Questions create clarity and introspections creates direction. Every year, I write myself a letter to reflect on the year and chart the course for the upcoming year. It's through these questions and introspection that unlocks additional years of high performance, and I want you to experience this as well!
Learn the questions to ask yourself during the final week of 2023 to absolutely crush 2024!
Episode Reference - Mel Robbins 6 Powerful Questions Exercise
Thank you for tuning in! If you feel led, please subscribe & share the show to others who you believe would benefit from it.
Keep in touch below!
Questions create clarity and introspections creates direction. Every year, I write myself a letter to reflect on the year and chart the course for the upcoming year. It's through these questions and introspection that unlocks additional years of high performance, and I want you to experience this as well!
Learn the questions to ask yourself during the final week of 2023 to absolutely crush 2024!
Episode Reference - Mel Robbins 6 Powerful Questions Exercise
Thank you for tuning in! If you feel led, please subscribe & share the show to others who you believe would benefit from it.
Keep in touch below!
Welcome to the Win Today podcast, a weekly tool intentionally crafted to help people enhance performance, feel inspired and conquer life. Our commitment is that you will learn from some of the most disciplined, heartwarming and inspiring people on the globe, in addition to receiving a piece of a winning playbook from myself or a renowned expert in their field. My name is Ryan Cass and I am your host, and it is my purpose in this world to inspire people to establish a foundation for sustained success by developing systems that will enable you to accomplish your goals, break systemic trends of adversity and chart a desirable course for life. Thank you so much for tuning in. Please help us achieve our vision of becoming one of the top podcasts in the world by subscribing to the show, sharing it with somebody who you believe will benefit from it and leaving a review. Let's connect with our guest.
Speaker 1:Merry Christmas, everyone Wishing that you all are having an amazing time with your family, loved ones, enjoying a day off or, for many of you, enjoying what is going to be a week off the final week of 2023 and taking advantage of all of this time and what it has to offer. I look forward to this week every year, not only because it provides an opportunity to recharge, but it also provides an opportunity to be very introspective, evaluate the year and look ahead into the new year. I have said this before that two of my favorite days of the year are the day that I get to set my goals for the coming year, and then the day that I get to review it in great detail and write a letter for the upcoming year. I released my letter to myself this year for 2023. It's something I've been doing for a few years and I'm deciding now to start putting more and more of my stuff out there with the intent that it serves as a tool for at least one of you, not with the intent of here's another thing that Ryan does, and this is the Ryan show. Everything that's out here is intentionally crafted for you guys, so that will be launching here soon. But I figure, rather than release my letter and say, hey, here's my letter for myself and maybe you'll learn something from this and one of you will write yourself a letter In advance of that I'm sharing this week, what are some things to start asking yourself? What are some questions to start asking yourself to prepare for the upcoming year and take advantage of the time that we do have again for those deep introspective periods. What I'll share with you are the three questions that I asked myself, a new one that I'm adding and then one last one that I am shamelessly stealing from one of my favorites in the personal development world, mel Robbins, with my letter and with my goal evaluation, which I'll release a bonus episode on New Year's Eve that goes into the letter more in depth, because we have a special coming up on Monday with an amazing guest, big time guest, that I believe you all will be very excited to hear from.
Speaker 1:Here we go the three things that I'm going to be asking myself and really deep diving as I look at my 2023 goals. First off, what went well and why, and it's important to understand the second piece, the why piece, because before and early on in my journey, I would take note of okay, what did I do, what did I not do, and that's that. That was the first couple of years. And then since then, for the last, I would say, 10 plus on this 13 year journey. Now I've gone ahead and, on the back of each of my annual goals and the binder that I have, you can see what the goals were and then you flip the page. You'll see what happened and why or why it did not happen. Because then in that, why question you, really get the playbook? And okay, hey, I ran a thousand miles this year. As an example Maybe that's a goal from one of you guys I ran a thousand miles, that was your goal. Well, what made that happen? Well, I developed a system that had me running on Monday, wednesday, friday. Maybe I hired a coach, maybe I joined a running accountability group. That's the why, that's what allowed you to accomplish that goal. And so what that tells you for 2024 or any future years? Well, maybe building systems helps me out, maybe hiring a coach helps me out. Ah, you know, what I found that was the biggest benefit for me was joining that running accountability group. So that's why it's important to understand not only okay did you get it, but why. Because that why is giving you your future playbook, it's giving you hints, it's giving you a clue, it's telling you something to continue doing in the coming year.
Speaker 1:The second one is what did I not hit? Which goals did I not reach and why and I love this part, I might even like this part more than what went well and why? Because, even though it's important to celebrate your victories, I really believe that the greatest room for growth comes in your opportunities. I don't even believe in losses or failures, but you either win or you have an opportunity to do it again, or to learn a different way, an opportunity to take a different approach. And even just by looking at it as an opportunity, it still keeps it positive in your mind. So what did I not hit and why?
Speaker 1:And over the years, as this goal-sending journey, this personal development journey, has evolved, there are a lot of, there's plenty of check marks and there's a good bit of X marks as well, and those X marks are very meaningful and those are the ones I look back on and have later. They've later become check marks. For instance, the Boston Marathon journey ran Boston earlier this year, in April. That took seven years. That was a seven year pursuit of what I thought was originally going to be at most a one to two year journey. But in those why I didn't get there and the why's, that has allowed me to adjust my training. It allowed me to do more research on what did the best of the best do. It forced me to take a little bit more time to really adjust how I approach training, and that's been awesome because now it's helping my running game go to a whole new level because of all those opportunities that were formed over the last six years.
