Get your new year planning guide here: https://www.sarahlang.ca/workbook

In this conversation, Pam and Sarah discuss the importance of reflecting on the past year and setting intentions for the upcoming year. They introduce a guide designed to facilitate this process, emphasizing the significance of self-awareness, goal setting, and establishing boundaries. The discussion covers how to effectively review the previous year, dream big for the next year, and create actionable intentions while maintaining a focus on personal growth and contribution.

Takeaways

• Reflection is key to understanding past experiences.
• Setting intentions can guide your actions throughout the year.
• Awareness precedes change; check in with yourself regularly.
• Dreaming big allows for unfiltered aspirations.
• Boundaries are essential for maintaining balance and focus.
• Community support can enhance personal growth.
• It’s important to celebrate what is already working in your life.
• The process of reflection can reveal cycles in your life.
• Intentions are guiding principles, not strict goals.
• You have the freedom to define your own path.

Links, Corrections, and Whatnot

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Transcript

This transcript was generated by AI so please ignore any weird errors. If there is anything really terrible, let us know.

Pam (00:00)
Every year we do an episode where we talk about kind of end of year planning, looking ahead at the next year, a little bit of goal setting, but sort of just kind of figuring out your vibe for the next year and what you want to do more of, what you want to do less of. And we facilitate that with a guide that Sarah puts together. It will be available at a link in our show notes so that you can go through this process. If you are like me and you’re someone that doesn’t really set specific goals and just kind of flies by the seat of their pants and hopes everything works out. This is actually a really good process for you because it’s not like that, you know, specific SMART goals, you know, like having to figure out that you want to be at X point by X date. It’s really more of a reflective process and

Sarah (00:54)
Yeah.

Pam (00:56)
Just kind of getting an idea of where you want to go in the next year so you know where you want to focus and where you want to put more energy and less energy. So again, that link will be available in our show notes so that you can follow along with the guide and get the benefit for this for next year. If you’re listening to this in January, this does not have to be done in December. Do it whenever you want. can even check in halfway through the year and see

where you’re at, like this is not something that is concrete and has to be done for the new year. So as with everything that we do, we wanna make it easier and make it not stressful. So yeah, I’m gonna kick it over to you, Sarah, so you can kind of talk us through the guide and tell us how you use it with clients and what benefits you see there. And we’ll talk about…

some spots along the way in the guide where I see a lot of value or ways that I think people can use it to benefit them.

Sarah (01:52)
Mmhm

Awesome, yeah, thanks for the intro. Really I designed this guide because when I’m working with clients, it’s oftentimes we’re starting in one year and continuing on to another year. Like we’re working at all different stages of the year. And goal setting or intention setting is always part of the process, whether they’re goals

involve improving communication skills or involve making changes in their life more broadly. And one thing I know for sure is that awareness always precedes change. So before we dive into a process of creating new routines or setting goals or being really specific about it, taking a moment to check in with ourselves is just so important. Also, we’re always changing.

And so the goals that we may have set three months ago, six months ago, three years ago, we may have achieved them already, or we may have started along the path and then abandoned them because realized, that was actually not what I want or abandoned them and realized, oops, I do want to go back to that. So we always, I think… I love the end of the year, like the end of the calendar year for checking in because it’s just such a clear demarcation. But as you said, we can really do this anytime.

Pam (03:02)
Yes.

Yeah. And if listeners have been with us since last year and did this process last year, or like with your clients, people on your email lists that have done this with you in previous years, you know, grab that review that you did last year so that you can kind of check in with it and use it as another reflective piece of this. You can kind of see what you mean to spend more time on and kind of let go.

Sarah (03:40)
so to give a little context to the guide before we go through it section by section, I wanna mention that there are really two main parts to it. There’s one initial section, which is about looking back at last year.

So in this section, you’re asked questions about 2024, getting you to reflect on that and give some thought and then essentially closure to it. And then the second part is looking ahead towards 2025 and setting some intentions around that. So those are the two main sections of the guide, but what we’ll do now is we’ll go through the different pages in each of those sections. Okay.

Pam (04:22)
Great.

Sarah (04:24)
So the first section, the title of this page is called Last Year at a Glance. And I love this section because it’s asking you to look back at 2024 month by month. And a great way to do that is either if you happen to have a daytime or paper daytime or like me, if you’re old school, you can use that to look at the months or you can use your Google Calendar Outlook or whatever your electronic calendar is.

and take a quick look at each month that passed and you have one to two sentences. So you’re really being forced to bottom line here. What stands out for you? So what was the highlight of each of the months? So what I like about this is it’s both the intention is that you’re doing it quickly, like within like, you know, 15, 20 minutes, you’re just doing a quick scan and whatever pops up for you as a highlight to capture that.

on the paper so it’s not kind of an agonizing review of everything you’ve achieved and how you spent every weekend or every working hour. But like it’s a quick review, what stands out, what was a highlight and you write it down.

