EP69: Reflection Day: The Mid-Year Reset

At the beginning of the year, it is easy to set goals, feel motivated, and imagine the person you want to become. But by the middle of the year, your habits, calendar, health, relationships, and business have started telling the truth.

In this episode, Dr. Austin Cohen breaks down the power of a Reflection Day — a simple mid-year reset designed to help you stop drifting and realign with what matters most.

Austin walks through the 4 Scoreboards of Reflection Day: health, relationships, business, and personal alignment. He also shares the green, yellow, red audit you can use to honestly evaluate where you are on track, where you are drifting, and where you need to make a decision now.

This episode is for high performers, business owners, leaders, parents, and anyone who wants the second half of the year to be more intentional than the first.

Because success can hide misalignment, busyness can hide truth, and clarity without action is still just a wish.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why July is the perfect time for an honest life audit
- How to use the 4 Scoreboards of Reflection Day
- Why your health has to support your goals
- How to identify where you are drifting
- What the green, yellow, red audit reveals
- How to choose one action that creates real alignment

The second half of the year belongs to the people willing to look honestly, realign quickly, and take action before drift becomes their default.

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Transcript

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This is the Austin Cohen Podcast where we talk real strategies for chiropractors ready to grow beyond the adjustment. If you're building a business, developing your leadership, and trying to build wealth without burning out, you are in the right place. Let's get to work Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode What's up, everybody? Welcome back. Austin Kleon Podcast, episode 69. Hope everyone had a good Fourth of July. We were in... By the way, if anybody's looking for a great experience, Islamorada shark fishing with Captain Andy is awesome. My brother, my future brother-in-law all went down there, caught six lemon sharks, on top of the barracudas and the snappers and the trout and the ladyfish, and had an amazing experience. So highly recommend that for anybody who's looking for a really good experience, whether it's a if your spouse likes fishing or if you're looking for a good, like one-on-one trip with a child. To me, that is a very good experience. So anyways, cool spot. And then we headed over to Charleston went straight there. Man, it's been a grind. I was two weeks ago, we were doing Empire Live event, then went to Chattanooga for a baseball tournament, then went to Islamorada, then to Charleston, and now I'm finally back in Atlanta which has been very nice. And just getting prepped for Adventure Summit, which is coming up in about a month and a half. So c-c-cranking out the Teton Crest Trail with everybody. And yeah. And then the other thing I wanna share real quick before I go into the content today is The people that are in my Ascent program right now, which is our weekly coaching program that happens on Tuesdays, are seeing massive transformation in their lives right now and in their businesses. And the transformation is happening from the person who they knew they could become, but they just needed the tools, and also they needed the implementation to start happening too as well, which they're getting down as we break it down. For those that are on the fence or are thinking or who have ever thought about working with me on a coaching side, I cannot describe to you how good it has been. There are no contracts. The next cohort starts on September eighth. I'm gonna start really promoting this very hard starting July fifteenth. I'll be promoting it from July fifteenth to August fifteenth, filling it up. We cap it at twenty people, and then that will be the program. That will be the cohort that will work together as we build businesses. So reach out to me on Instagram. Email me at austin@chirowonade.com if you're interested. But I can tell you right now, if your ultimate goal is to move into being a business person, being a good leader for your team, having systems that are beyond anything you've ever been taught in chiropractic before, I promise you this would be the place for you. I have thirteen active locations right now. I've opened up over twenty clinics. Like I've got this down, and all the businesses I study are non-chiropractic businesses. They are true businesses. So with that said that will be happening. But I'm giving those, my listeners, kinda early in- inside information 'cause once we fill it up it's gonna be full for the twenty people, as my first cohort knows already. So what I wanna talk about today was something that I shared on Instagram last week and, 'cause at the beginning of the year in January, everybody's so excited. They're emotional. They're motivated. We set these goals. We write down what we want. We think about who do we wanna become. We have health goals, family, business, finances, leadership, growth. I do something called the five Ps, which is personal, people, play, prosperity, professional. So everyone's got these different goals But July, that to me is where the facts show up, where you have enough evidence in your life to know if you're moving in the direction you said you wanted to move. And you-- by now, at least if you're listening to this, it's July seventh, you have enough data to know if the habits that you've created since January one, if they're matching your goals. Does your calendar, your conversations, your health, your business, the people the circle of people that you've been surrounding yourself with in your proximity, is it aligned with the person you said you wanted to become? And this is why I truly believe that every single