36. How to Start Your New Year Off Right
How are you planning for 2022? Are you reflecting on the lessons you learned in 2021 and taking them with you as you move forward? Often, we focus on the actions we took and our outcomes as a guide, but this actually isn’t the most useful way to make sense of the year we’ve just lived through.
So this week, I’m offering a powerful and insightful tool to help you start your new year with direction and intentionality from an emotional point of view. You might be wondering what emotions have to do with kicking off the new year, but in this episode, you're going to discover the power of outlining your most prevalent emotions for both reflecting and setting goals.
Tune in as I introduce you to a tool called The Year’s Three Emotions. I’m showing you how to put this tool into practice to achieve everything you want in 2022, and why it’s so beneficial to see your lived experience through an emotional lens.
If you’re struggling at work, burnt out, overwhelmed, hate your boss, or at the end of your rope after a year-and-a-half of dealing with a pandemic, I have an amazing free course beginning in 2022. It’s packed with simple, direct content that you can easily consume over your lunch break to help you feel better and less stressed in 2022. Join the 2022 course waitlist here!
What You Will Discover:
The purpose of The Year’s Three Emotions tool.
How to use The Year’s Three Emotions tool to both reflect and set intention for the new year.
The emotions that I found most useful and least useful in getting closer to my goals.
Why we have to get comfortable with feeling both positive and negative emotions.
The difference between allowing and indulging an emotion.
Resources:
Sign up for a Curiosity Call to find out more about coaching
Get The Burnout Recovery Resolution mini-course when it’s released by signing up here!
Follow me on Instagram!
Download The Year’s Three Emotions worksheet here.
Full Episode Transcript:
If you're two to five years out of your MPH degree, love public health, but find yourself secretly unhappy at work and maybe even thinking about quitting your job, then this is the podcast for you. I'm Marissa McKool, host of the Thoughts Are Your Root Cause podcast. Join me each week as I share tips, tools, and resources to help you have the career you've always dreamed of without any of the stress you are experiencing right now. Come along.
Happy New Year, everyone. Can you believe it's 2022? It's kind of crazy, like, what happened in the past two years? I hope you had a great New Year's, whatever you did. We laid pretty low. We did a lot of fall traveling, and I felt like I just wanted to chill. I have some exciting things happening in 2022. Particularly with the podcasts. I can finally share with you all. I am so excited. I finally have a professional podcast production team supporting me. This is truly, just mind-boggling and amazing. Those of you who have been around a while know that I started doing this podcast sitting on the floor of my closet, and editing it myself, and trying to figure it out.
And now, I have a whole team helping me. Which I am so grateful for. And what that means is we're no longer doing seasons. So, those of you who have been around a while know what I was doing was having the show happen in seasons, so between seasons, I would take a week off to give myself some rest. I did this because I truly value rest, and also, I wanted to be an example and set a good model for you all to encourage you and to help you give yourself permission to prioritize rest and to make it happen. Even when your brain tells you, you shouldn't, even when other people tell you, you shouldn't take breaks, even when it's difficult or challenging.
So, I'm still going to be taking rests. It's just different now because I have a team supporting me. It means week by week, I have less work to do around the podcast, at least. So, I'm having more sustainable rest, and I am still prioritizing it. I'm just doing it in a different way. So, what that means is moving forward, this is just all one show; there's no seasons. So, past episodes where I refer to seasons, that's just no longer. They're all just part of one show.
So, it's going to free you to know, especially those of you who might be new, and you go back and listen to old episodes, and you hear me say that, but you don't see it on your player. That's why. Today, speaking of the New Year, I'm going to be sharing a really powerful and insightful tool to help you start your new year off with a direction, with a north star, with somewhere to go. So, I call this tool The Year’s Three Emotions. It's an activity and tool you can use each new year to both reflect and set intentions.
I am going to walk you through the tool and use my answers to the questions as an example. And as you listen, don't you worry, you don't have to jot down the questions, or you don't have to come back and re-listen. I mean, you can if you want. I created a worksheet that you can download so you can go through this activity and this tool as well. So, you can get this at mckoolcoaching.com/free, that's M-C-K-O-O-L coaching dot com slash free. We will also leave a link in the show notes, so you can download that.