Pam (05:32)
I like going through my journals as part of this. One thing I just like going through my journals and reading, you know, who I was a year ago, but that’s really helpful for me looking back and seeing what I was excited about, what I was worried about, you know, what I was looking forward to and, and, know, using that, I don’t really have everything in my life in a calendar. So I’m, I get much more out of my journals. So that’s another place that people could look for kind of jogging their memory.

Sarah (05:34)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Great. Yeah, perfect place. Okay, so that’s really your first step is to take a quick review of last year.

Pam (06:07)
And this shouldn’t take a ton of time, right? I mean, we’re talking like 15, 20 minutes of just like jot down the overarching ideas. This shouldn’t be something that you have to spend an entire afternoon on.

Sarah (06:09)
Uh huh.

Exactly.

precisely that’s why I made it you know one page and I say define the highlight of each month in one to two sentences. Yeah thank you. Okay great the next page is where you’re reflecting on what you just wrote down so the first page you’re just dumping it down like a brain dump and then the second page you’re doing a little bit of reflection on what trends you saw so some of the questions are what did you notice

Pam (06:26)
Perfect.

Sarah (06:47)
as you review the year month by month. There’s an opportunity to pull out some of the bigger challenges. Is there anything that you’d wanna do differently next time around? And then also some of the bigger highlights, right? What are you most proud of? What’s the best part of last year? And some other specific prompts around really identifying.

you know, what the year was about. So there’s a question here. Let’s imagine that the year 2024 was a book. What title would you give the book? So again, this is like a great opportunity just to put a few concrete words to really name a whole 365 days.

Pam (07:37)
I kind of started going through this to get ready for this episode and just to give people, you know, an idea of things that they might want to put down there. it could be professional things. It could be personal things. It’s, know, really whatever stands out for you. And so for me, looking back at the last year, I decided that the best part of the year was just spending more time with my mom and building a deeper relationship with her.

you know, my dad died about almost three years ago. And in that time, the blessing from losing him has been getting to spend more time with my mom and having that deeper connection and really focusing on that and making spending time with her a priority. And that is something that has just become part of my life. So I could kind of easily not really think about it. Like that’s just what I do now.

But having this reflective process and looking back at the time we spent together and trips we’ve taken together, it really stood out that that was the most meaningful part of the year for me. So yeah, I just want people to think about like, this doesn’t have to be purely focused on business goals or anything like that. And we’ll get into that more as the guide goes on. like, feel free to let whatever stands out.

Sarah (08:54)
Yeah.

Pam (08:55)
stand out. You don’t have to like force this in a direction of like productivity or or you know business or or like those sort of more goals related to producing or or career oriented stuff. It can really be whatever stands out to you.

Sarah (09:11)
Thank you. think that’s a great example and great reflection. And something that it spurred for me when you said that is for listeners, your reflection might reveal something that feels meaningful in a way that makes you feel good, right? Like the way you shared yours, it sounds like spending this time with your mom has been really meaningful and like positive. You might also find when you’re reflecting on 2024,

that it wasn’t such a great year for you, right? And you might find that, you know, the best part of last year maybe is even hard to pinpoint. And like some of the challenges feel bigger from last year than maybe they have in the past. And, you know, that’s okay too. Every year is going to be different. So,

Pam (10:00)
Yeah.

Sarah (10:06)
this is really an opportunity for you to be honest with yourself and just name whatever it was, knowing that we will be looking toward the future as well.

Pam (10:18)
Yeah. Another thing that is standing out for me as we’re talking about this is that in our recent episode about navigating stressful times, we talked about understanding the cycles of your life, of your business, of your personal life, whatever that is. This can be a really good tool to see those cycles. If you look at your months where you’ve noted things and you see like, every spring,

I get really busy and stressed out or the holidays are crazy for me, whatever that is, that can help you identify those cycles so that as you’re looking ahead at the next year, you can have that in mind so it doesn’t surprise you.

Sarah (10:56)
I love it. Knowledge is power. So don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. And yeah, and just to say it can take courage to kind of look at that. Look at those those months sometimes. Right. OK, great. So that’s the that is the twenty twenty four reflection. So that’s really the section where you’re taking a look at the past year in anticipation of looking towards the future.

