UNcomplicating Business for Teachers, Helpers, and Givers

The 4 Words to DITCH as You Plan For 2022

December 14, 2021 Sara Torpey Season 1 Episode 52
UNcomplicating Business for Teachers, Helpers, and Givers
The 4 Words to DITCH as You Plan For 2022
Show Notes Transcript

This is the time of year we all starting to shift into 2022 planning mode. 

As you do this, there are 4 words (and all of their iterations) that would be SUPER helpful to DITCH. 

On this episode of the podcast I'll share these 4 words, why they are not only NOT welcome in your future planning but also are secretly holding you back. 

A successful 2022 starts with having a successful PLAN - and these 4 words do NOT belong :) 

Free FB Group: Teachers in Business https://www.facebook.com/groups/teachersinbusiness

Free 1:1 Coaching Consult: https://calendly.com/torpeycoaching/letstalkcoaching


 

Welcome, welcome to episode number 52. This means there's all our episodes done on this podcast for every week in a year, and I'm super proud about that. This week, we're going to talk about planning for 2022 and forwards that you ought to consider ditching, like wholesale, ASAP. They are words. And in you can ditch all the iterations of these words that are not only not welcome in planning, but they are words that really do kind of secretly ninja sneaky, hold us back. And so in planning for 2022, a successful new year begins with a plan and a successful plan begins with now these four words. Before we jump into that, I have two quick stories I want to tell you one is about my group program charting business success. Last week, we did the most interesting thing, we sat down and we thought about priorities. And one of the things we talked about was, like using the analogy of a car, like all of your two dues are driving around in a car with you. But some of them you put on the front seat right next to you, and some of them you put in the back seat. This is four weeks into our 16 weeks or a quarter of the way through. And when everybody walked away from the meeting this week, they had an understanding of which priorities they put in the front seat like you know, where you put your purse on the passenger seat, maybe it's just me, so that you have like easy access to your sunglasses, and to your lip stuff. And to the credit card when you need to go into the parking garage and all the things. That's the stuff they're putting in the front that they need to be able to touch and grab and do to really move themselves forward. And then the other stuff you put in the back. So in everybody's case, what they are prioritizing into the front seat, and the back seat moving out of their sort of view right now really dependent on their goal. Like in one case, someone is building something, but like her goal for the end of charting business success is to have a particular program built in running. And so what she's putting in the backseat for now is networking. And that's okay, for the next couple weeks. When you prioritize like this, this is not a forever decision. Just keep that in mind. The other story I think would be really useful to tell you is that like, my favorite thing about this time of year, is getting to remind clients what their 2021 goals were.

 

Like, I actually keep a little list over on my whiteboard of by client, just their first initial. And last if I need them, sometimes I have the same letter choice. And what they're like big goal for this year is the most fun thing right now this time of year is getting to say to people Oh, hey, as we start thinking of 2022, you know, let's look back at your 2021. Because here's what's happened in so many cases and so many cases with my clients. They're like past this 2021 goal, or they it's been around so long that they're like Yay, it's done. It's been done. And they're sort of mentally moved past it. They've totally forgotten about how big a deal it was in January, how scary it was how uncomfortable like I have a client who her goal over the course of this year was to make $25,000 a quarter like it was $100,000. You know, it's funny, as she and I talked this past week, she realized that she's breezed past that 25k goal like literally breezed. It's luck felt easy. It's been a ton of fun, for three quarters out of four. And in one of the quarters. Like she almost doubled that. And she kind of went like Oh, because because not only is it she making the money, but it's been easier than ever. And she's taking more time off than ever. So in quarter three, where she like literally almost doubled it. She took a bunch of weeks off because it was on July, September, July, August, September. She took a bunch of time off. She's doing the same thing at the end of the year. She's still going to exceed that goal. And now it's like, oh, wait, if I'm exceeding this goal every time you know what, what's next. And so now we get to really think about her 2022 And that's amazing. She's to the point where this big one scary goal is now like oh Easy, breezy, which means it's time to reset and we were resetting by quarter but it's that big overall year goal that I think is really interesting to think about. 

 

So today we're going to name four words. We're going to put them on like the retired WORD LIST you've ever done that in elementary school. When I used to coach teachers every elementary classroom would have like a retired word list in the back of their room, it would be like nice in very and fine words that they wanted that the kids were like they're trying to build vocabulary. This is not us building vocabulary. This is us building power. So when we plan ahead, what's really important is to release our grip on the past, and to release our focus on the past, because honestly, if we're planning the future, based on past experience, what we get is more of the same. I was listening to a call this morning that a former coach of mine was doing and she was talking about how the the point of, of having a really big goal in the new year is, is hitting it, but actually not so much hitting it, but who you're becoming in pursuit of that goal. Because you're going to hit the goal. It's who you're growing into as you do it. But if we make our next goal based on past experience, what we get is, you know, small growth, more of the same stagnation. So we need to leave that behind. So here are the four words that we tend to use as human beings. That to me are red flags, that you are looking at the past to plan your future. They are for ours, I think of them internally as the four R's of the apocalypse. So they are responsible, reasonable, rational, and realistic. Listen, here's the thing. I am a practical kind of girl. I am I am deeply practical. I am a teacher, I am a math person. I am a mom, I am all these things. I understand what day to day life looks like. But reasonable, responsible, realistic, and rational. They don't belong with goals. They don't. They don't because think of it this way. Like if the Wright brothers were focused on what was responsible and rational, would we fly today? Probably not. Would Elon Musk be sending people to the moon, or space? Probably not. Like all of the innovations, in time in technology, in transportation in business, have come from people who put aside reasonable, rational, realistic, responsible, and I'm not saying to be wildly irresponsible, or totally irrational or completely unrealistic. But what happens is that voice of past looking is so loud in our heads, that we do not even allow ourselves to detach from it a little bit. Like this client who had this $100,000 goal this year. She said to me the other day, she was like, Okay, well, looking at 2022, you know, I think it would be reasonable to set a goal of like 125, I like to think is like you're already there. That's no.