So, this tool is split up into thinking about last year, in this case, 2021, and thinking about next year, 2022, from an emotional point of view. Often when we reflect around the new year or plan for the next year, we are so focused in on our actions or achievements or other similar outcomes, and that's great, and all and that has its place. But what truly makes our life, what makes our year? What defines our experience is our emotional experience, not our achievements, not the outcomes, our emotional experience.
So, the purpose of this activity is to help you reflect and learn from last year's emotional experience and plan for next years' experience based on emotional intentionality, intention. If you've been around awhile, you know that I just make up random words that aren't real. So, reflecting on last year, this is where the activity starts, and the first question for you to think about is, what three emotions defined 2021? And what I mean by defined I do not mean that where you are now thinking back to 2021, what feelings are you having now, as you reflect? I am asking what three emotions did you feel the most often during the year.
Sometimes it can be really helpful to think back, okay, what happened during the year? What were the milestones? What were the challenges? What were the successes? And then, ask yourself, what was I feeling during that experience? And then, over the course of the whole year, what three emotions popped up the most? And once you figure out that, dive into why you think you felt those three emotions the most. What was the reason you felt those emotions? Why did you feel them so intensely or so frequently? Why did those emotions take up so much space in your ear?
So, for me, my top three emotions in 2021 were excitement, self-doubt, and determination. And reflecting, I realize I felt excited because I started a coaching business. I had so many new things going on. I was excited because I could help people in the way I knew I was equipped to. I got to be my own boss. I got to, you know, try new things and learn new things, and I got really excited when I heard that I had helped someone.
But, I also felt a lot of self-doubt for similar reasons. For starting a business without an MBA, putting myself out there, self-doubt around quitting my job. My brain had a lot of thoughts about if I could do it, questioned my capabilities, my abilities, my worthiness. I think that's very common when you go for a big goal that is brand new, and you've never done before, and determination. I felt determined a lot of the year. Partly because I knew, and I do know, I am an amazing coach. But partly determination because I wanted to make owning my own business work. I wanted to make leaving my job work. I was determined to learn. I was determined to get support. I was determined to figure it out.
When you do this for yourself, outlining your top three emotions and figuring out why you felt them helps you make sense of the year, helps you see your lived experience as it is emotional rather than just accidental or accomplishment based. It helps you see how your emotions played a role in your year, in what you did, in what you achieved, in all of your experience. So, once you do that, the next step is to ask yourself what is your reflection of that answer? Meaning, look at the top three emotions you identified, and look at the reasons why you felt them that you wrote down, and what do you notice?
What's going on in your mind as you step back and read your responses? This is really important. This is really helpful when you do thought work, and you do the work of asking yourself questions and answering them, so then, ask yourself what do I think about my answers to that question? So, for me, what I noticed as I looked at my top three emotions and the reason why I felt them so much that in the moments I experienced self-doubt in the moment, on the micro-level, sometimes it felt like it was never going to end. It felt like my brain's thoughts about my ability or inability were true.
Sometimes it felt all-consuming. But what I realized when I looked back at this is the determination and the excitement, those emotions, got me through. It got me unstuck out of my self-doubt. It kept me moving. It kept me taking action to spite my self-doubt. That was really useful to see. I also noticed; my year truly was 50/50. Meaning, half the time, I felt like shit, and half the time, I felt great. My top three emotions included what I would call two positive emotions: excitement and determination and one negative emotion, self-doubt. It ended up being all 50/50. Self-doubt could be louder sometimes or more constant, and the excitement could be more fleeting, but overall, it was 50/50. And that's the way life is, right?
So, at this point, it's really helpful to dive even deeper, right? So, we did the reflection on our answer. Let's dive deeper, ask yourself what was the emotion most useful and why? Which was the least useful, and why? Useful, meaning was it of use to feel that a lot? Did it serve you? Was it worth feeling a lot? We have this idea like, we can have a feeling we love to feel, but it doesn't mean it helps us get to our goals. We can have a feeling we didn't love to feel, but it actually did help us get us to our goals. This is why it's important to ask this question.
