Year-End Self-Assessment: Success without Stress or Guilt (Reboot)

Tired of hating year-end reviews and setting resolutions you won't keep? This episode is your guide to looking back over the past year with curiosity and love instead of self-criticism. 

Coach Megan Devito teaches ambitious women how to use self-assessment to their advantage to find the success and lessons they've been seeking.

Discover why New Year's Day is an arbitrary date for change and learn a new, stress-free way to evaluate your past so you can move forward confidently.

In this episode, you'll learn

1. Ditch the self-judgment and embrace curiosity: Learn how to look back without pointing out failures or judging yourself into a hole. Instead, view your past with curiosity to find the information you need for the future.

2. The power of small steps and gratitude: Move forward by focusing on small steps and making a list of only three things you would do differently, avoiding the overwhelm of a massive plan or long list of changes. You'll also learn to roll around in the feeling of gratitude, even for things you hated, because gratitude is a key to moving forward.

3. Evaluate what worked and what didn't (for YOU): Get Megan's step-by-step evaluation process, including creating lists of everything that worked (felt good, you were brave, you weren't anxious) and what didn't work, ensuring you only focus on your actions, not other people's mistakes.

🎁 Grab the End of the Year Assessment tool HERE.

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

Megan Devito (00:00.198)
I used to hate looking back over the year. I didn't like what I saw. I didn't know how to move forward. And I've never been a big fan of New Year's resolutions. I mean, do we really get a clean slate at the stroke of midnight just because the picture on the calendar changed? No, we don't. Not anymore. I learned why self-assessment is so important and helpful and how to use them to my advantage. And in this episode, I'm teaching you how to do it. Check out this reboot of episode 68 from back.

in 2023, right before the new year, I'm talking about how to look back over your year with curiosity and love so that you can find what worked, what didn't work, and what you do differently so that you can feel gratitude for the lessons that you learned and find the success that you've been looking for. Enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the More Than Anxiety podcast. I'm Megan Devito, a coach for ambitious women seeking more calm, confidence, and balance in their busy lives. If you are tired of juggling all the pieces, grinding your way towards success, and feeling stretched way too thin, this is the podcast for you. Each week, we dig into real strategies for managing stress, setting boundaries that stick, and building the mindset you need to thrive, not just survive. Let's get started. Hello, you are listening to episode 68, the final episode of the More Than Anxiety podcast for 2023. So if you are listening in real time, I hope you had a really great holiday season. We're on the downward slide into New Year's and I want to get you ready for 2024. And if you're not listening when this episode first airs, I hope you're having a great day and that you're ready to make some changes because even though this episode is going to be about assessing the past year, you can do this anytime because honestly,

New Year's Day is kind of silly, isn't it guys? I mean, we buy a new calendar and then like your very godmother is supposed to come in and change everything overnight. It's rubbish, total rubbish. But I wrote this episode sitting in the dark in front of my Christmas tree, thinking back over this past year, over 2023. And it occurred to me that there were some things that I started doing that I really want to share with you all that can be helpful to get you out of your rut.

Megan Devito (02:10.914)
or to get you moving forward, even if you're not in a rut. So as I'm thinking back over this past year, this is what came to my mind. This year was hard for me. What a mess. Next year will be better. And then I remembered the last year I did this evaluation I'm gonna tell you about, and I wasn't sure at all if I wanted to go back and review 2023.

I was talking with a friend at dinner a few weeks ago and we agreed that we would take 2020 over 2023 again in a heartbeat. But now, recording this, I'm not actually sure that's true. And 2023 has tested and tried me in a lot of ways. Some of these ways were new and some of them were ways that I didn't really want to repeat. But I'm here recording this and I've been through the trenches this year as a mom.

And as a business owner, as a human being on a planet that is sometimes pretty scary, and things are okay. We're coming out the other side. 2024 is only a week away when you hear this, maybe, like I said, if it's in real time. And I decided that I'm gonna just get excited about what comes next while I look back and see what worked, what didn't work, and all the things for 2023, because we're gonna be able to do both.