 

So, you know, it meant that reasonable, was keeping her smaller, when you know, from one year to the next hurdle went from, I think her goal the year before that was 30k, right? So you know, and it doesn't need to be the same kind of magnitude shift. But it really does need to feel like it's not being driven by past experience. So as you sit down this year, this December, or even in January, I don't care when you do it. But when you sit down, maybe you're participating this week in plan 2022 In my Facebook group, that's what we're doing right now, if you're not, you can actually go in today and join the live that we're doing for planning today. We're talking about actually partly about this today. And the big things we want to accomplish in 2022. You can get the live from yesterday on replay and then you can join us tomorrow and you can grab all the worksheets, it's all still there right now come play. But as you make those plans. It's not about where you've been. Right? It's about where you're going. So it's about detaching from what has already been enough for you to allow yourself to dream a little bit. And like the worst case is you don't actually 100% hit that number. So like will you have grown? Can we think my favorite picture for a goal is you know, like when service organizations like the United Way by my old house in New Jersey had a big poster on the side of their building like a what's the word like a billboard? And what they would do as they were getting closer to Their goal is they would fill in like the red on the temperature temperature on the thermometer that was tracking their goal. What if reaching your goal is more like that? What if it was more temperature gauge thermometer, then it was checkbox. Because really, you know, what we're looking for is more growth than last year more than or maybe you're looking to grow in a different way. It's not always about money. But it is about increasing capacity increasing, you know, who you reach how you reach them, it could be increasing your free time, I have a potential client now. And that's really a lot of the discussion she and I are having is about how she can decrease the amount of time she's working and maintain the work she's doing, which I think is going to be fairly straightforward for her, which is going to be super fun by, you know, the middle of next year, or even the spring, really, she's going to be living a life where she's working, you know, 20 hours a week and making more actually than she's making now. And that's going to be super fun. Because then she can go do all the really fun things she wants to do with her family for her daughter's school. All of these things, she's going to write the book she's been wanting to write and not getting further on, you know, all the cool stuff she wants to do and hasn't had time for they're going to happen. It's going to be great, super excited. When you're setting your goals for 2022. This is the place where you get to dream.

 

And if you're dreaming in responsibility. Sounds kind of awful, doesn't it? So as you plan, intentionally put aside, responsible, reasonable, rational, realistic, please, please, please, please. And you're not a bad person for doing this. Your brain is going to offer you all kinds of trash, about how irresponsible you're being how unreasonable how not rational how not realistic, how ridiculous you're being. It's fine. That is simply your brain trying to protect you from getting disappointed. But if we never take the risk, and we never risk disappointment, we don't grow. That's just the nature of this game. You signed up to run a business. You signed up to grow, you signed up to do this hard thing that you can do, right? As, as as Glennon Doyle likes to say, we can do hard things or no is the other lady Brene? Brown? No, I think it's Glenn and Doyle. But I think that when we sort of cover it in reasonable, responsible, realistic, what we do is we stop ourselves from taking the risk, we stop ourselves from facing potential disappointment, we stop ourselves from facing potential failure. And because of that, we stop ourselves from getting the thing we really want. We stop ourselves from reaching the potential success, we stop ourselves from changing other people's lives of the work we do. Because if you are not out there doing the thing that you're really good at, people miss out. So push your goal, so that people can learn from you grow from you be a part of what you do. It's your responsibility to them. That's the only way we get to be responsible in here. When you grow. It serves the people who need you, and you're responsible to help them if you can. That's what you are here for. Right? So if you need help with planning for 2022, please come into my free group. It's Teachers in Business, we welcome you. If you're looking around at 2022, and you're like, holy crap, big goal, what the hell am I going to do to get here, I would love to talk to you about it. This is the kind of help I provide to my clients and one on one coaching. It is the kind of help I provide to clients in Charting Business Success, I will secretly tell you right here, that the next iteration of charting business success is going to be opening the first week in February in 2022. And it is going to take the same maximum of five people it is going to be the same price which is $1,000, which is a crazy good steal. Like they've gotten $1,000 worth of good in the first four weeks. No doubt, like it's amazing. It's worth every penny and you should sign up you should join but like you're gonna have to operate attics, people are gonna be all over it. So you can even email you now if you want to talk about it, and we can get that list going. So if you're looking for accountability, if you're looking to hit the goal without it being so hard if you're looking to hit the goal, to talk your brain out of this reasonable and responsible and like have somebody checking in who's going like yeah, no, you can do more if you need Push to take the risk to avoid to get to the success and stop avoiding the failure. This is what I do. This is the good that I do for people in that practical way. My responsibility is to you. So happy planning 2022 I cannot wait to hear what your big goals are. Please please please feel free to send them please feel free to share them. You can send them to me on email. You can message me them on Facebook or LinkedIn. I can't wait to hear what they are. And we will talk again next week. Happy planning