Mid-Year Check-In Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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 268 today, and I want to do a bit of a mid-year check-in. We're we're already past mid-year. It's been a few weeks, and we've we've made it. We're we're halfway through the year, and I feel like we do this, I mean, we do this episode every year, and I feel like it's really, really important because we're always going to be in different mindsets at this time of the year, depending on how your year's gone, what you've been trying to achieve, and just everything else that's going on in the world. And and before your brain kind of jumps between, it's like, oh, what have you done, or what haven't you done, or what goals have you missed? I want I want you to stop, take a breath, just breathe. Because this isn't me giving you an audit or making you feel bad, but it's just kind of like a chance to check in, do a bit of a recalibration, sorry, a recalibration, and just make sure that things are where they should be. So if that sounds like what you need, just kind of like a little pulse check, a little pick me up, or a little reminder that you're doing good, this is the episode for you. Please subscribe, leave a comment if you like as well. You can also share these podcasts and we can help other people further their lifestyle as well. We're gonna roll the intro and let's get into it. So

What Has Improved Since January

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I think the first thing we need to really address is just the reality, the reality check of where things are at. Like this is for you individually, right? So I'm gonna be talking about things, but you've got to put this in the lens of you and you answer it openly to yourself. If you want to continue the conversation, you can jump down into the comments. But I think the first question we need to ask ourselves is this year, it's not about like asking, what have you achieved? But it's I think it's about what's genuinely improved, what is better today than it was six months ago or a year ago. Now, this could be, excuse me, this could be anything. This could be confidence, it could be health, it could be your awareness, self-awareness, it could be relationships, it could be your discipline, it could be your mindset. And you've got to remember, we've spoken about this before, growth is not always visible to everyone else, but to who you are and what you've become and your ability and capacity is going to be very intimate and very personal with you individually, right? So I think that's the first thing you need to be asking yourself is what is better today than it was six months ago, right? You got that. Question two, I want you to be asking yourself is what actually feels heavier today? What's the thing that's draining you? What's the thing that's making you feel harder or making or what is becoming harder? What's costing you energy? What's draining you, becoming harder, or has become harder and costing you energy? Now, don't avoid it. Write it down, name it, be be realistic about this, all right? So that's the that's the second question. The third question: what keeps showing up in your life? Now, this is a really important and a very huge one because this is this is where the excitement starts. What lesson keeps repeating itself to you? What challenge keeps revisiting itself to you? What conversation keeps needing to happen? And life tends to put, I guess, a lot of repeat lessons until we learn them, or continues to push us out of our comfort zones. And people come into our life and get us out of our comfort zones, and it forces us to have to make a decision that we thought we would not have to make because it's going to make our life nowhere as comfortable as it is now. But these are all really important things. These aren't necessarily bad things, but they're things probably reminding you this is the next step forward.

Priorities Versus Your Actual Calendar

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So the next thing that I want to kind of go through is still some more questions, but now we can start to align all of this from a reality perspective is are we aligning to what we're trying to achieve? Right. So the first thing, the question that I'm going to ask you, or question number four in this case, am I living according to my priorities? Now, I think we need to ask ourselves, what does the calendar say is important? What does my behavior say is important? And then we can re we can contrast that towards what did you say was important? But the two conflicting points is kind of like where is all your time going and what have you prioritized? Now, if you use a calendar or a diary, you'll be able to visually see where your time and effort has gone. But then you can also pulse check with your mentality and your focus and your frustrations and your joy and your achievements around, okay, and what has your behavior been saying important? No, so a good example of this is you might want to be playing video games, but you're spending too much time working, or vice versa. Maybe you should be doing some work, but you're playing too much time video gaming, or so you need to look at that contrast. Now, one of either all of these is going to make you annoyed, frustrated, or happy and satisfied, right? So that gives you that kind of little, I guess, alignment check. Question five is what have you been tolerating? Or what have I been tolerating? And this one, this is where you have to be real, you have to be honest with yourself. You cannot avoid this. I mean, I don't know. I mean, you might you might skip this part, but don't skip it. So, what have you been tolerating? The bad habits, the poor boundaries, the excuses, the avoidance, the situations that no longer fit. And this is really important because what you tolerate or what you accept and what you excuse is going to become a standard for you, a baseline for you. So if you're in the if you want a habit build, if you want to lose weight, if you want to achieve a result, if you want to get something as an outcome, you need to make sure that the tolerating behavior that you're doing is for positive outcomes, not for things that are going to create self-sabotage or drama or destruction in your life. So that one's a tough one. And the only person that can control that is you. Question six is Am I moving or am I just staying busy? And this is a classic, classic conversation we've had before. Sometimes we feel like we're we're being productive because we make ourselves busy when really all we're doing is making ourselves busy, avoiding the thing that we're meant to be doing. Activity is not progress, right? Business, or bit sorry, not business, busyness isn't necessarily momentum either. Movement requires direction. And if you aren't moving to the direction that you want to be going, like getting one step closer to where you want to be, then the activity is not going to help you progress, or the busyness is not actually the thing making momentum for you. That's a tough one to swallow. You've got to figure that out. Now, the final part, I think it's the final part. Might be there, might be two more parts, sorry. This is