person should have a reflection day. And, for me, that does happen on July one, but I give people up until July fifteenth. So really, for me, it's like a reflection between July first through July fifteenth. And, when you think of reflection day or reflection week, whatever you call it, I think the things to be careful on, and I've been seeing a lot of this in today's world, is just there, there's no shame in it. You're not beating yourself up. You're not thinking in your head, "Oh, man, I'm so far behind," and you spiral and get into some mental health situation. It's just alignment. That's all it is. You're pausing for a certain window to ask yourself, "Am I still on track? Am I becoming who I said I wanted to become? And if not, what needs to change now?" And, the reason this matters is because if you're successful and having success right now That can hide misalignment. You can be winning in your business, for example, but drifting at home. We've all been there before. Or you can be making money, a lot of money right now, but what are you losing? Maybe you're losing energy. Some of you may be growing your company and, maybe the people that thought they knew you, y-you're somebody they don't even recognize anymore based on the success that you've had recently. So on paper, you can be achieving but still feeling disconnected from whether it's your body, your family, your purpose, your future. Something is missing. And, my theory is always that busyness, when we say how busy we are, is one of the easiest ways to avoid the truth. 'Cause if you never stop to measure, you never have to admit that you're actually off track. But if you if you're willing to look within, truly, like within, honestly at your life, to me, reflection day becomes one of the most powerful tools you have. I always talk about how October one through October 31st, you set your goals for the year. January one, you implement. For me, February 11th is my birthday, so I always ask myself if I feel like I'm better now than I was the year before, and truly happier too as well. It has nothing to do with, about money, by the way. I always talk about this. I don't look at how much my bank account is worth 'cause that to me is an outcome based on the processes of the things that we... and the systems that we've built into our lives. So am I happier? Is my team still with me? Is my team happy? Is my team earning what I was hoping that they would be earning? It's not about me. So when I look at reflection day, there's four scorecards I typically evaluate. One is health. Two, relationships. Three is my business. And fourth is my personal alignment. So it's my health, my relationships, my business, and personal alignment. And to me, those four scorecards give a really easy way to look at your life without making it super complicated. So like for example, one, let's look at health. Question I start asking myself is like, "Is my energy better or worse than it was when I started the year on January one?" And I have access to objective tools such as WHOOP, so like HRV, resting heart rate. Hey, am I still training consistently? Am I sleeping well? How's the data looking on Function Health, which is a tool that I implemented this year? Am I treating my body like it has to carry my fut-- Like, is my future gonna be able to work because of the health investments I'm making now? And your goals are only as sustainable as the body that you've built that can carry them. If I wanna do all these fishing trips and do all these cool things, yeah, I gotta be healthy to do these things. So if you're not feeling good and if your nervous system is stressed- How are you gonna perform at a high level? For me, this is why I care so much about the fitness, the blood work, chiropractic, recovery, objective data. Everyone should know what optimal feels like. Not average, not getting by. What is truly optimal? Because when you feel and function better, to me, you can lead better, you can parent better, you can serve better. People in your proximity wanna be around you as well because people of higher calibers do like to be around people of higher caliber thinkers and people that are actually taking care of themselves rather than people who are just playing victim of ti- whether it's time they don't have in order to work out or whatever the excuse would be, or that it's age, that they can't do hard workouts anymore if you do age. Yeah, some people like, "Dude, if I have a broken leg, I can't run anymore." But you know what? I can probably do pull-ups, and I could potentially do push-ups, and I could potentially do some core work. I could potentially do some strict presses seated. It's always being adaptable and finding out what can I do based on my circumstances. Number two, relationships. And things I ask myself in this one are, "Hey, do I feel like from January one to June thirtieth, was I present at home? And have I been giving my family my best?" And one thing I would say is have I been giving them my best or my leftovers? I always wanna also look at what conversations from now, January 1 till now, have I been avoiding? And then the question I follow up with is, all right who needs more of me in the second half of the year? Because if you win the year, great, but you lose the connection with the people you love, to me, you actually didn't win the year. A lot of high performers say family, subjectively, that's their priority. But when I look at their schedule, the business is the priority. And, when you look at when they're actually home, like their phone shows you like, hey, they're majorly distracted. And I think stress is also just like one of those things that's like everyone else is getting what is left. When you have a reflection day or reflection week or reflection two weeks, whatever it is... I like July 1 through July 15. I just-- But I just call July 1 reflection day because I'll spend the next two weeks doing this reflection work. It does force