Hello. Welcome today’s episode. So am going to be talking about New Year’s resolutions today. So specifically how to set a bang in New Year’s resolution. Now, mind you don’t have to be listening to this on New Year’s. You can use it whenever you want to kind of have a fresh start in your life. So whether it is on physical New Year’s or maybe your version of a new year is every birthday or maybe you need to change things up in your life so you need a fresh start. This is the podcast for that because it helps you kind of clarify their goals of what you want, just like you would in New Year’s but actually move you forward in life. So let me dive right in. And again, I’m always going to mention this. 

Any of the resources I mentioned, any of the journal prompts that I’m mentioning, they’re all over at the podcast. They’re all over at the website. Margaret Stevens Co so if you want to answer along with me because you are listening to this, please feel free to say stuff out loud. Or if you want, you’re more than welcome to go to the Clutter free community and go ahead and post your answers there. But again, don’t freak out just because you don’t have the answer the questions written in front of you. They’re all over at the blog. So let’s start with the most important question out of all of this. Since the primary intention is to feel good, and if you haven’t heard any of my episodes on that, please look for the episodes in regards to feeling good and setting your intentions. 

But since the intention is to feel good and you want to do that, what type of feelings do you want to feel? So again, let’s go off the mindset that this is New Year’s. Like it’s literally maybe two days before New Year’s, you’re trying to set your new intentions for the next year. How do you want to feel in that next year? So I’ll give you my examples. My example was I wanted to feel intentional and spacious and I’ve also added onto that, to be honest, I want to feel intentional, spacious and calm. So why do I want to feel those ways? Well, in previous chapters of my life, I have not felt intentional or spacious or calm. I have felt ambitious, I have felt goal oriented. I have felt what I’ve collapsed time. And there’s a different episode for that. 

So if you haven’t heard the Collapsed Time episode, listen to that one too because that’s a really good one as well. But I felt all these other things and I feel like I’ve accomplished a good chunk of things I wanted to do at this point in my life. So what I’m doing right now and what I’m actually doing not only for just this year, but for the next ten years, because I like to have my yearly goals kind of tie into my decade goal. My decade goal is to prepare myself for the future so that I’m not always reacting to things. We as in me and my husband. Me and my husband have always talked because we come from a background of it. He was a Cisco engineer, which is a fancy schmancy engineer in It and I was a project manager in it. 

So again, we come back from a background of it and in it. The people that actually had really big clientele, it wasn’t because they were reacting to stuff. It is because they either built software or they designed businesses that was proactive. So if you were a proactive It company man, you made a bank. And it was a mindset that was really helpful for us because we got indoctrinated into that early on in our careers. So whatever we’ve done since then, we’ve always focused on, well, let’s be proactive instead of reactive. How can we be proactive? How can we be proactive? It’s kind of like a broken record in our home. So it’s kind of the same thing I am wanting for the next ten years of my life, which I don’t even know what they’re going to look like. 

I’m not really hardcore set on them. I’m not saying, okay, I have to do this and this, and if I don’t, then it was a waste of ten years. But I do know from the last decade of my life, my twenty s, that even though there was a bunch of things I accomplished really well and very fast in my twenty s, I felt really stressed out all the time because I was always reacting from thing to thing to thing. And whenever we would start to be a little bit proactive, we would kind of let that go out the window. And we never kept it as a front point in our planning and in our strategizing and in our, okay, we want to achieve this, but how does that feed into the big picture? 

So again, that’s why we learn from our, I don’t want to say mistakes, but we learn from our past. We grow from it and we build on it. So building on it again, for whether it’s the year or the decade, how do you want to feel? I want to feel intentional because I want to do things on purpose. I don’t want to do things because I’m just reacting to them. I want to feel spacious because I like having a couple of days of rest built into my week. So what do I mean by that? Again, I’m trying to give you guys words and examples so you can start to think of this on your own and you can go through the process even though I’m not physically there with you. 

So I want to feel spacious because, like I said, I like to have a couple of days of rest built into my week. So rest for means I have no obligations to do anything or go anywhere after I get out of work. It is just go home, cook dinner with the husband, play with the six children, the fur babies and relax. And if we watch a movie, if I read a book, if I go on a walk, those are all little bonus activities. But I don’t have to do something, I don’t have to go anywhere. So that is what spacious feels like to me. So I have noticed as again, growing older and wiser in my 30s or starting my thirty s, that I am a massive introvert, but I still have this really big creative part in me. 

