Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris, I am your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 193 today and we're actually we're actually the end of the year, which just blows my mind. This is the last episode for 2024, and we're going to be finishing up with a bang. I'm going to be asking you the biggest question that you can ask yourself ever. Well, also for 2024. It is the best and the biggest question you can ask for 2024.

Just as we finish up for the year, I want to leave you with this question. We're going to go through this question. I'm going to give you some ideas on how you can tackle this question and hopefully it's going to help you further your lifestyle, but, most of all, it's going to help you go into 2025 ready to rumble. Now, if you're listening to this in the future and it's a whole different year, it doesn't matter. You can still continue to ask yourself this question, regardless of what day it is, what year it is or wherever you are. It's relevant for a short term, for a long term, but it is very, I guess, as well-mannered for the time that we're in at the moment, in terms of you're coming to the end of the year, we're about to start a new year, so why not ask this question? Anyway, we'll go through that, and then I'm going to give you a bit of my own personal experience, and then I'll talk about at the end. We're taking a couple of weeks off at the end of this episode. Take a few weeks off, and when you can expect us to be back in at full, you know, back to normal schedule. So let's get into it.

The question that I want to ask you today, the biggest question that I think I can ask you for 2024, is what have you learned this year that can help you shape next year? Great question, we're going to roll the intro. Let's get into it. Into it. So, what have you learned this year that can help you shape next year? This is a really great question, and I think it's a question which it doesn't have to be, you know, stuck on a year perspective. You can do this on a month, you can do this on a quarterly basis, you can do it in a week. It doesn't really matter. The fact of the matter is, though, it is relevant to where we are at this time of the year, and I've built out this little questionnaire I think it's 10 areas which, if maybe you don't know how to answer this, maybe you don't know how to probe into it and I want to break it down into the 10 different topics or subjects which you can then ask yourself. Now, the beauty of this is this is for you, this isn't for me. I have done this for you. I want you to spend some time and do it, because it can help you maybe find some gaps, find some really great achievements, but also give you some really fresh perspective to maybe go into 2025 or go into the next year and kick butt. Now. We've been talking about all that for the last six weeks and now is really kind of your last chance to really I mean, you can reflect on 2024 in the next year, but it's the new year. You want to be full steam ahead, focusing on what you want to achieve, so we're going to get into this.

Number one is the topic of reflection and growth. Sorry, reflection on growth and change. So I'm going to prompt you a few things. These are some things that you can ask yourself to really understand how you've gone in this area of your life? Number one is what is something I know now that I didn't know at the beginning of the year? What's one thing, something that you now know, or have a better understanding of, that you didn't know at the start of the year how have your priorities changed over the past year and what have triggered those shifts? So, what were your priorities at the start of the year, how have they shifted and why, or what were the shifts that? What were they triggered by? The next one is what challenges did you face this year and how did you handle them differently than you might have handled them in the past year, and how did you handle them differently than you might have handled them in the past? This is a really great one. So that's how to reflect on growth and change.

Now, if we want to evaluate on wins and setbacks, which is really important, we've covered this with Rose Thorn and Bud. We've done a couple of episodes on that, but in this case, there's three questions I want to get you to ask yourself is what was my biggest win this year and what did I do to achieve it? When you understand what it took to be able to achieve something great. Then you can figure out how to replicate it. What was your biggest setback and what did you learn from it? You know setbacks are okay. They're opportunity to learn. They're opportunity to enable you to thrive going forward. So what was your biggest setback and what did you learn from it? And number three for evaluating wins and setbacks is if I could go back to a difficult moment from this year, what would I do differently? And this is really important because you know you can reflect back and forth. If I was starting on this again, I would do things differently, and it's great because you can now take that and know that when you do have or experience a moment again, you know what to do Super important.