you to be honest about all the, all of this and really start asking questions. And, one thing I noticed on social media is it's almost everybody in today's world says, "Oh, I'm gonna be vulnerable with you guys. Let me tell you my problems." You don't always have to have problems. Like there are some of you right now that life is really good. And I've always heard this before, it's if you got in a circle with twenty people that you know and everybody put their problems in the cir- middle of the circle, and you could either pick somebody else's problem or take yours back, you're actually gonna take yours back. The problems that many of us are dealing with, for the most part, not everybody, in the grand scheme, they're not big. Now, no one knows what I'm going through. No one-- And I don't know what you're going through But fortunately, I have my health, I have my family's health. Business is doing well. We still... we always have problems with it, but it's still doing r- well. So we always-- I'm looking at almost like a macro picture of everything. So relationships, like you don't always have to have problems is what I'm saying. Like on social media, everyone thinks there always has to be a problem. There doesn't always have to be a problem. You can have it all. That is possible. You can have it all. Am I saying it's gonna be like a perfect road? No. I've had multiple bumps along my road, and I've had a lot of things that have happened in my life that 99.9% of people don't even know about. Doesn't even matter to them. It's all about my internal filter system and having these reflection times that allow me to get back on track and course correct. Number three is the business, right? Are we on track with our business? Like what worked in the first half of the year? What didn't work? Are there any decisions I've been delaying? Where am I tolerating underperformance in any clinics? Do any standards need to be raised? Like those are some of the questions I'll take my brain through. I don't think more businesses need more ideas. They just need honest reviews, man, of the systems. How many of people am I finding in today's world that they think that they can go on Claude... They'll go on Claude and be like, "Oh, put together a six-month marketing plan Okay. Le-- in six months, I wanna know how that marketing plan did. Because to me, nowadays, there's more access to knowledge than there's ever been. But the implementation and the accountability is really where I'm finding a lot of the missed opportunity for people. Could you... Could everybody who's in my Accent program and Empire program create Claude documents and chat documents on some of the things we've discussed? Maybe. Now, they probably don't know some of the details of things that we've built already, like the ladder and the floor, the container, like a lot of these concepts that we talk about, especially in the pursue phase of team retention. But could they go on Claude and type in, "Hey, how would I maintain an employee for three years plus and be one of the top companies for hiring office managers and chiropractors?" Yeah, they could do that. Does that mean that's gonna translate into results? I don't necessarily think so. Sometimes the pivot is not another strategy. It's really just a hard conversation. That's the work. Have a hard conversation with someone. Or maybe it's not even the hiring of somebody new, but just delegating responsibilities better, fixing systems, admitting that you sometimes are even the bottleneck. So it really comes down to doing the things that are hard. And I really honestly, at the end of the day, think a lot of this just come down to hard conversation. Like we talk about in our asem- or my Empire program, which are, these chiropractors that are doing a million dollars or more in revenue. And what we talk about is how we, we did an activity called the leadership letter, and I had them write a letter to their team and read it out loud to their team. And what it did was it just really created more accountability for them to their team and some of the new commitments that they're making, but also expectations they have from their team. And what we found was that was one of the best activities for these clinics to have done because it created vulnerability for them with their team, and their team now can see them as a real person on how much they care. It's all people wanna know, man. They just wanna know how you care. Like for example, like no one remembers how you, what you say to them and the words, but they remember how you make them feel. Many of you probably don't remember what we talked about at Growth Summit, but you remember the feeling walking out of Growth Summit, and maybe that feeling was, "God, I have so much more potential. There's a lot I thought I knew, but I realize I don't know," and that's where support comes into play. A lot of great things you saw, and I think the last thing to me is personal alignment. And this is a really good reflecting questions, and one of the things I like to ask myself is if I'm proud of how I'm living my life Am I becoming the person I said I wanted to become? Looking at my life too as well where am I probably out of integrity with myself? And what would I change if I stop needing, if I s- everyone else to understand and caring what people thought? To me, alignment is when your calendar, your words, your habits, your goals, they're all telling the same story. And they're not telling the same story that is not failure. They're just telling it. It's... They're getting feedback. That is the biggest thing that I'm looking for when I do this. So those would be the four sections. And a simple way to do this is just doing green, yellow, red audits. I'm so simple, man. I just do this in Excel spreadsheet. You-- Looking at every major area of my life, and it's just green, yellow, or red. Green means o-on track, keep going. Yellow means drifting, needs attention. Red, I