After you do that, I want you to ask yourself if you had known in the beginning of the year that those would be your top three emotions, would you have wanted to change them or keep them, and why? So, for me, my initial reaction is I wanted to say exciting was the most useful. But when I really thought about it, it wasn't. It was the most fun, that's for sure. I love feeling excited. It's very energizing. It feels good in your body. When I really think about it from a place of did it serve me the most out of those three emotions. My answer is no. Because the feeling of excitement only got me so far. It got me to maybe take action from a place of like, I'm ready, I'm into it, like, I can't wait.
It didn't get me past the door of fear, uncertainty, or doubt. That's kind of where the extent of excitement's use was for me in this year. Where on the other hand, determination did do that; the determination was the most useful. It got me to take action even when I was scared, anxious, or in doubt. It got me to take action even though I really didn't want to work that day, or I really didn't want to do the tasks I scheduled. It kept me moving, taking action towards my goals.
Maybe it wasn't as fun as excitement, right? But it kept me doing the work I needed to do, and that's so important to recognize. And then, self-doubt, on the other hand, is absolutely the most useless emotion for me. It did not help me get to my goals, and it probably slowed me down. And there's no shame in having this feeling. I am not shameful that I felt this way a lot of the year, and I don't feel shame recognizing it wasn't useful. It's good for me to know. It's normal to have self-doubt.
But, as I have been reflecting and doing this activity, what I saw was the time I spent in self-doubt was totally unnecessary. I indulged in it. I sat in it. It doesn't mean moving forward; I have to get to the point where I am in full confidence about myself. It just means I need to practice noticing the self-doubt and letting it come on the journey rather than letting it stop me. And after reflecting on those things, I probably would have chosen at the beginning of the year if I had the opportunity to dial down my excitement a little bit, dial down my self-doubt a little bit, and dial up my determination.
Listen, as I said, excitement is super fun. I don't want to get rid of that completely. I love that. But it only gets me so far in my goals, and that's what this activity helped me realize. And it isn't the emotion I want to rely on to get to my goals. I want it to be a part of the journey, but I don't really think that it's always going to be fueling the actions I need to take to keep going. And then, with self-doubt, that was a little bit too loud, I think. It might always be there, and that's okay, and in some ways, having self-doubt, and then using the other emotions, like, determination and confidence, and whatever else came up in the year to move through the self-doubt and move out of it is so empowering, right?
And that's how I know I can do that. I can do it more often. I can do it quicker, right? I can get out of the self-doubt. I know that and other emotions help me do that. What I want to do differently is not sit in it, right? And use the tool of leveraging other emotions to get out of it. Because it doesn't really help me move towards my goals.
The determination as I look back to 2021, MVP emotion of the year, for sure. Like, if I could give determination a trophy, if I could have it stand on a pedestal and give it flowers, like MVP. So, the purpose of this part of the activity, right? Thinking about your feelings in this way is to help you better understand the role of your emotions in your life and in your year. It helps your brain understand the power of your emotions, and it helps you leverage what you learned in this reflection to set up next year. From a place of emotional intention and power rather than reaction. Okay?
Because you get to determine how you feel with the way you're thinking. So, when you think intentional, you feel intentionally. So, it's really useful to reflect on your feelings the past year in this way, so then, you can think about next year differently from an emotional intention place. So, before we talk about the questions thinking about next year, I want to just touch on the various top three emotions you might have. So, when you do this reflection, you will either have all three emotions will be positive or all three will be negative, or two will be negative and one positive, or one negative and two positives. There's absolutely no right or wrong in the combination of emotions you felt. There's no right or wrong emotion, period.
Emotions aren't good or bad. They just are. Some are more useful than others, and that might change depending on the context and where you are if they're useful or not. When you do this if you start to have judgments of the make-up of your top three emotions. I want you to reflect on what I am about to share. So, for those of you who may be end up having all three negative emotions, you might want to feel shame or feel bad about that. You totally can, like, that's an option, but you don't have to at all. There's no shame in having a year of a lot of negative emotions.
Whether it's because you experienced a lot of hard challenges, which by the way you can choose instead of shaming yourself for it, reflecting and feeling badass for the fact that you processed those emotions and got through the year with them. Or it might be because you needed those hard, negative emotions to get to accomplish a huge goal. Which also is a moment to celebrate. So, don't reject your lived experience or your emotional experience. Learn from it. It doesn't mean you have to love it. It means you accept and honor it.