Speaker 1:So what did you not hit and why? And B? Be very honest, be brutally honest with yourself on these ones. I have Some coming up which y'all will hear about in the next episode. I've got a good bit that I didn't hit this year and you know what I'm not upset with myself about it. I'm obviously not jumping for joy, but I am smiling because I know that progress was made, some progress was made on these things and a step forward was taken. Now I Can also know or trust and believe that in 2024 these things are going to come to fruition and it's. It's gonna be a dream come true. It is a dream come true and I'm putting it out there. Just be brutally honest. You guys will. We'll see that soon, because if you're not, then it doesn't really give you that opportunity to To really grow from that experience and to make the adjustments that you need to make so that you are successful in the coming year or the upcoming years.
Speaker 1:The last one is what are my opportunities for growth, and this is more so personally. What, what? What are your opportunities for growth? What adjustments are you going to make? What do you need to? What do you believe you can do better internally? This on how you operate day-to-day, is it your thinking patterns, is it your belief systems the opportunities for growth really Forces you to not so much look at, okay, what did you do or not do, but what's the type of Person that you're becoming, or what's the type of person who are you right now and is that resembling of who you want to be? And that's the new one that I'm adding for 2024.
Speaker 1:This whole thing, this whole personal development journey, really can be described as a process of becoming. One thing I've learned as I've continued to study this world, talk to some of the best in the world in their crafts and especially in the personal development space is that goals are really just the pie in the sky and they're the desired outcomes and then they're great. Don't get me wrong. But it's the journey and the process that Surround those goals where that's what we should really crave, because that's what requires the transformation, that's what requires the rather, and that's what gives us the, the, the most, the most growth, the most transformation. It's in the process.
Speaker 1:So, when we think about it, just looking at going back to that simple running goal run a thousand miles in a year. Maybe that's again one of your goals for 2024. What Person must you become to accomplish that? So, rather than I'm going to go run a thousand miles, no, how about I become a runner? Who must I become in 2024 to achieve XYZ? Because now, if you are a runner and you believe you're a runner, then you're going to be more prompted to lace up the shoes three times a week, four times a week, to hit the weekend long run to sign up for a few extra races. So, with any goal that you're writing down, really look deeply and think about who, what type of person must I be in order to accomplish that?
Speaker 1:And the last one, and this is driven from Mel Robbins. I'll link this in the show notes. Mel Robbins is one of the goats in the personal development world and I've benefited from her work. I really love the five second rule Great book, but you can listen to a lot of podcasts with Mel on there that she talks about it in a podcast episode. But highly recommend the five second rule and Mel just released an episode with six questions to ask yourself to start 2024 and just make it an amazing year, and it's similar to this process I just mentioned here, when we ask ourselves questions. That's when we establish the most clarity and we get these things out of our minds that are already consumed with an abundance of thoughts.
Speaker 1:The last three questions that Mel posed in this episode are what will I start in 2024? What will I stop and what will I continue? And I've done these exercises in the past, especially in my corporate roles. The start, stop, continue exercise is very popular, but it's a really good one for your personal life as well. What are the things that you want to start doing in 2024 that maybe wanted to start doing in 2023, but it didn't come to be. Things got busy, so on and so forth. It wasn't the right time. What do you want to start? And some of this can also be fed by that second question I posed to you guys what did you not hit and why and it was likely because something wasn't started or wasn't done enough what do you want to stop doing in 2024?
Speaker 1:And think about this one again. Going back to that, to that personal side what do you want to stop doing? You want to stop creating stories in my head, you want to stop? Here's one that I am going to put on there because I'll also do this exercise is stop hitting this news button. Got really good at it, pretty good at it. Got not so good at it lately Not as bad as I once was. But no more snooze buttons. That's my funny one, but there are a lot more serious ones to come about. One thing that I am going to stop doing and it feels strange that every year that I've done this it has helped tremendously is stop taking as many one-on-one meetings and mentoring agreements. So that is something that I will be limiting in 2024. And I'm talking about outside of business and professional capacities. I've seen that that is taking far more time than what I originally envisioned, and there's only so many people that I can give my absolute best at a certain point in time while balancing everything else that's going on. So that is a serious one that I know will be on the stop or limit list and not sure yet as to what it'll look like, but I will share that with you guys.
Speaker 1:And the last one is what will I continue doing? What will you continue doing in 2024? What was something you started doing this year? What's something that you've been doing that has been very useful and you believe it will contribute to your success and well-being in 2024? So what will you start, stop and continue in 2024?
Speaker 1:Thanks to Mel Robbins, and going back to the top, when you think about reflecting on the year what went well and why? What helped you get there? What did you not do well? What goals did you not hit and why? What are your opportunities for growth and who must you become in 2024?
Speaker 1:Again, this is a process of becoming, it's a process of being, it's a way of being. This whole journey is really just a way of being, optimizing your way of being. So that's what I recommend you guys do in this last week of the year Merry Christmas. If you have not signed up yet for the weekly win email list that will be linked as well. That is launching January 2nd 2024. Every Tuesday, there will be an email coming out with tips from the best of the best recaps of podcast episodes what I'm reading, what I'm listening to, what I'm learning, seeing in the personal development industry. The intent is to provide you with another resource that is going to help you grow and help you win as we start a new year. As always, folks truly appreciate you for tuning in, ask yourself these questions, spend time in them and really dig deep and be brutally honest. That's what's going to create clarity for the new year and is going to help you win today. Thank you.