Stop Carrying What Is Not Yours

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the third part of this is okay, now let's recalibrate and actually see how do we how do we get things checked and how do we get things right and how do we make sure that we are moving in the right direction. So this is question seven. And I guess it's look, you gotta remember all these questions abroad and the the ideally they're made to make you think. And this only works if you do the thinking and do the action taking. So please take this into account. So the question I want to ask you now is what should I stop carrying? What burden have you been holding on to? Whose burdens are you carrying? What expectations or false expectations are you carrying from other people? What story have you been telling yourself? What identity are you carrying that is not even true to yourself? What pressure have you put onto your shoulders? And half the reason people feel stark is because they're dragging all this unnecessary weight, all this fluff, all this crap, all this stuff that is not actually even yours to even be carried. This one's deep. This one's a reality check. This one is where you can start to really realize okay, the last six months, I've taken on things which is not even relevant to my life. They're not my burdens, they're not my expectations, they're not my story to be told, they're not even my identity. So you've got to be careful with this. There is so many things in the world that attract your attention, and it's easy to get distracted. It's easy to get pulled away from what we are actually intending to do with intention. Question eight, what deserves more attention? Here we go, back to attention. And that's the thing. People seek things, people, entities seek our attention. So where's your attention going? Is it going to the right things or the wrong things? So not everything needs fixing, and not everything needs your attention. Sometimes if something's working, maybe it just needs more consistency, more reps, or more commitment, not another pivot. And I think this is where a lot of people self-sabotage is they say, I'm not getting the results that I expected that I can see other people getting. And this has happened to me. I'm not seeing the results, so I slow down and I prioritize somewhere else. Or I've had people use me as a baseline saying, hey, look, I've started reselling and this happens a lot. You're doing $150,000. We do $150,000 every 90 days, and they're saying, Oh, look, I'm only doing $20,000 every 90 days. And I'm like, well, hang on. If you started last week, you were doing incredibly well. If you started a year ago, you're still doing incredibly well. Different circumstances, different priorities, different focus, different reps. I've been doing this for six years, right? So you've got to make sure you're being very careful because if if you do the baseline and you think, well, you weren't doing this six months ago, all you got to do is keep being consistent, putting in the reps, and keep being committed and keep doing what's working, right? If in six months from now you haven't moved, that's when you can start to ask the question okay, something needs to change, something needs to be fixed. But again, it's about having that baseline. If you started from zero at the start of the year, that's where you're at. You're winning. Next year, we can actually start to do some comparison. The only person you should be should be comparing to is yourself, your past self. That's it. Question nine. So in the next six years, sorry, if the next six months looked exactly like the last six months, would you be happy? Kind of coming on what I was just saying. And this one, it's it's meant to hit hard. It's meant to challenge you, it's meant to make you feel uncomfortable. Reason why is because if you did exactly what you did for the last six months and got the same outcome, would you be happy? If yes, well then you're aligned. If no, well then you're drifting, right? And there's a change required. Only you can answer that. So you have to start to think about well, what what can I start to do that's different? And where has the distraction or the drifting occurred? And what change is now required.