Pam (10:59)
Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, and if people are following along with the guide and want to pause right now and do those two sheets for their reflection before we move on to looking ahead, now would be a great time to do that.

Sarah (11:37)
Okay, so now that you have had a chance to fill out some of your reflections on 2024, we are going to look ahead at 2025. And the way I like to begin this part of the process is really to be completely open minded and give yourself full permission to write down what you actually want. So this would be unfiltered, un…

unscripted on, my gosh, I have to be really reasonable here. This is your, what I call 2025 dream space. So you don’t have to commit to any of these as concrete goals, but what a great opportunity to just actually do a brain dump of what you actually want to happen in your life or what you actually want to create in your life.

Pam (12:28)
Yeah, and like you said, don’t filter this. Like whatever big things come to you, just write them down. There’s no commitment here. There’s no one who’s gonna like look at this and laugh at you or judge you. You don’t have to do the things that you write down here. Just like let it flow because you might surprise yourself or you might come up with something that you didn’t even know that you were actually thinking about or wanting, or you might see a theme.

Sarah (12:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Pam (12:58)
in some of them that like ties together and had having it all on one page like this, it can kind of stand out to you a little bit better than it would if you, you know, weren’t thinking about this like holistically.

Sarah (13:11)
Yes, exactly. And I love the reminder that you’re not committing to doing this. This isn’t your commitment page, it’s your dream page. So the categories on this page, we have eight separate categories where you can just write down what your dream scenario would be and the categories are work. That’s the first. The second is your home.

Pam (13:21)
Yeah.

Sarah (13:40)
And that can be, you know, the state of your home, moving to a new home, the outside of your home, the inside of your home, the dynamics in your home, you know, whatever the word home means to you. Your health, your love life, your family and friends. The next section is hobbies, fun and personal growth. And then the seventh section is your wealth.

And then the last section says what else? So that’s where you get to, you know, write whatever else you want that hasn’t fit into any of those categories. And obviously feel free to scratch any of the titles and rewrite them if you would like.

Pam (14:25)
And if you don’t have a goal for one of them, like don’t feel pressure to come up with something. This is your space. This is where you’re focusing on what is meaningful for you.

Sarah (14:31)
Totally.

100 % and it could be, know, I love my love life the way it is and I don’t want a single thing to change. That’s great. Celebrate what’s working. It doesn’t mean we have to change. You know, sometimes we’re already living our dream in certain areas.

Okay, so I’m going to move to the next page and this next page is called a vision for 2025. And this is where, so if on the first page it was more of a brain dump, on this page we’re kind of pulling out some of the key themes and putting words to what some of your goals might actually be or your vision might actually be for the next year.

And so the first prompt here is again getting you to review what you’ve written. So review what you brainstormed on the previous page and notice what stands out to you.

And then some other problems around what’s important to you above all else. So when you’re looking at this, what stands out as most important to you? What values might you wanna highlight this coming year? And what difference or contribution do you wanna make this coming year? This question is important because when I work with people on purpose, like as in when I work with people on helping them identify their purpose,

and live their purpose. What is my purpose? What is my life purpose? What is my professional purpose? My personal purpose? A lot of our work around purpose comes from knowing the kind of contribution that we want to make in the world, the kind of difference that we want to make in the world. you know, giving some time to thinking about the way in which you might want to make an impact in your own

community, your own circle, the world, your workplace, whatever it is, is definitely an important part of crafting your vision for next year.

Pam (16:41)
Yeah, as an example of that, like, there’s so much stress around, finding your purpose and you know, that kind of like huge pressure of like, what am I meant to do with my life? And I think that using this framing of like, what contribution do I want to make kind of take some of that pressure off and makes it so you don’t have to like figure out what you’re going to do to make that contribution. It’s more about just like,

How do I want to contribute and what feeling do I want to bring to my actions? And thinking about it in that way, last year I think really helped me decide how I wanted to give back to the world. I’ve always wanted to do something with my free time where I was benefiting others, but

Sarah (17:16)
Mm.

Pam (17:37)
It always felt like donating money, it just goes away and you have no idea what happens to it. And I wanted to have a personal touch. knowing that and knowing what I wanted and what I didn’t want led me to volunteering with an organization that helps kids in foster care. So having that freedom of not having to decide, my purpose is to build this organization myself that has all this impact. It was like, no, I just wanna have like.

an impact on one person. just want to touch one person and benefit them in some positive way. That freed me up to find how I wanted to have that outlet. Does that make sense?