For years though, I refused, absolutely refused to look back or to set goals. And I always thought resolutions were ridiculous. Honestly, I still don't set resolutions because January 1st, like I said, it seems like just kind of an arbitrary date and it's a surefire way not to get what you want, isn't it? There's a pretty short window for most people to hold on to those shiny New Year's resolutions that they make or those goals.

And I want you to succeed. want 2024 to be the best year for you. I want you to learn how to do things and to go after what you want for yourself without anxiety being a problem or stopping you. This is something that can be particularly hard if you're anxious because anxiety makes you see the worst and everything that could go wrong. But I'm going to show you a new way to do this so that you can evaluate your year.

Megan Devito (04:31.49)
So you can start letting go of anxiety stopping you, all of that negative self-taught stopping you and help you move forward. And it's gonna be in teeny tiny bites where you don't have to make resolutions and I'm going to encourage you to screw up. So you can't go wrong, but let's go ahead and talk about what's actually going on. Why is it a problem to look back over the year? So one of the things that could be about being a problem, it might've been a really hard year for you.

It was a rough one for me, I'll be honest. It's been rough and it's okay. Those rough years teach us things that we need to learn. You can get stuck in it, you can swirl around in it, you can swim in it for as long as you want. But if you're ready to stop swimming in that cesspool of everything that felt yucky, let's move forward. So if you're afraid to look back and set goals or create resolutions because you

don't want to see all of the times that you felt too anxious or that you quit on yourself or that you failed and then felt really rotten or get trash-talked yourself. I know this can feel pretty big and I get it, but I've learned that this is not the point of going back and evaluating your year.

It's not to point out all of your failures. It's not to point out everything that you screwed up. It's not to point everything that like, well, you blew it on this one and you totally freaked out and didn't even show up for that one. That's not the point of the evaluation. That is just criticizing yourself into a hole where you really will stay stuck and not move forward.

Another reason for doing these evaluations that might feel kind of intimidating or like something maybe you don't want to tackle right now is that you're afraid to look at what isn't working because you don't know exactly what the future is going to look like anyway or what to do differently or how to change what you're doing right now. I want to remind you that that's pretty normal. If you knew you would already be doing it and your brain is going to show you

Megan Devito (06:38.717)
what's not working to keep you safe. It's going to say, do you see all these things that didn't work, but you're still alive? Just keep doing those things. It's hard to change those habits sometimes, but I can help you make it simpler. And it just takes a different shift in perspective. I'll talk to you about that in a minute. Another thing that might make these evaluations or these assessments or whatever you want to call it, feel like maybe a waste of time or kind of scary is that

You want to change really bad, but it also makes you critical of yourself. And it stresses you out and anxious about what might have to happen. Or if I go back and think about this thing again, I'm going to feel anxious all over again. And that's not necessarily true because remember that anxiety comes from what you think about a situation. So when we can look at it as I'm changing the way I think about it, that anxiety isn't a problem anymore. And it doesn't even show up.

So are we ready? If you wanna pick up this evaluation sheet that I created, I'm gonna tell you right now, I'm gonna put that in the show notes. I'll also send it out with my weekly email. So if you go to the show notes, it'll bring you to a landing page where I will send you the evaluation guide that's gonna go with this episode. You'll also get on my email list, which means that you'll get all kinds of fun extra tips and tricks. And I send it out every Tuesday. Yes, the same day as podcasts come out, but.

That's a good way to get on my list and also to get this form so you can fill it out. So you don't have to take notes if you're listening while you're driving or doing whatever it is that you're doing. So let's talk about what it is that you might be doing now. All right. If you look back over your year, if you decide to think back and you look back and you only see where you are right now in this moment, and it doesn't feel good to you. So you tell yourself that you're a failure.

or you feel like I just am still here where I was last year at the same time and nothing has changed. You might tell yourself things like I should be further along. I should have started getting help for my anxiety or I shouldn't be anxious anymore. I should have quit my job and made my side hustle my number one priority. I should have done whatever it is, whatever it is that you're thinking. Looking back is not to make you feel worse.