Choose One Path And Act

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So part four, which I now think is yeah, the last section of this, you've got you've got to choose one, right? And this is all comes down to the the final challenge, I guess, that there will be some more little questions at the end, but it's kind of like, okay, you need to choose one of these. If you're winning, you need to double down, you need to avoid distractions, you need to don't reinvent the wheel, and you need to compound down. And what I mean by compound is leverage that momentum to get compounding results. If you are drifting, what you need to do is recommit. You need to don't wait for January, you need to just get back on the hit the ground running, and you need to start now. Don't wait, start now. Now, if you're struggling, this is where things need to change. You need to simplify, you need to focus on not fixing everything, but fixing on the one thing and find your next step, right? Bring it back to basics, bring it back to what is one thing that I can do today that's gonna get me closer to where I want to be, be it in six months, be it in one year, be it in two years, five years, ten years. That's how you can pulse check back. So if you're winning, like I said, the key thing is you want to double down, you want to compound and just lock in. If you're drifting, pull yourself together, recommit, don't wait to start, start today, do one thing today. Now, if you're struggling, you need to simplify. What can you can stop focusing on and trying to do too many things? Pull it back to very basic stuff, and let's just it's almost like starting from scratch, but you don't want to be fixing everything. Remove the overwhelm, keep it simple, keep it stupid. That's the mentality, and just find that next step.

Make The Second Half Meaningful

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So, a final question that I have for you is what would make the second half of this year meaningful? Not perfect, not impressive, not any of that wishy-washy stuff, just meaningful. What would make it feel meaningful and purposeful to you? Because that's what's going to be different for everyone. And this is what's really important is my goals, your goals, someone else's goals, someone else's goals, they're all going to lead to different outcomes. They're all going to lead to different ambitions and ways of living and lifestyle. And that's why I talk about furthering your lifestyle, because the tools and techniques and the steps of getting there is all the same in terms of taking the steps, being committed, being consistent, putting in the reps. All of that is exactly the same. But what you're striving for, what you're doing, the action, the inaction, the details behind it all, it's different because your motives and your ambitions are going to be very different to someone who's 20. If you're 40, right? You might have a family to feed. They're just come out of high school and they're ready to hit the big world and figure it all out, and they've got time to lose. They can make more mistakes. They don't have to feed families, right? So please be kind to yourself and be meaningful in terms of understanding that what you're doing, if you're happy with that, that's all good. It does not have to be trying to get us to Mars or something, right? It just needs to be what you want or what you and your partner want, or what you and your family want. That's where it's really important. So I don't care whether you're ahead of your schedule or behind your schedule. That doesn't matter. That's not even my business, right? I don't even care if you're off your path that you plan. What really, really matters is between you and this conversation that you've had with yourself, listening to me. But what matters is you're here, you're listening to this, you still have time, you still have agency, you still have choices you can make. This year isn't asking what happens, what happened in the first year. It's about asking, well, what are you going to do with the second? And that's why averages are really important because you could have a low start, but have a super high second, right? And or or or finish, if you will, which evens it out to a really great year. I've

Micro Versus Macro In Real Life

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had exactly the same experience. Started this year, things were rough. We really were not in a good position with the business. I was questioning it all. I was thinking, this is not good. I've had to do things which get some money from different places, and it's put a lot of challenges and stress and risk in other areas. But I knew that, well, everything we're doing is right, but there's just a lot of other things that are competing with us to help making us not getting it good enough, right? And having to ride that out, push that through. But now, now we've made up for that deficit. Now we've made up for that gap. And we're probably going to hit on top of our target. And that's that's the beauty of it is things will change if you put in the action, see it through, be willing to learn, being self-aware, analysing and understanding what's going on around you in the both the micro and the macro. If you don't know what that means, micro is down in the detail. Macro is like all the changing events that's usually out of your control or influence the things that will impact you. Like, for instance, I can't control the Australia Post going up 4.9%. I just have to wear it. I have to figure out, okay, well, where else can I save costs? Or how can I add more value to my customers so that seems like it's a good opportunity? Do I just up the pricing and send it on to the customers? All those different things. I can't control that. Now, in the macro, that's happening to everyone. So everyone's gonna feel it. In the micro, that's my world. How am I gonna deal with it? How am I gonna help with it? How am I going to manage it with my customers? How does that impact me? And what can I do about it? I digress. My point

Final Push To Start Today

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is, what are you gonna do with your second half of the year? Go back, listen to this if you need to again, take some time, be kind to yourself. You've got this, you've got this, right? And then you can checkpoint at the start of next year how the whole year went, and we do it again. And you get one step closer to being where you want to be. Appreciate you being here. If you did enjoy this, please make sure you hit subscribe if you want to get more of these and you hit the notification bell as well. And you can also like like this if you enjoyed it. You can leave a comment, continue the conversation. But if you think someone else needs to hear this, get a little kick up the butt and get themselves in order, please share it with them. That would mean the absolute world to me. You have a wonderful day. Cheers.