Sarah (18:19)
Yeah, it really does. We haven’t really talked. We’ve talked a bit about your volunteering, not on the podcast, but just on our own. You and I have talked about your volunteer work and the meeting that it’s brought to you. But we haven’t spent a lot of time talking about how you really landed on that. I see such a natural fit when you talk about the work, but we hadn’t really talked about the process whereby you selected that as the right fit for you.

Pam (18:42)
You

Yeah, I think maybe we should do a whole episode on volunteering, especially with your background in volunteer. Yeah, exactly. And then my experience going from someone who had never really volunteered with anything at all to going all in on this organization. So I think that that would be something beneficial for us to do next year.

Sarah (18:53)
Yeah, volunteer management.

I love it. Okay, new theme, new theme for 2025. So again, here, you don’t have to commit to how you’re going to volunteer doesn’t even necessarily have to be volunteer work. But do think about

Pam (19:08)
New theme.

Sarah (19:20)
Do you think about how you want to bring some goodness to the world? Right. And I think as well, it’s, it’s an important antidote to when the world does feel stressful and chaotic to think, well, how can I be of service in my own way, in my own sphere of influence? I think it makes a positive impact and it really does feel good.

Pam (19:38)
Yes.

It does. Yeah. We’ll go into that much more in our upcoming episode on volunteering, because I’ve got a lot to say about it. So if you are following along with the guide and you want to pause right now to do your 2025 dream space and your vision for 2025, that would be, this would be good time to do that.

Sarah (20:01)
Okay, so let us keep going. I’m excited to talk about this next section of the workbook because it is on a very important topic, which is boundaries. Why boundaries? Because anytime we’re bringing anything new to life, we need boundaries to help us.

Pam (20:26)
And we have talked about boundaries so many times on this podcast that I swore we had a whole episode on boundaries and we don’t, we just talk about it all the time. Yeah.

Sarah (20:29)
We love boundaries.

just always talk about boundaries. And apparently I still need a lot of help with boundaries because I, when I look at my own calendar from the last couple of months, I had zero boundaries around my work life, around what I accepted in my work life. And I really, really was hanging on by a thread the last little while. And so even for such an advocate for boundaries and somebody who is always

telling people to take a careful look at your calendar, your realistic capacity before you say yes to something. I myself was really feeling boundary-less. And remember just how challenging it is to thrive when you don’t have the boundaries that you need to.

to kind of keep you going and to keep you healthy and motivated and supported so that you can do the good work that you want to do in the workplace and in your home. So I am looking really carefully at my own boundaries for 2025.

Pam (21:46)
Good. I’m, I kind of think that I’m a little bit in the other direction where I maybe have too harsh of boundaries, like I say no a lot. And so I’m actually on the other end thinking that I need to kind of open up a little bit more like say yes to more opportunities, you know, network with more people and kind of put myself out there a little bit, open my calendar up a little more after a number of years of like, really restricting.

Sarah (22:06)
change.

Yeah, yeah, listen, we’re all different, right? And we need and also not only are we different, but life changes, know, life changes, we change. So on that note, on this page, you know, there’s an opportunity here. I have one of the questions is what will you say no to this year? And then on the flip side, there’s what will you say yes to? So, you know, Pam might be like, I’ll say yes to this networking opportunity, or I’ll say yes to this to more opportunities, right?

Pam (22:16)
Yeah.

Yes.

Sarah (22:42)
And then there’s a couple of other questions here, which I think are really, really vital to look at. So to look at your desired life in 2025, what help do you want or need? Right, because we can’t do it all alone. So does that mean, for example, that you’re going to need some help delegating at home?

Are you, do you need help from new collaborators? Do you need an infusion of energy or support from other individuals, whether on a friendship level or somebody that you’re paying for their services? Do you need new space or to clean up your space? Like what do you actually need to live out this desired life? Because it’s not enough just to like put, take your pen and put the words on the paper.

and then on that note around community, community is so huge. So there’s another question here. Actually, I got this question from my friend Richie. so Richie, if you’re listening, thank you, because this is one of his great questions, which is who are your champions and supporters? So who in your, who in your world lifts you up and makes you feel like you can do new things and do what’s right for you. Do you want to lean into them?

So what community will you choose to lean into or what community will you choose to build up? You might be looking at this and thinking, wow, man, as it stands, there’s not that many of my people in my community who are really gonna necessarily champion me in the way that I need, right? Not necessarily throwing any shade on them, but they might not be able to give you what the kind of support, the kind of conversation.

the kind of company that you want. you know, how can you find that community? How can you build it? How can you look for it and show up so that you can be around the kind of people that are giving you the feeling that you want to have?

Pam (24:53)
Yeah, and on the flip side of that, who are the people that maybe you don’t want to spend as much time with? If there are people that have been negative or holding you back in some way, draining your energy, this is a good opportunity to look at those relationships and decide if you want to continue them.