Megan Devito (09:05.089)
And it's not only for people with tons of things to celebrate. It just gives you a chance to see what you'd like to do differently and then come up with a starting point, not come up with an entire plan. That is overwhelming. And that will throw me into a downward spiral. I'm 100 % learned this past year. Don't try to think that far ahead. You don't need to. It's going to make you anxious. It's going to make you stressed out. All you want to do is just see, okay.

What's going on right now? Let's just look at it as if I'm looking through the window of somebody else's house, if you can picture that. A second thing that you might be trying that's not actually working for you is thinking back and seeing the things that aren't working or where you think you failed as something about you as a person. I'm an idiot. I can't schedule anything. I always quit. I screw everything up. If you hear those thoughts coming through your head,

you are judging yourself about the things that you failed as. Failing actually is good. Something else I learned this year, you can tell that like this learning process was no joke. I've been doing this work all year long, that you're looking at failure as you being a failure. And that's not true. So if you're judging your future based on your past, why would you even begin to spend time thinking about what didn't work or what you didn't want? We're going to talk about that.

If you're using your past history as the track for how you'll be forever, you won't get anywhere and it will keep you feeling rotten. So this makes setting new goals maybe feel a little too big and impossible because you want to be less anxious and you want to have less stress and you want to do other really important things, but you're afraid to go there and be disappointed because you're judging yourself. You're telling yourself it's impossible. So I'm not even going to put that on my list.

because I'm going to fail anyway, because that's just what I do, I feel. I'm anxious forever. None of that is true. It's just what you're thinking over your evaluations and decide how you're going to move forward. All of these things could be true that we talked about, right? There really are scary what ifs. There really are times that you screwed up. You really are stuck. Let's not pretend it's not true. Let's just take the judgment out of it about who you are or what you're capable of. That's really the important part.

Megan Devito (11:30.156)
Because everything could also be the opposite could be true. I've told you that ancient brains will find a problem for every solution to keep you from changing. don't, you know, if I change I'll upset my parents or my spouse will be so mad if I change. And it makes you feel secure. So you stay at work even though you don't love the job and you wanted to do your side hustle or you don't start to work out.

So because what people think, they'll think I'm vain. They'll wonder, you know, they'll wonder what's up with me. So you just, you just choose to stay stuck sometimes. Change, even change you want is new and it's unknown because you've never been there before. And your brain will start firing off all of the warning shots to keep you from getting where you want to go. This is how I started doing my reflections on not just my whole year, but also on people after I coach or

after I talk with someone on a consultation call, or if I go and I speak to a group of people or anything else that I'm working on really. But for now, let's just talk about how looking back over no more than the past year can help you move forward. And let's just keep it contained to that because that's a really big chunk of time, isn't it? You might even choose to look back over only a half a year or just three months, whatever it is you wanna look at. But I want you to pick a constrained chunk of time.

Don't rush through this. I want you to take your time. Remember, there's a link to the form so you don't have to memorize this and do it while I'm talking. I talk fast anyway. You're gonna feel a lot of emotions. Some of these emotions are gonna feel really good when you start looking at things and other ones are gonna feel pretty crummy. It's okay. They're just emotions. I read not too long ago that a negative emotion only lasts about 20 to 30 seconds. So why do we stay angry so long?

Think about that. If the actual chemical reaction inside your body lasts for seconds, why do we swim in those negative emotions for so long? It's because we keep thinking about them. So I'm not asking you to sit in the misery here of these negative emotions. I want you just to notice them and say, ooh, that makes me feel jealous. That makes me feel angry. That makes me feel humiliated. Whatever that is, name the emotion and then say, okay, that's what that one felt like. Moving on.