The next area of topic is assessing habits and routines. What habits or routines have you had the most positive impact on your life this year? I think sometimes we don't realize. When we just continue to do things in repetition mode, we don't realize the benefit it has. So spend some time and think about it. The other one is which habits held me back and why did I find them difficult to break? You know habits. We want habits that are going to create extra progress for us, passive habits that are going to be positive impact on us. We don't want these habits that are causing problems for us or taking us down routes we shouldn't be going. So what are some habits that have held you back and why did you find them difficult? And then the third one, under habits and routines, is how did I spend most of my time this year and did it align with your goals and your values? We speak big on this podcast about making sure you're doing things that's going to get you closer to where you want to be. So did you do that? That is the question. Did you do that?

The next area I want to talk about is self-awareness and mindset. What limiting beliefs did I challenge or let go of this year? This is deep. This is really deep, and you've got to spend some time thinking about this. You know where has your mindset changed? And then the other part of this is how did my mindset evolve when dealing with uncertainty and fear? Did it get better or worse? In what situations did I surprise myself with my resilience and creativity, or creativity? This is really good, you know. It's telling you things maybe you didn't realize about yourself.

Number five is relationships and connections. Ask the questions around this. Which relationships grew stronger and what did I do to nurture them? What did you do to keep these relationships growing and growing stronger? What relationships or interactions drained your energy and why did you let them continue? You've got to ask yourself that. And then, who were the people that influenced you the most this year and what did they teach you? These are just. These are credible, incredible things, because even these, I get so many ideas and so many different things that I realize myself, even though I put this together. But it's challenging me now on the fly, because I need to come back and look at this, because I'm thinking of new things.

Number six was career or business areas of your life. What was the biggest accomplishment in your career or business this year? Don't hold back. If you had a big win, let it out. What was it? What strategy or process or decision didn't go as you originally planned and what can you take from that experience? And this is the importance when we do have setbacks or issues or things that didn't go as planned, we have to leverage them for better growth. Where did you see the most growth in your business or your career and how can you replicate that going forward right. So if you know this is what you did to get a result, how do you now replicate it? How do you make more of that happen?

Number seven is creativity and curiosity. What new skills or hobbies did you explore and how did they impact your perspective? Good one, what was no? When was the last time you felt deeply inspired and what led to that feeling? What were the things leading up to that? What questions or curiosities did you follow this year that opened you new doors? Huh, what did you, you know, dabble in? Where did you step out of your comfort zone, and what did that do in opening new doors for you?

Eight health and wellbeing. How did you prioritise your mental and physical health this year? Huh, how did you go? For me, it was a bit of a challenge, I'm not going to lie. What stresses did you successfully manage or reduce, and how did you do it? You know what were the things that were stressing you and how did you manage that. Maintain that. What self-care practices were the most effective for you, and why? I think for me, it's definitely going to have to be playing more RuneScape, just taking some time out right.

Number nine is around clarity and focus. What distractions did you eliminate this year and how did it impact your focus? What were you able to give up to give yourself more time for right? What goal did you achieve this year that you were most proud of? But also, what did you sacrifice to actually get there? You know it's a bit of a tit for tat kind of situation. What areas of your life need more clarity before you can move forward? This is a big one, you know. Do not leave those stones unturned and think about I'll get to them later. What can you fix before you move forward? And number 10 is around the future outlook and the direction of you. What do you wish you had done more of this year and why didn't you make more time for it? Now, it may be an excuse, but there's probably a reason why.

What did you avoid this year out of fear and discomfort, and what did that cost you? What was the missed opportunity? Because you continued to say I'll do it when I'm ready. You're never going to be ready. You just got to do it, is it? You've missed out on making progress for six months because you said you'll wait till the end of the year. Why didn't you just start earlier? Right? And then the final question is looking back, what moments would you like to carry forward into the new year and why? There is a lot here right and look, maybe you need to pause, you need to go back and you go through all this, do what you got to do.

I wanted to kind of I've written all these out so I'm going to be referring to them, but I went through and I went through a few different things of my own, like embracing change and adaptability. I think for me, I've had to pivot a few things in my business this year. I've obviously started a new service as well, which is the listing service, to take on some new opportunities there. But I've had to adjust also a lot of my strategies in my business and that's required me to overcome new challenges. But it's also enabled me to have some evolving perspectives around how I can stay relevant, how I can be a better version of myself but continue to, I guess, be insightful, and I think you know these are really high level. But these are just some that I wanted to play back to you to give you some perspective of maybe what this is going to look like for you when you've got some answers.

