then we are not empowered to go where we need to go to do what it is that we need to do to become who we need to become so that at the end of 2024, it's a different story.
In my life (year in and year out), the same challenges came with me because I didn't unpack them out of my bag.
I just took the same bag on every journey. The bag was filled with my doubts, fears, and failures, and they were weighing me down.
I like to do an exercise when I work with clients in a workshop around this. So, what we do is we get some bricks and a backpack. Each of the bricks we put into our backpack represents the fears, uncertainties, failures, and things we’re ruminating on that are holding us back.
For example, we can think of things that happened to us in the past.
Things that happened in our past can teach us many things. However, when we carry them around all the time, they can be a little exhausting,
When we are exhausted in our minds, bodies, and emotions, we're not able to be who we could be when we are being the best version of ourselves.
Remember, we're not talking about perfection; that’s never going to happen. We're talking about being the best version you can be right now. Being teachable and open to shifting, changing and adjusting. Looking at mistakes is a good thing because they teach us what not to do moving forward.
Looking at wins in a certain way that says: “That's great,” but not letting them define you and build on your approval addiction where you: “I did that, so now I am good enough." No. What you need to do is to look at what it was that you did in a different way that enabled you to get that result.
I'm passionate about this because I know that the clients I work with (it doesn’t matter where they are in the world) face this challenge. One of the things that they do, because they have some “time off” over Christmas, is ruminate on these things.
I never like being gender specific, but I do find that men do this a lot. They judge themselves based on where they were last year, and it doesn't look like they've gone any further, so they're down on themselves. I know that ladies also do that, and it's not the place to be. Doing this is holding you back from where you could be at the end of this year and beyond. This isn't just about a year — this is about next week, month, and the years to come.
In our last video, before I took a break, I said: “The end of the year is not necessarily any different to anything else, but it is a milestone that people tend to look at.”
So, let's capitalise on that. Let's look at 2024 and see what you could do differently and how you could think in a different way that's going to shift your behaviour from what's not giving the results that you want to the behaviour that will — where you build up that identity even stronger and where you really believe that what other people think of you is none of your business. Eleanor Roosevelt said that so well. She also said: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
So, there are many things that I want to help you with this year.
However, to do that, I want to start with a foundation that allows you to be ready to receive what I want to download with you this year.
Hopefully, I’ve got your attention. If you're still here, you're on the journey, which is a great thing. That means that you're sick and tired of being sick and tired. You do not want to stay in that same position.
Having this desire to change will take some stretching and growing, which will be painful and uncomfortable. However, it is going to give you the results that you want.
So, come with me. Let me show you the process that you need to go through today, this week. Give it some energy so that you can get your thinking ready to step into a year of opportunity, promise, and hope - filled with things, that will come across your world that when you're in the right frame of mind, you're going to recognise.
There's a simple process that I like to use.
It's got four R's in it, and you've probably heard me talk about it before.
However, I want to deliver that to you today in context to setting up your year so that you get the results that you want — that you get more achieved in the first 90 days of this year than others get out of their entire year.
So, let's have a look at them.
The first thing you need to do is you need to recognise the RESULTS that you want at the end of the year. How do you want things to look different to the way they look now in your energy, health, family, career, finances and friendships?
Choose the things that are most important to you and put those things down.
As you do this process, you need to keep the mini-me under control. Because that internal dialogue that wants to pull you back; that’s fighting against those three universal fears and the approval addiction, will steal the results that you want from you and convince you that:
“You're not going to get that.”
“You're not good enough.”
“You don't deserve that.”
Therefore, you need to be able to keep that mini-me under control as we go through this process.
As we go through this process, you can either come with me until the end of this journey on this video or podcast, then after you've taken your notes, you can do it. Or you can pause right now and write down the list of things you want at the end of 2024.
Once you have the list of things that you want, you now know the destination of where it is that you want to go on this journey. It enables you to come out of that rut of just going: “This is just another year; I'll just go to work. I'll do this and that,” and makes you come out of being in that same old Groundhog Day that a lot of people are used to.
Now, you’ve got something that will motivate you — you now have something to move towards.
In fact, on that list, there could also be some things that you want to move away from. That could be where the thinking starts, and you say: “I don't want this to happen anymore.”
So, flip that: What does that look like when that's not happening and what you want to happen is happening instead? When you do this, you now have a list of results.
The second part of the process is to come back to where you are right now to look at your current REALITY and going on that same list of things that are important to you ask yourself:
“Where is it different now?”
“When I look at each of those things, how do they differ from where I want to be?”
This is where I want you to really do this in a forward-focused way. Unfortunately, when you get in that position, you sometimes will get bogged down in the difference between where you are and where you want to go. Then, you’ll focus on the negative aspects of that reality.
No. What you need to do is to look at this through the lens of doing an audit where you’re just collecting data. The purpose of this is just to look at the gap between where you are now and where you want to go from a purely logical perspective.
As you go through this process, if that mini-me is once again getting involved in the conversation, challenge it.
Also, you can get a coach (someone like me) to go through that process with you. Coaches can lead you through that process because they are not emotionally invested in it, and they can recognise when you're getting bogged down and lift you out of that. But whatever you need to do, get that current reality.
Write those things down from a perspective of: “I'm going to use that information to go forward.”
