[00:00:00] Christine: The presents are all unwrapped leftovers. Fill the fridge in your left, staring at a messy house and filling a little bit lust. Now that the craziness of planning for and executing the holidays is now behind you. It’s easy to spend our time preparing for and planning for a big event like Christmas, renting ourselves, ragged, doing all the things, baking all the cookies, planning a big meal, wrapping the gifts, decorating, doing, going, going, going, and then it’s over Now.

[00:00:43] What can you and I do to make the most of this last week of 2022? What can we do so that this isn’t a week that just slips away wasted in a food coma, but one where you actually feel like you were setting yourself up for success, for stepping into a new year or a new season on the right. Well, let’s talk about it on today’s episode of the MilSpouse Mastermind Show.

[00:02:08] All right. Here is what I wanna do today. I want to give you permission to rest. I’m just gonna say it right up front. That is our goal for today. That means permission to not have all your ducks in a row, to not have everything put away and ready to go for January one. You probably, if you have kids, they’re still outta school.

[00:02:34] There’s still a lot going. Out of your routines in your rhythms, and I don’t want you to spend the next several days stressing yourself out, trying to figure out what your New Year’s resolutions are supposed to be. I’m giving you permission today to not start January one off as a brand new. And here’s why I think this is so important, because I want the changes that you make in 2023 to be sustainable.

[00:03:09] I want your dreams. I want you to actually make progress on your dreams. I want you to be able to pursue a goal, not from a place of burnout and overwhelm, because that doesn’t really work in the end, that’s not sustainable. We can set these big goals for ourselves, but if we are not pursuing it in the right way, they will not happen or will reach a goal, but it won’t be sustainable.

[00:03:39] Yes, I absolutely want you to have the best 2023 available to you, but I want you to do it well, to do it the right way. I want you to come at this year. From a place of sustainable health and growth, and that’s why I’m going to be offering a live goal setting workshop in mid-January. When you sign up for this workshop, you will get tools in the resources and the training.

[00:04:10] You need for how to plan out your year and how to set flexible goals that will work for your life as a military spouse and allow you to make progress towards the dream on your heart to do the thing that you wanna do at a pace that works for your life. And for your family where you are at right now.

[00:04:32] So I don’t want you to stress right now. I just wanna let you know that this is coming. It will be available. And the beauty of this means that we have some time, we don’t have to have all of this figured out by January one. Now you may be saying, but I read Atomic Habits. I know that there is a psychological benefit to starting something at the beginning, at the beginning of a, a day, a week, a month, a year.

[00:05:02] Isn’t January one perfect? Yes. We may get some psychological boost, but that’s not the only thing that matters when it comes to developing, sustain. Rhythms and habits that stick, which is really what setting and pursuing goals comes down to. We have to be able to break those goals down into actionable steps.

[00:05:31] We have to be able to make it something that is doable, that we are making progress towards the thing that we want to move. Towards. So we’re gonna be talking about this throughout the month of January. On the podcast, we’re gonna talk about goal setting and routines and habit formation and all these things so that you can be set up for success in the new year.

[00:05:56] So I don’t want you to worry about your New Year’s resolutions, what you need to do for 2023 right now today. For the next week, this is going to be our focus. We need to prepare ourself, and that comes from a place of health and wholeness. So I’m gonna talk about four things that you can do this week to set yourself up for success in the new year.

[00:06:28] Number one, give yourself permission to. To not have everything figured out. Stop worrying about everything that needs to be done and ask yourself. If you are actually taking time for rest now, all the way back episode 15, one of the early episodes of the podcast is all about why rest matters, why it’s so important, what it does for us, how we get started.

[00:07:02] So I would highly recommend you go back, listen to that episode. If you go and download the freebie on our website, this is the growth wheel, and it is a way to assess your life today. And it categorizes our life into 10 areas and talks about how we set goals and make progress in each area of our life and how we built a life of health and wholeness.

[00:07:31] But as you’ll learn, if you download that. Everything starts from a place of rest. This is the foundation for how we craft a life with purpose. So if you are wanting to get started, I will be telling you more about the growth wheel and how that applies to our life over the next several weeks. But that is available when you go to milspouse mastermind.com/.

[00:07:59] Growth wheel. But if you wanna go ahead and get a head start, you can go look at that. But I just want you to start from this place of rest and to understand that this is the foundation for how we live and work and find balance and harmony and all of the things that we do in life. So number one, give yourself permission to rest this week.

[00:08:24] Number two, we’re gonna make this really practical. I want you to do something for yourself. This week. Now, I know this can be hard when you have small children or you have a busy job, or you have family in town. All of these things that are really excuses for why we should not take care of ourself, but I want you to learn how.