The other one for me was the value of consistency over intensity, and in this I've obviously had to make some changes with my ultramarathon training this year and I wasn't able to put my efforts there because of an injury. But I was able to put that into my business and into my business growth and I've been able to continuously steadily, I guess grow that and not really take shortcuts, but just push, push, push and you know it's really ensured that it's reinforcing those longer term goals that I have. Another area that I've pulled out with focus and understanding for this year is navigating setbacks as learning opportunities. Now I spoke about this with some of the questions that I probed you on. There's been some tough stuff that I've had to deal with whether there's been feedback through YouTube comments messages, but also just some feedback that I've received while building my business and it's forced me to change things. It's forced me to take them as new opportunities to improve processes and adjust, like taking on a new photographer and new workloads and things like that. That's been a great way to challenge myself and also challenge my imposter syndrome and turn it into a fuel for growth, and by doing this I'm constantly trying to make the business better. I'm also trying to make myself better, and by doing this, you know, I'm constantly trying to make the business better I'm also trying to make myself better, and by me doing these videos, by me doing this podcast, it really has helped me transform the criticism or the challenges I've been facing into more actionable and tangible outcomes, into a perspective that I can hopefully encourage you to move forward and further your lifestyle as well. That was quite a lot Tongue twister.

The other area that I kind of put some detail into was excuse me, was time management and prioritization. I've re-evaluated how I've spent my time, and I've put that more onto sourcing and more business decision-making areas within the business high-impact areas, I guess and I've been delegating a lot more out. I've also, then, been trying to balance business with, obviously, my own personal hobbies and you know things like that and creative projects, trying to maximize efficiency and again letting go of things, outsourcing things, and then really prioritizing, making sure that I'm finding ways to keep my well-being in the right place. That's been a challenge one, not being able to run as much this year as well, but that was a prioritization. But it's also, you know, an area of mental and physical health, which I'll talk about shortly. But I think the other thing is then, you know, seeking better workflows or better ways of operating to manage my time better, to give me time back for other areas, which is then leads into that next area of the importance of mental and physical health. You know how am I, I guess, regaining the space or the opportunity to give myself that mental clarity and stay focused, but also having that balanced lifestyle of being able to, you know, do the YouTube, do the podcast, do all the different things that I enjoy doing my volunteering, while at the same time making sure I'm looking after myself. And I think the prioritization part that I said before, where it's been really a bit of a challenge is I haven't been able to do my running this year, but making sure that I'm still keeping my mental health in check Big challenge this year. The other area was focusing on relationships over results, built some really amazing connections this year. That's come from my newsletter, that's come from YouTube, that's come from just having conversations, it's come from customers Some really great stuff and that's been really good. It's also enabled me to engage my clients in a new, different way, obviously taking on a lot of new clients with the listing service and emphasizing a new level of trust. We're working with a bigger team. You know that's that's been a challenge too. But also like then respecting and really putting in a emphasis to push into repeat buyers and building ongoing business in that kind of service within the listing service, but also within my reselling business. So there's lots like this is really high level. But I'm just kind of playing back a lot of the things that I've been thinking about.

Another big one for me, and this is a really important one, is letting go of perfectionism. You know you're never going to be able to have the perfect situation or circumstances to be able to take action, so you need to learn to take action without the perfect conditions. That, on the you know, in a parallel sense, is I've had to get real realistic about doing the work that we do and making sure that you know, as long as we're hitting 80% of what I want as 100% perfect, then that's probably good enough and just, you know, going through that process and embracing that a little bit more. That's been hard. It's been hard because I always want things to be the top best they possibly can be, but sometimes that's just it's not realistic.

A big reflection this year has been the power of focused effort. You know we have grown the business by about more than 80% this year and that has only come from obviously concentrating on changing things from the bottom up but also concentrating my time on high value actions to get more bang for buck out right. And it's also meant that I've had to change the way I operate in other parts of my life. Obviously, I haven't been training for my ultra marathon because I've had an injury all year, so I was able to refuel that time into some more focused effort and put it into areas for growth, because I wasn't able to subsidize that with my running. So making sure I'm, you know, directing that energy into places where I can still get the fulfillment, the purpose and the sense of, you know, feeling good and feeling great.