So I noticed it’s actually a lot easier for me to combine my creative days and do three creative days back to back versus having them scattered. Because it’s kind of like this little thing where I can run with the activity, I can run with the creativity, I can run with the flow, because I know I’m going to have four days of rest. So it’s a little easy for me to kind of go into a burst. So, again, spacious is having and knowing I’ve got four days where I’m not doing anything. I have no plans, I have no requirements, I have nothing put upon me. No, of course, if I want to go out to dinner with a girlfriend, or if I want to go hang out or do something like that, I’m not going to automatically say no. 

But I feel like I’ve got space for that in my life because I’ve already said no to a bunch of other things intentionally. So the last part of how I want to feel, to give you guys more of an example, is I want to feel calm. And throughout all of this, I can be intentional, I can be spacious and I can still be chaotic. So, yes, I could be intentional and only do things that kind of move me forward. But at the same time, it could be very sporadic. It could be ping ponging between this and that, and my energy could be frantic. So, because we do have six animals and so does my husband, we like to keep our environment very calm. 

We want you, if you ever come over to our home, to feel calm and peaceful in our environment, not like chaos. So, again, that was the last thing I wanted to feel for my New Year’s resolution, was calm. So hopefully listening to my examples has given you three examples. And like I said, I’d love to either see you post them over at the Clutter Free Community Facebook group or over at the blog, or if you’re listening to it, you don’t have pen and paper. Say them out loud with me. How do you want to feel? Okay, so hopefully you use that pause to go ahead and say what you wanted to feel, at minimum, out loud. So the second thing that I do when I am setting a New Year’s resolution goal is I like to make things measurable. 

So I’m saying I want to feel intentional spacious and calm. Okay, well, how do I measure that? Because if you can’t measure it, then how do you know if you’ve succeeded? So, again, to be very candid, I like to go out and do nature walks. Whether it is with one of my dogs, because he’s a little trekker. I mean, I can walk three, almost 4 miles with him. And outside of him just getting slightly tired, I’m stopping because I’m more concerned about him. He’s not tired. So I love to go on nature walks. Like I said, I like to read. I’ve mentioned in multiple episodes that I love to Netflix and chill. So if I’m trying to feel spacious, let’s go back and tie it all in. 

I just said in an earlier example, I know that I have set up a schedule that lets me feel spacious because four days out of the week, I have no requirements on my time. So that is something that is very measurable. So I could look back through my day planner, my Daniella Port day planner, or I could look back through my Evernote, not Evernote, my Google Calendar, and I could see, okay, how many days was I running around like a nut job? Was it more than three? Okay, I’m kind of getting off my mark. I know that I don’t really function that well if I have a lot of after work obligations that spill over into multiple days. So that’s something that’s very measurable. So another thing would be calm, because you might be thinking, well, how do I measure calm? 

So part of the Daniella Port planner has little spaces in there for you to write what you want to get rid of. What do you want to stop? How do you feel? It’s kind of like a planner journal. At the same time, you could go back and physically look at a planner or maybe your notebook and see, okay, how many days did I feel frantic? If my goal is to feel calm, how many days did I feel frantic or anger or frustration or upset or unheard or whatever the scenario? Is that’s a way to physically measure, okay, if I felt in the last week calm only one day a week, what can I change? And that’s the entire reason why we are measuring this. It’s not just to measure for the sake of measuring. 

It’s to measure because we want to make sure that we’re on the right track and we’re actually going to be hitting our goals. The goal is to move you forward in life, which is step number three. Will this move me forward in life? Because I keep hinting at it, so I might as well run into it. So will this move me forward in life? Being intentional, being spacious and being calm, is this going to move me forward in life? Yes. Okay, so don’t just say yes with me. So whatever yours is, if yours is obviously going to be different than mine, if I ask you that question, will this move you forward in life? I want you to tell me why. Again, not controversial, but a different way of approaching a New Year’s resolution or even a decade’s resolution. 

Moving you forward in life is one of the best questions I have ever gotten in terms of thinking of my life in general. So my favorite question is always, what would this look like if it was easy? And then from there it’s like, okay, we have our life to live. We have this time on Earth that we get to grow and expand and experience all these amazing things. Well, I want as part of my life goal overall is I want to move forward. I want to progress, I want to up level, I want to continue on my spiritual path, whatever phrase feels good to you. So is this goal going to get me there? And for me, being intentional means yes. 