I promise if you let it, it will teach you something. And know you can always decide for next year to be different. For those of you who have all positive emotions, you might have had an amazing bomb-ass year, or you might not want to focus or reflect on the shitty parts of the year when you felt negative and hard emotions. Either way, the most beneficial work for you will be to spend some time getting curious about your beliefs about negative emotions. Do you allow them? Are you okay with them? Do you think they are even necessary? This will be really powerful because life is truly 50/50. You can't avoid negative emotions.
Being able to be with a negative emotion and allow it and even see it as useful sometimes is an important skill, and this might be our opportunity to start building that skill. For those of you who have a mix of some negative and some positive, know you are not alone. Maybe you like the mix, maybe you want a different mix, just remember life is 50/50. It's okay to feel it all. And in fact, it's often necessary. And here's the thing, in order to achieve many of the outcomes or goals or experiences you want in life, you will have to allow negative emotions. You'll have to learn to allow positive emotions.
You want to get a $10,000 raise or promotion next year? You might have to get comfortable allowing anxiety just to be in your body and not resist it. So, you can take the step of negotiating. You want to quit your job and run for public office, you probably have to allow yourself to get comfortable with experiencing rejection as you put yourself out there and be okay with that. Allowing is different than indulging. Indulging is wallowing or sitting in the emotion and getting stuck.
Allowing is giving it permission to show up, come on the ride, be in your body, and process it out so you can move forward. As you do new things, go for new goals, you will have thoughts that generate negative emotions, and that's okay. Going into it and expecting that to happen and embracing it will be transformational in your experience of that, and the same with positive emotions. Sometimes you need to be good at generating a positive emotion you're not comfortable with to have the year that you want.
If you want to take on a leadership role in your organization, such as a committee chair, you might need to learn how to generate confidence that does not rely on other people's opinions about you, right? You might need to learn that skill. If you want to actually use your vacation time next year, you probably need to practice allowing the feeling of trust or trusting. Trusting your team doesn't need you that week. So, just remember that as we go into the next part and the last part of this activity. Talking about next year.
So, first, I want you to ask yourself what are the three things you want to experience next year, and this can be outcome or goal-based, like, get a new job, or it can be experience-based like, feel more energized. Then, ask yourself what three emotions do you need to allow in order to achieve those things and why. So, for me, as an example, next year, I want to make $100,000 in my business. I want to buy a house with my partner, and I want the experience of more ease in my day-to-day routine.
When I think about these things in order to achieve them, I am actually going to have to allow discomfort, sadness, or grief, and certainty. Discomfort because it's uncomfortable to try new things, particularly in a business to grow it to $100,000. I'm going to have to put myself out there. I'm going to have to try things that I've never done. I'm going to have to get rejected by people. I'm going to have to fail a bunch. That's uncomfortable. But, in order to get to that goal, I have to be okay with that discomfort because there's no way around it. I have to be okay and get good at allowing it for the goal of buying a house with my partner.
It might surprise some of you, but what I recognized is, I actually need to allow sadness and grief because as we've been talking about this goal of ours, I've realized I'm holding on and avoiding sadness and grief. As we think about our future of buying a house, it will mean letting go of (a) some of our current life and (b) what I had imagined my future life to look like. So, with moving, we might be moving somewhere I never expected to live. We might be leaving where we currently live because it will allow us to buy a house. That was not in my mental plan, right? I am going to have to grieve that mental plan that I had before. I'm going to have to allow the sadness if I leave for the people I love and the memories I made. That's okay.
But I recognize I have to embrace that and allow it, in order to make space to move forward, in order to make space for this new chapter, in order to let the feelings that will come from that new chapter in. I have to be okay and embrace the sadness and grief, to close this chapter and move forward. Now, that's a great thing to know and recognize. And then, lastly is certainty. I realize I need to generate certainty in myself and my actions, and my decisions. I have a lot of certainties, but learning from last year and how much self-doubt I experienced, I know this next year I need to leverage my certainty and stand in it.