Another thing of reflection around time is I've been more intentional with time. I've outsourced a lot of things. My podcast has been edited, this gets edited. I've been making sure I'm doubling down on outsourcing my washing. I'm taking on more people working for me, second photographer, all those different things and that's enabled me to find more time for me and to work on bigger things. But also I've made a lot of investments last year which have started to see dividends pay this year. But also I'm still continuing to try and invest in making sure we can lower expenses while increasing profits in the business. That's been a big challenge, but how we do that with time and resources has been a nice little balancing act. But then also like working on trying to automate processes to give my time back and that's more for the listing service. So there's a lot here like there's so many bits and bobs that I can take from everything. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The last area that I'll kind of touch on is like recognizing, you know, some mind shifts, mindset shifts that I've had to take for myself. Obviously, it's been a lot that I've been talking about in this podcast all year and it's really been a big transformation for me and I hope it's been, you know, an inspiration for you to become a better version of yourself. I've had to also like adjust my perspective when facing setbacks or, you know, dislikement and things like that, and that's trying to turn that into positive affirmation and new opportunities has been a challenge, but definitely getting in the better position for that. And the other thing is you know a lot of the time that when we have problems, it's just problem solving. Don't stress about it, don't get fearful of it, you know, don't become, you know, so insane scared by it that you don't do it. It's just a matter of okay, how do we solve for this? What do we got to do to get past it? Do we do this? Do we have to do that? Do we have to take a step back? Do we need to move forward fast? At the end of the day, it's just problem solving, and changing been a big, big changer for me because it's enabled me to overcome, I guess, some big barriers for making help that were not making me or enable me to make better progress. That's a lot.

So, look, that was a bit about me, but I think the most important part is the first half of this episode of going through those 10 different areas of questions. You can ask yourself which was the biggest question for this year of what have you learned this year and how can you use that to shape next year. So I hope you've, you know you've leveraged that or that's been a really great, you know value for you. Let me know in the comments has this been something great to reflect with to leverage. You know how do you go into the new year. Do you have any big goals for the year? I'm excited to hear it. Play it back to me Now before we finish. I do want to say I am going to be taking some time off just to rest, rebalance and spend some time with family and things like that and just be fully ready for 2025, which, again, I want to make my best year yet. So I'm expecting that we should be back here for episode 194, probably the 5th of Jan or maybe the 12th of Jan. We'll just see how we go, but you know you'll get the updates anyway.

If you did enjoy this episode and it's something that's resonated with you or you think it would resonate with someone else, one please make sure you like subscribe, leave a comment, but, most of all, send it to someone else that needs to hear it. This is the perfect time to send it to other people. Start getting them taking accountability and responsibility for their lives so that they can have a better life in a better year for 2025 or the next year or whatever year it is, if you're listening to this, because my mission is to really want to help you further your lifestyle and the way I do that is, I'm helping myself further my lifestyle and then sharing back that progression what that looks like, how I'm experiencing it and what does it take, and backing that up with the results that I'm able to share and show with my business and with my life and everything else in between. I don't have it all figured out, but I'm figuring it out as I go, so I appreciate you being here. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season Christmas, new Year's, all those great things.

Spend it with family. If you can't get to spend it with family this year, make sure you spend some time for yourself. Reward yourself. You've had a big year. Maybe you didn't hit all the goals, maybe you smashed all your goals. It doesn't really matter. What's important is that you understand what you've done, be okay with it, take responsibility for it and you know, leverage it either. For if it's not the results you wanted, leverage that for an opportunity to how do we now leverage that to go into a better year? Or, if it was what you wanted, leverage that for an opportunity to how do we now leverage that to go into a better year? Or if it was what you wanted? Or better give yourself a pat on the back, but don't get, you know, cocky, don't get complacent. And now, how do you leverage that to continue to ramp up that momentum moving into the new year and that will then help you further your lifestyle, guarantee it, appreciate you. You have a wonderful day, cheers.