am out of alignment, and there are decisions that need to be made. And what I'll do is, think of the categories like health, marriage, family, business, finances, leadership, faith, personal growth. Like... and those would be categories under those four things. But the goal is not to make everything green, but just so you know, and it's not green on my scorecard, I'll tell you that right now, but it's to stop pretending the reds are yellow And some people, it is hard to look within and have that alignment. But like I said, that's where the calendar comes into play. That's where the habits come into play. Don't make excuses. But the reason why it's yellow is because blah, blah, blah. I don't have time. Okay. You could work out at four thirty in the morning and go for a six-mile run. You could do that, but you choose not to. So that habit is now not active, and that's a red. So really starting to look within. And I think that's where most people get stuck. Like they know something is red, but they call it yellow because yellow feels less urgent. Like, all right, you know your marriage needs attention. Your health is maybe slipping. The business issue is not going away. Your energy's off. There's team members that need conversations. But you keep calling it yellow because red requires action. Reflection day is where you get to tell yourself the truth. Like a goal review without a conversation, you're just journaling. So if you identify a red area but do not schedule the conversation, change your calendar, raise the standards, make the decision, or nothing's really gonna change. Leadership leadership. Everything rises and falls on leadership. If you have clarity without it being on your calendar, it is literally just a wish that most likely will not get done, and you will be in the exact same place on July one next year. So here's what the exercise breakdown would be. You pull out your yearly goals, however you've broken that down, rate them green, yellow, or red, and write down the truth about each one and identify w- if there, if it is red, what's the conversation attached to, to, to that? The one decision that would create the most alignment. And then we schedule action. 'Cause by July fifteenth, the goal is not to have a perfect life. That's not gonna happen. But I wanna have proof that I've moved it and I'm getting closer. And, maybe the proof for you is that let's say it's health. Maybe the proof is that you booked the blood work. Or for some of you guys that are chiropractors and telling people to get adjusted regularly, maybe it's you and your team need to be adjusted regularly on a schedule too as well. You're finally taking care of your body. Maybe it's scheduling date night or sign up for workouts and get those dang things on your schedule. There's many of you that have reached out to me recently now that grow- now that Adventure Summit's about a month away, there have been multiple people and it's actually more than I would have expected, that said, "I wish I signed up for that." But you've somehow had some story you probably told yourself when I put it out there back in, November, December that we were doing it about why you potentially wouldn't be able to come. This is why I'm so adamant about just getting things on a schedule. Go book... Go sign up for a marathon right now for, no, for December or January or February. Go right now and sign up for it. Yeah, go. Go sign up for a hundred-mile run. Do it. Like why won't you? What is the story you're telling yourselves that's blocking it? And how-- and it's like I always think of like, all right I'm gonna be forty-five in February. It's like how would I feel if I didn't do that and I created excuses for not doing these hard things? Maybe you need to put down having a hard conversation. Like when are you gonna have that hard conversation with that team member? Or, some of you guys, you're making good money but you're not doing anything with it and creating experiences. Go create an experience with your family. Like I said, like the Isla Murada trip, what an awesome experience. That will be a core memory for my twenty twenty-six. I will not remember how much money I made in twenty tw-- I, actually, if you ask me my revenue in twenty twenty-five, I have no idea what it is. No clue. But I do remember the Grand Canyon for sure. So I remember experiences and that's always the thing that we're gonna be able to take with us, right? It's like always taking experiences. And I'll remember my hike coming up in about a month from now. I'm definitely remember sharks for 2026, but in two years from now, not remembering the revenue. And maybe for some, it's just admitting your goal that you set in January. Hey, maybe it's not your goal anymore. That is not failure to me. That is a maturity conversation. The point of reflection day is to stop drifting. If you wait until December, to be honest, you lose six more months. But if you tell the truth in July, you can actually make the change the second half of the year. And here's the challenge. Take one day, take an hour, sit with the four scorecards, health, relationships, businesses, and alignment. Excuse me. And make each one green, yellow, or red. Tell yourself the truth and then choose one action that proves you're moving. January is the emotional phase of your year. July, it becomes factual. And the second half of the year belongs to the people to me who are willing to look at their life honestly, realign real fast and start taking action before drift becomes the default. That is reflection day. Hope you guys enjoy this. And I will talk to you all next week. And if you are interested in my ascent coaching program, make sure you reach out to me ASAP, austin at chironade.com or reach out to me on social media, Dr. Austin Cohen. Have a great week. to learn more about building your business, leadership, and life on purpose, visit chiro one eighty.com or follow Austin on Instagram at Dr. Austin Cohen.