Moving forward, I need to really be in certainty even when I make a decision that there's some doubt around. Even when I do something I have never done. I can still feel certain in that moment. Maybe I'm not certain of the outcome, but I am certain of myself and my internal knowing and my ability to have my own back and my ability to learn. And that will help me even when my brain is scared and is saying, no, no, no, don't do this, you're going to get rejected just hide under your covers. And no, I am certain, I am certain in myself, my ability to learn, my ability to try things, my ability to have my back. Other emotions will come up, of course, right?
There will be some excitement, joy, fulfillment, anxiety, fear, but these three emotions: certainty, sadness, or grief and discomfort, these are the ones I know I will need to either allow or harness to move forward towards my goals. When we think about achieving a goal, or we think about the point of the year, it's not always to feel happy, excited, and great all of the time. All of the emotions have a purpose they serve. And when you recognize that your emotions drive your actions, then you can harness the emotions to get to the goal you want through your actions. Setting your intention for the year from a place of emotion rather than action sets you up for success. Because our actions are 100% driven by how we feel.
So, when you set an emotional intention and anchor yourself to the emotions, you decide you need to allow or generate to have the year you want, then when other emotions come up, you're not thrown off. Then, when your brain tells you to quit, you can drop into the emotion you know that will help you keep moving forward despite your brain complaining. And the truth is, it just feels so much better to go into the year from a place of emotional intention. You feel way more in control, empowered, and centered, and the actions from that and that part is easy. And then the how, will come.
Okay, y'all, so that's the top three emotions tool. It is so powerful for this time of year. You can download the workbook for free to go through this yourself. mckoolcoaching.com/free, we will leave a link in the show notes. The last thing, this is really important. If you are not already on the waitlist for the burnout recovery resolution mini-course, you need to get on it. You have about a week. The waitlist will close at the end of January 9th. Everyone on the waitlist will get the three-part mini-course on January 10th, and if you don't get on it, or you're not on it, you're going to have to wait until February for the public release, and you don't want to do that. You do not want to do this. I just went through the final videos this week, and they are fire.
So, let me tell you a little bit about what to expect. The course is going to teach you exactly why you are stuck and feeling burnt out, right? Explain why the solutions you've tried and you've tried a bunch actually aren't working. It's not that you're going to be stuck in burnout, and you can't get out. It's that you are using the wrong solutions for the actual problem you're experiencing. I am going to teach you the strategies that you need that will actually help you get out of burnout.
In the second piece, you are going to learn what to do when you have a boss or leadership person or team who are making your stress, your work stress worse. I know, I know. You've tried complaining, you've tried changing them, you've tried waiting for them to change. You've tried all of the personal development panels, right? You've even looked for new jobs. It still doesn't work. So, in this part of the course, I am going to teach you, I guarantee the one thing you have not tried, you have not even thought of, and you're not doing that actually is going to help you. That is the key you're missing.
And lastly, you're going to learn the real reason your workload is too high. I promise it's not what you think. Once you learn the real reason your workload is too high, you can actually solve it. Your boss doesn't have to change. You don't need to hire more staff, right? Like, nothing external has to change. I'll teach you the solution you can implement immediately after you learn it. So, if you're not on that waitlist, you need to hustle, get your butt on over to mckoolcoaching.com/courses that's courses with plural by the end of January 9th, so you don't miss the thing, okay? We will leave a link in the show notes.
Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. I hope you have a great week. Bye, y'all.
Are you ready to make a change? Whether that's learning to love your job, making a career move, or anything in between, I can help. I'd be honored to coach you through figuring out what's next and navigating the steps to get there. So, head on over to mckoolcoaching.com/consult that's mckoolcoaching.com/consult to set up a time to chat and talk about how you can achieve the career of your dreams.
Happy New Year, everyone. Can you believe it's 2022? It's kind of crazy, like, what happened in the past two years? I hope you had a great New Year's, whatever you did. We laid pretty low. We did a lot of fall traveling, and I felt like I just wanted to chill. I have some exciting things happening in 2022. Particularly with the podcasts. I can finally share with you all. I am so excited. I finally have a professional podcast production team supporting me. This is truly, just mind-boggling and amazing. Those of you who have been around a while know that I started doing this podcast sitting on the floor of my closet, and editing it myself, and trying to figure it out.
