#53 - The Yearly Reset Series (Part 2 of 4): Growing into Greatness

Moving into the second episode of a special four-part series designed to wrap up 2024 and jump into 2025 with purpose and intention. In this episode, I introduce the Yearly Reset Series and dive into Part 2: Growing into Greatness.

In this episode, we will take a close look at our values, our transformation, and our priorities as we move into the new year. 

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Transcript

Intro:

Hello Everyone! Welcome to The Game of Life Podcast; I am Alexandria Burek and I am your host. 

Thank you for picking my show out of the millions to choose from; I am honored and excited to share this time with you! 

Continuing with the four part series, I’m excited to guide you guys on some of my favorite reflective questions to ask as we look at our values and perspective on the world.  

Personal Update: 

I had the MOST amazing string of friends dates this past week; all of them were special and amazing for their own reasons–I am so thankful for my friends. I got to spend some time back home in Downtown Chicago, walking in the most beautiful part of the city, eating the best foods, drinking the best drinks, and there was just something different and special about being back this time. I could feel that I was HOME. I will be back there for some things this coming week, I am bringing the dogs and we are staying in River North. I am interested to see how it goes; my girl dog is excellent when it comes to walking in the city and has been to River North before, while my baby boy is a bit overwhelmed by everything I am hopeful these mini exposures will get him prepared for our next chapter in life. 

A little update on running–I ran a 5k the other day which is a HUGE accomplishment. Even though I have done turkey trots and stuff before, I was never able to run 3.1 miles straight, nonetheless, be able to walk the day after. I am so excited about this new journey! Next plan is to train for the Shamrock Shuffle 8k and the Half Marathon–these are a couple of the goals I have my mind set on for 2025! 

And with that, what better segway into part two of “The Yearly Reset,” if you missed part one, I suggest hitting pause and taking a listen as that tees up this whole series; I did try to put them in a logical order building up to the final part which is where we will design 2025. 

The Yearly Reset  

So, quick recap on the four part series: 

1 - Your Year Unfolded - Last week we covered different ways to look back on and appreciate 2024. 

2 - Growing into Greatness - This week we will take a close look into our values, our definitions of love, success, happiness and more 

The next two episodes will be: 

3 - 2024 in the Rearview – Where we will explore ways to bring closure to yet another year in a different way and through a different lens than we did in part 1

4 - Stepping into 2025: Where we will set goals, time travel, and set the intentions that will shape the fabric of our year ahead 

OK - Part 2: Growing into Greatness– I think it is important to think about our values, how they may have changed, if they need to change, etc. There are a couple sources of inspiration for this: 

Bob Proctor: In his book Change your Paradigm Change your Life, featured in episode 47, he stresses the importance of deeply studying and reflecting on books, concepts and even words. The reason I bring this up is because in today's exercise we are going to really look at and think about our personal evolution with regards to success, happiness, health, and love. 

The other inspiration for this deep dive is my friend, who I will call “The Chef,” because he is a chef–very creative, I know. He and I were on a walk and we were talking about what we want out of a significant other, and he said he wanted someone who was Kind. And that stopped me in my tracks. I thought. Hm. What even is kind? So I asked him. Then I thought, do I want or need that in a partner? Ultimately I landed on no. He wasn’t too surprised. I shared this with another friend of mine (each of these guys were in the string of friend dates by the way), and during both of these friend dates we revisited this topic. I shared with both of them, I still do not need someone who is kind, respectful yes, loving yes, kind no. I say all this to say, if you don’t spend time thinking about what it means to be kind or what love in your world looks like, you will be aimlessly floundering about life without a sense of direction; you will end up unhappy with the results, trust me. 

So I’ve split this out into three parts for us to look at. 

Part 1: Defining the cornerstone words we will use to describe our goals, our values, and ourselves (success, love, happiness, health, and peace)

Part 2: A look back on our transformation over the last year to guide a vision for our future (what did we learn, accomplish, experience, self discovery)

Part 3: Based on our clear definition of the cornerstone words, and our observed transformation, we will think about what we might want to explore, experience, prioritize or go after in the year ahead 

Part 1: Defining what our cornerstone words actually mean on an individual level.

What does success, love, happiness, health, and peace look like to you? 

What comes to mind when you think about success (is it money, is it respect, is it having a family, is it a perfect body, is it hitting your various goals, is it ALL of the above)? For me, success can broadly be described as living up to MY potential; I have learned in the last year, that most people do not have a clue what I am capable of, they have no idea how small and how safe I have been playing, SO for me, success is challenging myself to live up to MY standards, to achieve what I believe is possible for me; this obviously encompasses many categories; it is not a binary, black and white definition. But that is MY definition of success. If that doesn’t resonate with you, the Oxford definition of success is, the accomplishment of an aim or purpose, so what is your aim or purpose? What would need to happen so you could look back on your life or your year, with a pleasant sign of satisfaction? 

Love. This I am certainly no expert on. BUT I do know I have an immense amount of love to give. I do know how I would like to give it, and I do know how I would like to receive it. This summer I spent maybe about 10 hours thinking very deeply about love and what I want my relationship to look like, how I want it to feel, the type of person I want to be in the relationship with and the experiences I hope to have with my partner. Some people would say this is crazy, but this exercise allows me to know who and what is worth my time and who and what is not. For the record, after having completed this, my dating life came alive in the best way possible. If you are already with your person, (CONGRATULATIONS), you can still do this as you look ahead: what do you and your partner want to experience together this year? Was there something they did this year that really made you feel warm and loved? Did you tell them? Was there something that didn’t sit well with you in the last year? Do they know? How are you planning to set that down and move on from that? Think about last year and the year ahead, what do you want to feel, how do you want those you love to feel? I realize the focus here was predominantly on love in a romantic relationship, but you can, and probably should, do this thought experiment with other relationships: Friendships, Family, Children, etc. 