Megan Devito (13:58.709)
But don't rush, please. Let those emotions be there and just keep on writing. Grab the PDF, download it, and keep going, okay? Here's what we're gonna do. The first thing I want you to do is start by listing all the things that worked for you in the amount of time that you chose, whether it's the entire year or three months or somewhere in the middle. Without overthinking or judging yourself, list them. If it felt fun, if you felt confident, if you smiled,

whatever worked for you, write that down. Anything, little teeny tiny things. Maybe it was a funny memory or a huge event. It doesn't matter. Maybe you did something brave. If you're like, I don't know what I did in the last three months, it can be really helpful to pull out your calendar or even to open the photos, like whatever photos app you use on your phone, even to scroll back through your personal photos, what that you put on Instagram and just look, what did I actually do this year?

See what jogs your memory, but everything that worked gets to make the list. Worked means felt good. Worked means got me where I wanted to go. Worked means I wasn't anxious or I was anxious and I did it anyway. Anything that you qualify as worked, write that down. We're just making a list. After that, I want you to do the same thing, but I want you to write down specifically what didn't work. Now there's a caveat to this one. I don't want you to write down what other people did.

They can do their own evaluations. This is about you. I don't want it to be this person did this to me and this situation did this to me. I want you to let yourself be like, what did I do when something bad happened or negative happened? How did I handle it? What did I do that didn't work? Maybe your thought is I said I was going to start getting help for my anxiety this year and I never did it. I didn't do it. Or,

I said I was going to take that side hustle and make it my number one job. I didn't do it. That's okay. We're not judging ourselves. Just be curious. Maybe you blamed yourself for other people's mistakes or you binge watched Yellowstone when you wanted to work out. This is just your chance to see what didn't work and ask yourself why. Was it totally out of your control? Like there was a big storm that blew your roof off or was it something else? Was it something you did or didn't do?

Megan Devito (16:22.333)
Again, no judgment. It's not allowed. The third thing I want you to look at is to make top five lists. These are kind of fun. The top five things that you liked or enjoyed this past year. Maybe you went to a baseball game. Maybe you went camping. Maybe you tried a new recipe. Maybe you, I don't know, you got a bird feeder and you love watching the birds. I'm kind of guilty of that, you guys. That aging thing with the birds is not a joke. It's real and it's

I'm not kidding. Anyways, I'm not going to go down that. So, you know, why did you like or enjoy those things? How did they make you feel? Again, we're looking for the emotions. When I watched the birds, I felt joyful or I felt relaxed. I don't know, whatever it was for you and the emotion that came with it. Not the thoughts. I thought they were pretty as a thought. I was relaxed as a feeling. Okay, it's a feeling.

So you also want to do the top five things that you didn't like or even hated. Why didn't you enjoy those things? Or what emotions did you feel there? I got fired. I hated it. I felt humiliated. Or maybe you were relieved. I got fired and I felt relieved. Maybe that was on your top five things that you liked. And that's really where that thought shift comes in there. But you're going to list the top five things that you liked and the top five things that you didn't like.

And next I want you to do the top five gratitudes you have. This one might surprise you. I think you might be surprised at the things that made your top five list that show up on your gratitude list. Yes, even the things that you hated or didn't like. It might just bring up these feelings of gratitude. Look at that idea of being fired. At first when I got fired, I was embarrassed and I was humiliated. And then I realized that...

I could do anything I wanted to do and I feel really grateful that I got fired. That's where gratitude sneaks in. Just roll around in that feeling of gratitude because gratitude is going to get you everywhere. Everywhere. Give yourself a little party for the things that went well. Celebrate them. Just celebrate honestly that not everything sucked. Sometimes we have to look back just to see that not everything was bad. Sometimes we like to skip over the good stuff because it doesn't last forever.

Megan Devito (18:44.341)
But the bad things didn't last forever either, did they? Celebrate that too. Feel the gratitude for the lessons that you learned and for what went well. And then finally, this is a big one. I want you to make a list of only three things that you would do differently. You don't want the list to be a mile long or you're going to feel overwhelmed. Just keep it to your top three, even just one thing, if you just wanna focus on one.