Sarah (24:58)
Yes.

Yeah, great. And then the last question on the page is what will boundaries look like in 2025? Will they look similar or different to how they looked in 2024? Because we are allowed to evolve and change.

Pam (25:27)
Yep. And I actually, as I’m thinking about this, I think this might be the most important page in the guide because we can set all the goals that we want and we can have all these dreams, but actually putting the steps into practice and doing what needs to be done to achieve them requires a shift in how you think about what you can do, how you spend your time.

the people that you surround yourself with. So if none of that changes, it makes it really hard to do the thing. So you have to have these boundaries. You have to kind of hold your own feet to the fire with having these boundaries and saying no when you need to say no, saying yes even if it’s something you want to do, but you feel like it’s out of your comfort zone, like really, really putting thought into these

boundaries and putting them into practice is the only way that you’re going to achieve those goals that you had on the previous pages.

Sarah (26:34)
I love it, Pam. You heard it here first. This is the most important thing. Don’t skip this page.

Pam (26:38)
laughs

Right, so pause right now and go do it. All right, so we’re coming back for intention setting.

Sarah (26:44)
Pause right now, set those boundaries.

intention setting. So the last page of this guide is to help you clarify some intentions for the year. An intention is like a guiding principle or an attitude. So it’s not so much a goal. It’s a way of thinking that will support you in bringing your vision to life. So I wrote a list of a whole lot. I don’t know how many there are here 40 or

50 or something potential intentions that you can choose. These can also some of them almost sound like mantras, don’t they? But there are ways of thinking about yourself and how you’re going to live your life. And the idea is to pick one or two or a few and to practice saying these and to really, you know, embody them as a way to almost like give you some fuel.

Pam (27:31)
Mm-hmm

Yeah, I looked back at last year’s episode and on this page I chose, remember I can do hard things. And that really did play out through the year. I did a lot of things that I have been talking about for a long time. I launched a Substack,

Sarah (27:52)
That’s how I describe them.

Pam (28:12)
took my workouts up to a new level with building muscle because I’m getting old and we all need muscle. I just really made a lot of shifts in my life that were like things that I’d always talked about doing, but they seemed hard. And so I remember I can do hard things and I did. And the growth that I’ve had over the last year just because of that mindset has been so rewarding.

Sarah (28:20)
believe that.

Fabulous. So there’s so many great intentions here. If I look, I mean, I chose them because I love all of them. So I could pretty much, you know, pick any of them and feel like they’re motivating. But if I’m to, if I’m to sort of share some of my favorites from this page, I would choose this that I make the most of every day because I really,

When I remember the fact that every day is a gift, it helps me, yeah, make the most of it in terms of do things that are meaningful and that are gonna add value to those around me and to myself. But also it just reminds me to like enjoy it and be present in every day, which is pretty life changing.

Pam (29:32)
Yeah. I think the one that’s standing out for me most right now is I can do things differently.

what I want to bring into next year is a little bit more freedom for myself that like I can do things.

in unconventional ways. I don’t have to look at what everyone else is doing and do it the way they did it. Like I need to trust myself and look at the success that I’ve already had and bring that forward with me and know that I need to trust my gut and trust what is authentic to me and achieve my goals in that way rather than looking at what someone else is doing and try and copy them.

Sarah (29:52)
that.

I think that’s such a powerful vision to hold for yourself. And I’m going to say plus one to that. And I want to like join you because yeah, I also like remembering that I can live in an unconventional way in my own way. Certain things might be conventional, right? But I can choose to shape my life in ways that defy what’s

Pam (30:18)
you

Yeah.

Sarah (30:40)
normally expected. And there’s a lot of freedom in that, right? The sky’s really the limit if you actually like lean into that.

Pam (30:42)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, a lot of freedom and it opens up so many opportunities because you’re like, can I do that? I can do that. Yeah, there’s no rules.

Sarah (31:01)
Yeah.

Right, beautiful. And so what a beautiful way to wrap up. There’s no rules. There are no rules for this workbook. There’s no rules for you. Just give yourself some time to reflect and brainstorm and be free with whatever words come out on the page.

Pam (31:09)
you

Awesome, so we will link to the free guide in the show notes. You can grab it from there and leave us some comments and let us know what came up for you, what your goals are that you’re working on for next year, how the guide helps you, questions you have, anything. Drop a comment.

Sarah (31:41)
And any conversations that Pam and I can have on any topics that might serve you, let us know. And Happy New Year.

Pam (31:48)
Yeah, absolutely.