Now that you know where you want to go and where you are right now, you have a gap. You now have a journey — point A and point B — that you’re going to travel towards as we step off into the new year.
“Towards” is an important word here.
The reason I say “towards” is sometimes we're going to need to go off track a little bit, and things will change and shift because the world is a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) world, and things are going to shift.
Opportunities are going to come across your world.
Things are going to change.
People are going to go in and out of your life.
All these things could happen because life's never perfect. However, you've got an idea of where it is that you are pointing towards with your compass for the next 12 months.
What you can now do is take that 12 months and break it down into 90-day chunks.
In fact, you can do six weeks or whatever works for you. It just needs to be long enough that it stretches you but short enough that you can see the mile marker (that milestone) that’s in front of you.
Now that you've done that, what you do is go through that same process, and you look at where you are now and where you want to be in 90 days.
You focus around that and ask:
“What are the results I want at the end of the 90 days?”
You do that for each of those quarters. The thing with this is it's not just a matter of taking the gap on those things and then dividing it by 4 because a lot of the momentum happens towards the end of the year.
As you build up and compound on those competencies, strengths, and behaviours, they are going to exponentially grow your results.
So, where do you want to be in 90 days from now?
Then we're going to cut that down again and look at where you need to be each week, each day, etcetera.
What you want to do next is you want to move the ROADBLOCKS out of the way.
There are things that you did in 2023 — and some of those you've been doing for years — that are going to stop you from going from where you are now to where you want to go.
A lot of those things are going to be beliefs and mindsets that you have, thought patterns that you allow yourself to ruminate on. They can be opinions that you have about who you are and who you're not. There are also some behaviours that you're doing that are not serving you as well.
So, ask yourself the question:
“What could I do to stop myself from going from where I am now to where I want to go?"
Once again, you might need some help from someone like me to be able to do that.
The end result is to come up with a list of opportunities to grow.
I use that terminology on purpose to help you understand once again that this is not an opportunity for you to go:
“Ugh, here's some more things that I don't like about myself.”
“I do this, and I don't do this.”
“These things are things that I always do.”
When you use this kind of language, it’s going to keep you anchored to where you are.
You need to cut that off and make a decision to change.
To do that, you need to leave some of those thoughts behind.
By identifying the roadblocks, what you're doing is going:
“Oh, what do I need to work on?”
“In my journey of personal and professional development this year, what are the things that I'm going to work on?”
When you use this kind of language, it becomes a plan, not just “I’ll do a little bit of this and that.”
Therefore, it becomes an in-time learning rather than a “just in case”; it has a purpose.
Then, the fourth R that you need to look at is RESOURCES.
What are the resources that you need to add to overcome those roadblocks so you can go from where you are now to where you want to go?
Some of those resources could be books that you need to read.
It could be programs that you need to put yourself into.
It could be daily habits that you need to bring into your life that are not the negative ones that are there right now.
It could be around building up your self-talk.
It could be a list of affirmations.
Once again, those things could be worked out with a coach to make sure that for each of your roadblocks, you have several resources that you can employ.
If we are on a journey on the road and then there’s a roadblock - like a tree in the way - we need to have chainsaws, wood chippers, trucks, and people who can get the roadblock out of the road. They're the resources that we need to use to get the roadblock out of the way.
And that's exactly what we're doing here.
For example, if one of my roadblocks is that I’m always beating up on myself, then one of the resources could be a list of positive affirmations that I want to believe about myself, and I'm going to read them three times a day.
So, there are many things that you could do.
If one of the roadblocks is you lacking a particular knowledge as part of your career technical skills, one of the resources is to find a way to get that knowledge.
If you are constantly procrastinating on things and you have great intentions to do things, but you don't have the support and accountability to actually keep you on track, then one of the resources that you could employ is a coach.
You could get me involved in what it is that you're doing, and if I'm not the right fit, I could help you to get the right one.
So, there you have the four Rs:
- Results: Where do I want to go?
- Reality: Where am I now?
- Roadblocks: What am I doing to stop myself from getting there?
- Resources: What can I employ to finally get those roadblocks out of the way so that I can go from where I am now to where I want to be at the end of 90 days and at the end of the year and beyond?
The key to this is the way you think when you go through this process.
You need to use that forward focus reflection.
When you are in a car, and you've got the big sheet of glass in front of you that's the windscreen or the windshield some people call it. And then, you’ve got that small piece of glass which is the rearview mirror that every now and then you pop up and have a look at to see where you've come and what's coming up from behind.
When you go through this R4 process, make sure that most of your vision is looking through the windscreen - out the front and where you're going - because if you get stuck on looking in the revision mirror (where you've been and why you are not good enough, et cetera), then two things are going to happen: You're going to run off the road, and you're not going to get to where it is that you want to go.
So, while most people are contemplating New Year's resolutions that they won't keep two weeks down the track or beating themselves up and thinking: “Well, it's a waste of time trying”, you and I are going on a different journey because we have already planned to get where we want to go.
So, use those four R's and I'd love you to connect with me and tell me what they are.
Whether you're watching this on YouTube or you're listening on the podcast or somewhere on LinkedIn or some other social media, get in the conversation with me. When you do, you and I will be ready to continue our development in those 9 crucial shifts in our leadership and emotional intelligence (all the things that I want to help you with again this year).
Well, that's it from me for the first week of the year.
Join me again next week as we continue this conversation.
I'll see you then.
