December is truly my favourite month, because there is something about the entire month that feels like a big celebration of everything you’ve achieved whilst also simultaneously having the abundant energy of a clean slate as you move into the new year. It’s like possibility is in the air and so for me December truly is the most wonderful time of the year to reflect and reset.
But I also understand that the end of the year for some is one of the hardest and most conflicting times of the year. It’s a reminder of all the things you wanted to achieve and yet now another year has slipped away and it feels like you have nothing to show for it.
Regardless of whether you’re excited by the fact that the new year is just around the corner or if this is a tough time for you, I wanted to share this episode with the aim that hopefully it will carry you into next year feeling really fucking good about yourself and what you’ve achieved.
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Now i’ve titled this episode reward the action, not the result, because whether you believe it or not, you have made progress on your goals and when you are able to focus on the action and not the result, December gets to be a huge month long celebration because you’re rewarding every action you’ve taken this year.
Your growth will never be linear. There will be times where you take steps forward and there will be times where it feels like you’re taking steps backward. But the end of the day, you’re still taking steps right? You’re still moving and that is worth celebrating. Because whether it feels like it or not you actually are moving towards your goals and you’re better positioned now compared to before.
When I started my business I placed my success based on what results I had or hadn’t achieved. So one of my goals was to make $10K in my first year.
But in that year I only made $9K so I felt deflated. I completely ignored all the action steps I took to make the $9K. I chose to ignore that I started my business, that I landed my first client, that I learnt so many new skills Instead I focused on this $9K result and the fact that it wasn’t $10K. But does that mean its not worth celebrating or rewarding all these other steps along the way because I didn’t hit my ambitious goal of making $10K? When I look back at when I set that goal of $10K, I didn’t even have a business, I didn’t know how I’d make $1K let alone $10K and I didn’t believe it was possible, but I thought I’d try.
Now because I held that belief, I had all this self doubt come in, saying “see I told you so, you didn’t do it. You’re not capable”. and when you get into a shame spiral like that it can be really hard to regulate and pull yourself out of it.
But if you were talking to a friend and they were feeling flat explaining that they didn’t hit their goals etc, what would your response be. It’d be you’re kidding right, you made $9K, of course you’re capable and look at all the other things you did along the way. You would remind them to celebrate the steps they took.
But when you’re in it, you’re often so focused on moving forward that you forget to look back and acknowledge just how far you have truly come. And when you do start to look back often times you surprise yourself for the things you have done that you one believed wasn’t possible.
It’s an easy habit to fall into because our brains are wired to motivate ourselves by results. Sales commissions are the perfect example of that. If you make X amount of sales, you’ll earn a cash bonus. But they don’t take into consideration the amount of work or the steps you’ve taken to get the bonus, it’s purely based on results and a lot of our society is based on that.
We use rewards to motivate ourselves to achieve certain results. If I eat healthy for a full week, I can have a cheat day. If I land 2 clients this month I will buy myself a new dress. We focus solely on the results and completely ignore the steps you need to take to achieve the desired results.
And often times we set ambitious and audacious goals that we don’t know how to achieve, because they’re often things we haven’t done before and so when we’re doing that, theres often a lot of steps in between that we didn’t realise. So then when the process takes longer or we don’t achieve the desired results we feel bad about ourselves, when in reality thats a part of growth, because as I said earlier, it’s not linear.
That’s why it is important to have a win list, that outlines the actions you have taken along the way so that you can celebrate along the way not just at the end.
Imagine you’re training a dog to sit. But you only gave them a reward once they’ve mastered it. They’d never learn how to. If you were operating in this way you can guarantee that its going to be a thousand times more difficult and take so much longer to train that dog because you’re not celebrating every action. It’s clear that the most effective way to train a dog is to give the command and every time they listen and do it, you reward them and that trains them to keep going. So why do we not do that for ourselves?
Celebrating the action makes the journey more fun, regardless of the results, and it means you are able to keep showing up taking action because you enjoy the process of achieving your goals.
Because at the end of the day if you get to the end of your life working your butt off never truly acknowledging yourself, never truly celebrating, was the goal, the money, the success actually worth it? The goal is only worth it if you are enjoying the process of getting there, otherwise what is the point?
Now heading into this month, I started to fall into this trap of feeling a bit sorry for myself, feeling like I hadn’t hit the heights I wanted to hit this year with my business. My personal life has been chaotic this year, the only stable thing was my business and so I didn’t take the risks I would have normally out of the fear that my business too would descend into chaos. I started to feel myself fall into victim mode feeling sorry for myself blaming my external situation for the reason my business hadn’t hit the heights I wanted this year, and because of that I forgot to acknowledge the action steps I did take.
For example one of my huge goals was to move out on my own. I’ve had it on my vision board for at least the last 2 years and it was often my biggest goal, or driving motivator.
3 months ago I moved out to my own apartment, and I celebrated so hard at the time, but soon enough I climatized to this being my new normal. Despite it being such a huge accomplishment at the time. A few months later it wasn’t as special anymore and so when I was reflecting, I was like yeah ok well I did that but what about all this I didn’t achieve. I swept the thing that was literally my biggest motivator and goal for the last 2 years under the rug, because I’d done that, I’d achieved it already and had moved on to bigger goals.
And I really had to pull myself back and go hang on what the hell. Remember how every night you journalled about having your own home, remember how excited you were when you got your keys. You drempt about this day for literally the last 2 years, enjoy the moment, sink into it and really celebrate you deserve it.
It’s so easy to downplay our steps, downplay our actions because you didn’t achieve something else.
That’s why journals and vlogs are important to record because you can look back on a past version of yourself and see exactly how you were in that moment, what you were feeling, and you can celebrate that version of you for taking the action steps to take you to where you are today.
So that’s why I wanted to record this episode for you today, as a way for you to truly reflect on every step, every action you’ve taken this year and your homework after listening is to go out and spend the entire month of December truly recognising yourself for the powerful work you’ve done this year.
At some point you were dreaming about being where you are right now and that in itself is worth celebrating.
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