On to Happiness. What actually makes you happy? If you don’t have a clear answer, look back on what you listed as your “highlights,” what were the things that lit you up in 2024? That will likely point you in the right direction. The pictures will probably tell you when you were happy as well. If you have a clear picture of what makes you happy, you will have a 100% better chance of having MORE of that in your life because you are aware of it, you can prioritize it, and you focus on creating more of it. Key components for happiness going into 2025, for me, are unique and interesting experiences (amazing trips, incredibly good food, new experiences, new places, and new friends)--these are some of the things that will make me happy if I were to fast forward to next December and envision myself doing this exercise. So think about 3-5 things, areas of life, experiences, feelings or whatever it is, that will drive happiness in your life. 

Health. I have pendulum swung on this throughout my life and I sincerely hope that all of the work I have been doing to transform and recreate myself will help me to maintain the level of optimal health I have worked so hard to achieve. I say this to say, we have all fallen off the wagon. At different times in our life, healthy looks and is different. Take a minute and think about where you are in your life with your health. Is healthy simply getting enough sleep and ensuring you do personal hygiene? Or is healthy training for a competition and dialing in your macros? Does it look like accomplishing 75 hard? For me healthy looks different than it did in literally every other stage of my life. I have had to remind myself. I am not optimizing for skinny, I am optimizing for strong. I am optimizing for fit.   

Peace. Peace comes in many forms for me. My life is peaceful when there is order, organization, a plan, minimal to no chaos. In other words, my life is peaceful when I set myself up for success and I follow my routines. My life is peaceful when I don’t put things off or neglect myself. I had this mantra of 2024, “2024 was peaceful because I put my life on easy mode.” This concept of easy mode comes from Shane Parrish, the author of Clear Thinking–I haven’t had a chance to read his book, but obviously I want to. Nevertheless, I realized that is something I MUST carry with me into 2025, and I realized I want to expand on this. I realized my life is peaceful when I do not hold on to resentments and when I focus intensely on all the positive wonderful amazing things that happen to me. Creating a peaceful life can be summed up by looking at what you do, what you focus on, and who you spend your time with. Look back on your year. Look at the activities and actions that brought you the most peace. Think about what occupied your mental real estate–was it your future or your past? Was it everything that was  going right or everything that went wrong? Who did you spend the last year with? Who do you wish you had more time with? Who could you have seen less? Who left you feeling calm? Who left you walking away with a smile on your face? Did you spend too much time with someone that left you feeling agitated or annoyed or frustrated? These are the questions you need to answer in order to create a more peaceful life.    

Part 2: How have we transformed our views, values, and ourselves in the last year?

This part will be quick. It is straightforward and believe it or not, I have run out of personal stories to share (Just kidding–I just don’t want to bore you guys with my over analyzation of my life). Here I would like you to think about how your definitions of success, love, happiness, health and peace may have changed over the last year–quick example, coming into this year my definition of a perfect romantic relationship was “we satisfy each other emotionally, intellectually, and sexually” now it is much more detailed and the detailed version is yielding better results; I often revisit my earlier definition of wealthy and because I haven’t yet achieved that definition it still makes sense to use it. I also want you guys to spend some time thinking about how much time you spent on the things you value. Did you prioritize what is important to you? Or did you, as Oliver Burkeman would say, Clear The Decks. Clearing the decks is essentially doing all the little piddly little things that you “need” to do, but do not get you any closer to your goal (think laundry, dishes, emails, etc). Think about what you learned this year, think about what you accomplished? How have you evolved from the start of this year to the end? Is there anything you discovered about yourself in the last year? 

Step 3: What do we want to explore, experience, and prioritize next year? 

We can start with the priorities piece here. Once you’ve taken the time to think about these cornerstone words and how you and your life has transformed, I want you to think about what were the most uplifting moments of your year or your life? What brought you fulfillment? How can you prioritize, double down or reintroduce those things into 2025. Do you have any unanswered questions or curiosities that you want to explore in 2025? Maybe it's a new hobby. Maybe it's a place you’ve been talking about going but have been putting off (for me this is going to Europe, this is going to be the year–Hell or High Water, I am venturing beyond North America in 2025). Maybe it's a class you’ve always wanted to take. I’ve decided I am going to take a hip hop dance class because I think it would be fun. And I love dance. And I think I would meet some really cool people from a totally different circle. And it would fit with my health and fitness goals. What lights your soul up. What would make YOU happy. Priorize that. Plan for that. Schedule it. Write it down (set it into motion). And see it through. 

With that you guys, I am going to leave you to ponder your personal definitions of love and happiness and success and peace and health and how you have transformed and who you want to be. Think about (and plan for) what you want to explore next year. 2024 in the Rearview is next. During this part of the series we will take a close look at what we need to leave in 2024, where we are lacking order, and some other special prompts that will help guide us into 2025 with clarity, gratitude, and focus. 

You guys thank you so much for spending this time with me. Thank you so much for your support of the show (rating the show, leaving honest and hopefully positive comments, and of course sharing this show with someone you love). 

Until next time…. Byeeeeee