[00:08:49] Important it is to take care of yourself in order to be able to have healthy relationships, in order to be able to do the thing on your heart, to chase your dreams, to live a life of purpose. So find one thing that you can do for yourself this week. Maybe it’s taking some time to go. To a coffee shop or go to the beach or to get your nails done, or to finally go get your hair done, or whatever it is that you want to do, do something for yourself.

[00:09:23] Maybe you go sign up for a class or go to a wine and sip night. Do. Now, I know it can be hard again with everything else going on, but have a conversation. If your spouse is home right now, maybe say, Hey, can I have two hours this week to go do something for myself and then offer them the same thing? Hey, why don’t you go take a couple hours and do something that is for yourself.

[00:09:54] If your spouse is deployed or they’re, they are working long hours, maybe you can trade with a friend. And if it’s just impossible because of the circumstances right now, at least put something on the calendar for January that you are going to take a couple hours and do something for yourself. Now, when I say do something for yourself, again, that’s an open door.

[00:10:17] You can choose whatever it is that you want to do with your time, with one caveat after you do the. I want you to take a few minutes and reflect on what you did, and I want you to ask yourself the question, did that fuel me? Did that fill me, or did that leave me more depleted? Because sometimes we don’t even know what to do for ourselves, and sometimes we just think we wanna go sit on the couch for a couple hours and watch a.

[00:10:52] That’s fine, as long as you ask yourself, do I feel more refreshed after doing that thing? Because our goal is to find the things that truly light us up. To find the things that refresh our soul, that leave us feeling more filled and fueled. And so what I learned over the last several years is that things that used to fill me up, like taking a break to go to the salon and get my nails done.

[00:11:25] Weren’t really filling me up. They were leaving me more stressed out because I still had everything else to do. I still hadn’t unpacked all of the thoughts in my brain, and it was actually something that was depleting me more than it was fueling me. And so I had to start to shift and really learn. What in my current season was giving me more life in choosing to do those things.

[00:11:51] So what it is that fuels and fills you can change over time depending on what season you’re in, depending on how busy your life is in this moment and what is available to you. So, I want you to just do one thing, but then reflect on it afterwards and see if you feel more fueled and filled and refreshed and replenished, or whether you feel more drained afterwards.

[00:12:20] And so then the more that you do this, I want you to start making that list. What is it that fuels and fills me? This is the third thing to start to do this week. If you have no idea how to get started making this list. Hey, I have a freebie that I created. This is a free workshop. For military spouses to really help you hone in on your identity, who you are outside of being a military spouse.

[00:12:46] And one of the exercises that we talk about in that free training is how to make your list of what brings you joy of what. Fuels and fills you how you want to feel. And so if you have felt lost, if you have felt confused and you’re not sure what it is that really lights you up anymore. If you are just feeling a little lost in life, I highly recommend that training that is available at milspouse mastermind.com/workshop

[00:13:16] I highly recommend go check that out. You will learn exactly how to make a list of what it is that brings you joy, what fuels and fills you. So if you need some help there, go watch that. But let’s recap really quickly. Number one, this week, give yourself permission to rest. Number two, make a plan to do something for yourself this week.

[00:13:42] And then after you do that, reflect on how that made you feel. Number three, start to get clear on what it is that fuels and fill fills you, what brings you joy. And then number four, the the best way to really close out your ear. Is to look backwards before we can even begin to look ahead to think about what we want, how we wanna show up in the new year, what we wanna accomplish, how we want our lives to look.

[00:14:15] We need to think back and reflect on the year. Now I, I know. That it is super easy sometimes to be like, well, that year did not go according to my plan. Things did not work out the way that I wanted to. And we can start to think about all the things we wish would have happened in the past year, but that’s not what I want you to do this week.

[00:14:39] This week I want you to look at the year and think about the good. I want you to approach this past 12. From a place of gratitude, what happened in 2022 that you can be grateful for? What good things happened in your year? What did you learn? In this year, how did you grow? Focus on your wins, what’s good, what you can be grateful for, and just make a list of that and we will revisit that back in When we get to January, I’ll have some more episodes, but this is the foundation.

[00:15:24] Start looking back and seeing what you can be grateful for and let’s end this. From a place of rest, from a place of joy, and from a place of doing the things that will fuel us and fill us with life. I wanted to keep this episode as short as I can because I know there’s a lot going on. Life is somewhat crazy for many of us, and we’re out of our routines and rhythms, but if you will, The time to do these things, you will set yourself up for so much more success.

[00:16:00] You don’t have to know what you want to accomplish in 2023. All you have to know is that you are preparing your mind, body and soul for something new. For a new season. For what is coming. And if we can start from a place of rest, a place of joy, a place of gratitude, we will be so much better off.

Friend, this is the end of 2022. I hope you have an amazing week, an amazing rest of your year and I will see you back here in 2023. Until then, may you live filled, fueled and full of joy.