This is where you're going to start when you decide that you're ready to make some changes, whether it's in the new year, the new moment, whenever. What do you think about making those changes and what do you hear yourself saying? Or do you notice that you feel? It's really important to notice what you're thinking when you think about doing something differently or when you think about making changes. Are you already thinking this is never gonna work? This is gonna be way too hard.

I'm never gonna stick to this. I am never gonna be able to do this. Those are anxious thoughts trying to keep you stuck. And I can help you let go of them because I've had them too and I've worked through them. And it's just the process of learning what you're actually thinking and why you think it. So let me start right now by acknowledging that if you've never done this before, I know it can feel big. And that is especially true if you are critical of yourself. Remember, that's where we started this episode.

We're just looking at where you are in life and where you want to go. We're looking over your past and that's a great place to gather information, but we're not hanging out there. There's a really, really powerful part of what I do when I'm coaching people where we say, what happened in the past? How are we moving forward? This is really the difference between therapy and coaching. Therapy does a fantastic job of healing your past, helping you deal with past situations.

Coaching acknowledges the past that it exists and we move forward. I can help you look back and find the information that you need to move forward so that you don't drown in the things that you think you messed up or gave up or what you should have done instead or even sometimes things that happened to you. And we can do that all without having to rehash past trauma. It can also help you decide what you want to do from now on and make those new things that you want to do turn into habits.

Megan Devito (21:09.95)
that stick so that you aren't repeating that same cycle over and over and over again and feeling like garbage. You're gonna start noticing that sneaky thoughts, those old sneaky thoughts that kept you stuck or afraid are disappearing. Little by little, one little step at a time. Again, small little bites and steps, okay? So for example, let's say you've been wanting to go out and meet new friends.

But time after time after time, you just find yourself thinking that this is too hard. I don't know how adults make friends. I don't know where to meet people. I'm boring. Who would want to hang out with me? I'm a terrible friend. I am way too introverted and I just like to stay home. Whatever your story is, it doesn't matter. Even though you would really like to be making new friends, you just don't. Because you do the same things every single day and you wonder why you're not finding new friends. I went to Target today, I didn't make any friends.

Yeah, okay, so that didn't work for you. Let's find something that does. You might go to one new thing. Like you say, okay, I'm gonna go to this group and you just go one time and then give up because you were uncomfortable or you tell yourself that nobody wanted to talk to you anyway and then you believe it and then it's too hard and you just spiral back down. I'm gonna help you come up with a plan. And for this example, we're gonna say to make new friends, but it could be anything. How do you wanna meet them?

How do you want to introduce yourself? How do you want to feel confident? What do you want to do? Where would these people even go? We're going to ask all those questions. So whatever it is that's on your list for this upcoming year gets solved. That's just in one example. And we can talk about this on like how the evaluation works and how coaching can help you on a consultation call from 2024 or from whenever you're listening forward. So to find out how I can help you,

go after whatever is on your list, you just go to the show notes, click the link, it'll be right close to the one with the evaluation sheet that I'm gonna send out too. And let's talk about how your evaluation went or what you came up with. And I wanna know what worked and what didn't work in your top fives and your three things that you wanna do differently. And you can learn more about how I can also help you through coaching on that call.

Megan Devito (23:31.261)
and you'll have a great step forward to whatever it is that you want next, whether you decide to do coaching or not. These calls are super fun and they're really eye-opening so you get to see what you're doing now that might be keeping you stuck and you get to see what needs to happen instead so you know where to go next. If I don't talk to you on a call this week, I will be back next week with another episode. Take care and happy new year.

Thanks for listening to More Than Anxiety. If this episode helped you see things differently or take action, leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. It's a really great way to help other people find the show. And if you want more support between episodes, you can follow me on social media. The links are all in the show notes or head over to megandevito.com where I share free tools, tips and content just for ambitious women who are ready to feel more balanced and confident. Until next time, take a breath, set a boundary and remember you are more than your anxiety.