I’m actually giving my energy to the things that matter, which is extremely important to me because before in my twenty s, I didn’t understand how to manage my energy. I just thought that it was this endless supply and you go, and two burnouts later, and two creative slumps and issues later, and depressions. Obviously that wasn’t valid. So if you’re looking at the short term, sometimes you need to, and I’m talking a lot in this podcast specifically about what your next ten years is going to look like. If that feels overwhelming, don’t go with the next ten years, go with the next six years, go with the next six months, go with the next month, take those baby steps, and then over time you can expand this. 

So if you’re listening to this podcast, and maybe it’s not New Year’s, and you have a current reality that does not fit the reality you want, but you don’t have the capacity to even think outside of the next year, focus on the next year. How do you want to feel for the next year? How can you measure if you were successful? And does this move you forward in life? So I know of a couple of people, and I won’t get into specific details just to protect the conversations we’ve had together, but I know a couple of people that are kind of doing a life reboot. One person is looking at the relationships in their life. Another person is looking at the obligations they have in their life, and it’s because they don’t feel fulfilled. 

So I’ve had conversations with them, and I’ve asked them, how do you want to feel? And one of them said, I don’t want to feel so overwhelmed. It’s like, okay, so what does not feeling overwhelmed look like? How do you measure that? So her version was to have a couple of days a week, kind of similar to mine, have a couple of days a week where she did specific tasks, and then the rest of it she outsourced because not having her be the only person that did everything felt really good to her. So she was able to measure, okay, well, haven’t been outsourcing things enough? Am I still doing too much? Do I have my calendar booked day after day? And then I go back to, does this move you forward in life? 

And moving you forward in life can mean a bunch of different things. It can mean getting you on your goals, like, say you want to I don’t know, let me make it up. Say you want to get a promotion within the next year. Okay, so you can go and you can run with that. But will that move you forward in life? And hopefully the answer is yes. Hopefully that brings more stability into your life. Maybe that brings career fulfillment and personal fulfillment, maybe financial fulfillment. But I want you to start making these decisions and start rewiring your brain in a way that you’re not thinking of just the next month or the next year or six months or one year or three years or five years, but it’s like this kind of overarching arc of your life. There’s. 

The cultures in Japan because I love to study different cultures of how they just look at their life differently. So one of my favorite cultures to study is Japanese culture, Japan. Not just because I have a friend over there. I loved it before I even had a friend over there. It’s just a bonus to have one. The reason why I like it is because they’re very intentional as a society, as a culture. I saw something on Facebook a couple weeks ago, but they don’t really have a word for retirement, quote unquote. Obviously, I can’t pronounce the word, but basically it’s like, what is your life’s goal? And they were interviewing, like, this great grandmother, and she’s holding, I don’t know, her great granddaughter. That’s an infant. And they were asking her, how do you feel? 

And she’s like, every time I hold my granddaughter, it feels like I’m in heaven. So maybe her goal wasn’t to become a great grandmother and hold her great grandkids, but it’s this overarching arc of is the decisions I’m making today going to benefit that version of me? That’s maybe 94, 95, 100, 102, however long we’re going to be on this Earth, am I making decisions that is going to be proactive and make that person’s life better? Or am I making decisions that are kind of going to sabotage because there is no in between? I don’t like it when people because I think it’s a lie when people are like, oh, well, you can be moving forward. You could be stagnant or you could be moving backwards. You’re either moving forward or you’re stagnant. And here’s why. 

And this goes back again to the New Year’s resolution, setting goals up. Whether however you define those goals, if you are not moving forward in life, the rest of your life is moving forward. Time is still physically passing. Let’s go with the opportunity of retirement. Time will still pass regardless of if you invest in retirement or not. You will eventually one day, hopefully live long enough to retire. You will still have some version of bills to pay when you retire. Because even if your house is paid for and your cars are paid for, well, depending on how long you live in retirement, some people are lasting 20, 30, 40 years in retirement, because a lot of us have the potential to live up to 100 now. So hopefully you’re not going to try and drive a car for the next 40 years. 

