Who’s ready to make the MOST of the REST of 2016 with a Mid Year Review?! I know I sure am. One of my favorite series on the blog is the annual New Year for a New You review series, but six months later, my soul stirs for another quiet session of reflection.
Mid-Year Review Q’s
Today I’ll prompt you with a review of the last six months, and then I’ll leave my answers below. Come back next week (a 2-parter!) so that we can go over what’s working (aka what you need to do MORE of) to make the *most* of the *rest* of 2016.
Begin with these five questions:
1. What feels good about the first half of 2016? What’s clicking?
2. What areas of your life or business are feeling out of sync?
3. What do you want the rest of the year to feel like? What would you like to see take shape?
4. What will you need to do to make that visualization come true?
5. What would you like to stop doing? What’s eating up your time, making you feel bad, or not contributing to your best life in any way?
Mid-Year Review A’s
What feels good about the first half of 2016? What’s clicking?
The best thing about 2016 (so far) has been my high success rate for goal-getting. I set an outrageous income goal for the year ($146K), and I met it in six months. Before this year, my business averaged a steady $30,000/year, but in 2016, everything changed (read: I changed).
This isn’t the first year I’d set a 6-figure goal. Ever since I opened shop (2010), I’ve dreamed of making $100,000 in a single year. That number may seem small to you, or it may seem outrageous, but to me it feels a a huge and glorious figure.
And there’s a reason I’d never met that goal before.
Every December from 2010-2015, while in review and reflection, I wrote “six-figures” as a goal I’d like to accomplish. Then, I’d start to strategize the products and services I could offer to achieve that financial goal (based on the previous year’s earnings), and the numbers were always askew. What I BELIEVED I could earn never added up to what I WANTED to earn.
Come January, I’d slash my income goal. I told myself, Okay. Maybe $100,000 isn’t realistic at my current level. It is almost tripling the most I’ve ever made in a single year to date, after all. Maybe I should lower that just a tad.
I felt anxious and doubted my ability to earn such a huge and glorious figure. I concluded, I’d be more than happy with $70,000. That’s still quite a lucrative amount!
By June, regardless of how I’d done so far that year, the slow months hit. And we all know, slow months are dismal. There was so much goal to go, but the funds trickled in. So, I negotiated my salary again. I thought, You’re nowhere near your (already compromised) goal of $70,000. In 2015, I’d already earned my previous year’s salary by July — I was close to my huge income goal — and I STILL negotiated (with myself) to allow for a lower salary because of a slow period!
I strategized, Okay. Just be sure you double last year’s salary. And guess what I did in 2015? I doubled my last year’s salary. Nothing more, nothing less. Can you relate?
Coming into 2016, I realized the only thing holding me back from achieving $100,000 this year was me. Click here to read how I shattered the 6-figure ceiling.
What areas of your life or business are feeling out of sync?
I’m actively changing everything in my life and/or business that feels out of sync. I wish I could say I’m taking it one step at a time, but if I’m honest, I’ve jumped the entire flight of stairs.
Let me show you this Instagram from my business mentor, Ramit Sethi. I’ve been following him for years, but his caption to this post hit me like a ton of bricks and changed the course of my life for the better. I’m sharing it in the hopes it will do the same for someone else …
He clipped an email from a reader who had been chasing the same problem for two years. It’s been 40 weeks (at the time of this writing) since he shared it. I thought about his response (in the caption) for the rest of the day, and I’m still thinking about it now.
Is there something in your life — your weight, your health, your career, your income, your relationships — that you’ve been struggling with for too long?
Are you willing to change it once and for all?
I decided I was willing and ready to do the work. I’m moving toward excellence. I schedule exercises of change into my calendar now, whether it be a workout (to lose weight and feel better in my skin) or a 90-minute power session to work on a project that will become a long-standing asset to my business.
In the last ten months (since the day I read this caption), I’ve completely redecorated my home to create a space that inspires me, firmly closed the door to toxic relationships in my life, stopped pinning about travel and started planning it – this year, we visit(ed) San Francisco, New York, the Bahamas, and Disney World Orlando PLUS I booked a 3-day creative retreat just for me! I invested thousands of dollars into my own training, taught a full-on workshop for CreativeLive (and had one of the best times of my career doing so!), hired my first assistant, hired a bi-weekly housecleaning crew (a GODSEND), hired a trainer (a SHE-DEVIL in Under Armour, but I love her), and hired a second assistant. I also started eating more plants!
This month, we’ll put our beautiful home on the market in order to move closer to the city, relieve my husband about an hour of his commute, and get my kids into the best school district in the state. Hallelujah. Amen.
What do you want the rest of the year to feel like? What would you like to see take shape?
If you asked me a month ago, I would’ve said, “I want to slow down and enjoy it all for a minute!” But that’s only because I truly needed a break. So, I took one and enjoyed the shit out of it. Then, I got back to work.
The thing is, change requires action. I have no plans to rest on my laurels. Behind the scenes, I’m wrapping up all the projects I started in the first half of the year (a private coaching concentrate, Luminaries membership upgrades, and the Complete Copywriting course). I’m itching to start Your Best Year 2017; after all that I’ve accomplished this year, it’s guaranteed to be the best one yet.
I want Your Best Year 2017 reach + inspire 200,000 creatives.
What will you need to do to make that visualization come true?
YES! The action. I’m in love with this question right now, mainly because I’ve got my gym clothes on, and I’m ready to sweat. (Literally. I have an appointment with my personal trainer after this.)
I’m going to invest, build and advertise Your Best Year 2017 as if it already is the best-selling, Gold album (project) I wish it to be.
What would you like to stop doing? What’s eating up your time, making you feel bad, or not contributing to your best life in any way?
I’d like to eliminate anxiety once and for all. Change is scary, and I’m a worry-wart. When I’m in the middle of a launch or some other next-level push, I can work myself into a state of absolute frenzy. I try to remember this gratitude-inducing, ever-calming question,
Reflect back on your life so far. Has anything not worked out?
This question has filled my heart and brought me to my knees in appreciation. My answer is always the same …
Just look at how this life has worked out for me.
Gosh, that felt good! If you do a mid-year review, please link up or share what you discovered in the comments. I’ll be back next week with a few more prompts for us to answer together. Until then~
What I learnt was I burnt myself out because I am chronically ill, this is new for me, and I need to give myself much longer time.
I was taking a course, and when the teacher had people book it in their planners she said, “unless you are sick, then your job is to take care of yourself. You need to give yourself 3-4 times longer, or more, if needed.” This hit me hard. My husband, my doctors, everyone told me but I didn’t listen until I heard this lady say it. Thank God. Now I am sad but know I must…
So INCREDIBLY INSPIRING! I have been filled with analysis paralysis (read FEAR) for long enough! Now it’s time to take action and create the life I really want. I’m sitting here with the mid-year planner (THANK YOU), and Google Calendar open…making plans. You are a girl after my own heart with continuous self-improvement and getting excited about planning and goals. I look forward to your next post! 🙂