But even still, even if you did, there’s a cost to maintaining that. So you’re still going to even have to buy groceries. People get all crazy about like, oh, I’m going to pay my house off and I’m going to be set. And it’s like, well, no, there’s still going to be other costs in your life. You’re going to have to buy groceries. You’re going to have to get gas, like little things that you can’t just take for granted. So by not investing into your retirement early, are you really benefiting that 94 year old version of you? Or are you hurting that version of you? And that’s just kind of an extreme example so that you can understand where I’m coming from. 

But moving you forward in your life is designed to help you start acting like other cultures that are really successful about this, where they think of the future more than they think of the present. Obviously, they’re in the present. They understand the present. They appreciate the present, but they care for future them at such a level of massive compassion that they start to design their life to care for future them. So again, another example. I was talking to one of my girlfriends, and she was talking about wanting to pay off debt. And I’m like, okay, well, great, that’s awesome, but how does that move you forward in life? She’s like, Well, I won’t have any debt. I’m like, So you’re saying you’ll pay off this one debt and you’ll never have another bit of debt in your life? 

What happens if you have an emergency? She’s like, Well, I won’t have any debt, so it won’t be that big of a deal. I’m like, yeah, but you also won’t have cash to cover the emergency, which possibly, depending on the emergency, could put you back in debt. So I think paying off debt is a really good thing. But even to that point, does this move you forward? Even for your new, like, New Year’s resolutions always kill me. It’s always, oh, I’m going to lose 20 pounds and I’m going to pay off all my credit cards. Well, yes, awesome. But again, it’s always individualized. How does that move you forward? How do you measure it? Obviously, you can measure physical pounds and you can measure credit card debt, but is that going to move you forward in life? 

If you lose the 20 pounds but you never learn how to retrain your body, to eat and exercise, is that going to move you forward or in two years, are you going to be doing the same thing all over again? Same thing with debt? If you are saying I want to pay off $10,000 in credit cards, but you never create a plan to have more than enough, whatever that means for you. More than enough cash on hand so that you can kind of act as your own bank. You’re eventually going to have to go back to those credit cards, because life happens. It’s not a matter of shaming someone. It’s not like, oh, I’m better than you because I don’t have credit card debt. 

Majority of the reason why people have credit card debt is because they don’t have enough cash on hand to pay for the things that they need to pay for. So let’s look at those goals that we’re literally spending time that we can’t get back on in our life and say, hey, is this going to move me forward? That’s also why it’s the last question, because I want you to feel how you want to feel. I want you to be able to measure it. But if it doesn’t move you forward, I want you to go back to the beginning and kind of kick it off the plate or kick it off the goal list and start over. 

I have done so many things where it helped out in the short term, but it didn’t move me forward in the long term because I never had compassion for future me. I always thought, future me is going to be smarter, future me is going to be skinnier, future me is going to be richer, future me is going to be this, and this. But I never gave future me any of the tools to be those things. I never cared enough or had enough compassion to be like, wow, how can I be kinder to future Margaret? How can I be more compassionate to future Margaret? How can I make future Margaret richer? Because I’m going to eventually become future Margaret. And then it’s one of those kind of cool things that you can be like, oh, past self Margaret. 

Thank you for being so thoughtful and putting money in retirement for years and years, because you now have more than enough to live on. You don’t have to scrimp and save and sell everything and rely on the kindness of your future, kids, little things like that. It’s a way to be kind to yourself and care for yourself, whether you’re in the future or you’re in the present. But if you’re not thinking of that future you’re never going to be able to kind of move forward. You’re always going to be having the same rotating amount of goals. And again, that doesn’t move you forward. No one wants to have the same goals. 

If you looked back at your list over the last five years, I bet you two out of those five years you’re going to have the same goals because you didn’t look at how that was going to move you forward in life. You didn’t break that down on as to how you were going to measure that and you couldn’t implement it. So you are literally doing the same thing over and over again, but you’re never getting anywhere. These questions will help get you somewhere. So I hope you found this podcast helpful. Again, if you have any questions, please feel free to write them on the comments below in the blog or go to the Clutterfree community in Facebook. 

And I am more than happy to be supportive and give you feedback and just be there to help you and I would love to hear from you. So hopefully I’ll see you over at the blog or I will see you over at Facebook. Have a great night. Rock out those goals and hopefully they move you forward in life so that you can be kinder to future you. Bye guys. 

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Thanks for listening.