And now, I have a whole team helping me. Which I am so grateful for. And what that means is we're no longer doing seasons. So, those of you who have been around a while know what I was doing was having the show happen in seasons, so between seasons, I would take a week off to give myself some rest. I did this because I truly value rest, and also, I wanted to be an example and set a good model for you all to encourage you and to help you give yourself permission to prioritize rest and to make it happen. Even when your brain tells you, you shouldn't, even when other people tell you, you shouldn't take breaks, even when it's difficult or challenging.
So, I'm still going to be taking rests. It's just different now because I have a team supporting me. It means week by week, I have less work to do around the podcast, at least. So, I'm having more sustainable rest, and I am still prioritizing it. I'm just doing it in a different way. So, what that means is moving forward, this is just all one show; there's no seasons. So, past episodes where I refer to seasons, that's just no longer. They're all just part of one show.
So, it's going to free you to know, especially those of you who might be new, and you go back and listen to old episodes, and you hear me say that, but you don't see it on your player. That's why. Today, speaking of the New Year, I'm going to be sharing a really powerful and insightful tool to help you start your new year off with a direction, with a north star, with somewhere to go. So, I call this tool The Year’s Three Emotions. It's an activity and tool you can use each new year to both reflect and set intentions.
I am going to walk you through the tool and use my answers to the questions as an example. And as you listen, don't you worry, you don't have to jot down the questions, or you don't have to come back and re-listen. I mean, you can if you want. I created a worksheet that you can download so you can go through this activity and this tool as well. So, you can get this at mckoolcoaching.com/free, that's M-C-K-O-O-L coaching dot com slash free. We will also leave a link in the show notes, so you can download that.
So, this tool is split up into thinking about last year, in this case, 2021, and thinking about next year, 2022, from an emotional point of view. Often when we reflect around the new year or plan for the next year, we are so focused in on our actions or achievements or other similar outcomes, and that's great, and all and that has its place. But what truly makes our life, what makes our year? What defines our experience is our emotional experience, not our achievements, not the outcomes, our emotional experience.
So, the purpose of this activity is to help you reflect and learn from last year's emotional experience and plan for next years' experience based on emotional intentionality, intention. If you've been around awhile, you know that I just make up random words that aren't real. So, reflecting on last year, this is where the activity starts, and the first question for you to think about is, what three emotions defined 2021? And what I mean by defined I do not mean that where you are now thinking back to 2021, what feelings are you having now, as you reflect? I am asking what three emotions did you feel the most often during the year.
Sometimes it can be really helpful to think back, okay, what happened during the year? What were the milestones? What were the challenges? What were the successes? And then, ask yourself, what was I feeling during that experience? And then, over the course of the whole year, what three emotions popped up the most? And once you figure out that, dive into why you think you felt those three emotions the most. What was the reason you felt those emotions? Why did you feel them so intensely or so frequently? Why did those emotions take up so much space in your ear?
So, for me, my top three emotions in 2021 were excitement, self-doubt, and determination. And reflecting, I realize I felt excited because I started a coaching business. I had so many new things going on. I was excited because I could help people in the way I knew I was equipped to. I got to be my own boss. I got to, you know, try new things and learn new things, and I got really excited when I heard that I had helped someone.
But, I also felt a lot of self-doubt for similar reasons. For starting a business without an MBA, putting myself out there, self-doubt around quitting my job. My brain had a lot of thoughts about if I could do it, questioned my capabilities, my abilities, my worthiness. I think that's very common when you go for a big goal that is brand new, and you've never done before, and determination. I felt determined a lot of the year. Partly because I knew, and I do know, I am an amazing coach. But partly determination because I wanted to make owning my own business work. I wanted to make leaving my job work. I was determined to learn. I was determined to get support. I was determined to figure it out.
When you do this for yourself, outlining your top three emotions and figuring out why you felt them helps you make sense of the year, helps you see your lived experience as it is emotional rather than just accidental or accomplishment based. It helps you see how your emotions played a role in your year, in what you did, in what you achieved, in all of your experience. So, once you do that, the next step is to ask yourself what is your reflection of that answer? Meaning, look at the top three emotions you identified, and look at the reasons why you felt them that you wrote down, and what do you notice?
What's going on in your mind as you step back and read your responses? This is really important. This is really helpful when you do thought work, and you do the work of asking yourself questions and answering them, so then, ask yourself what do I think about my answers to that question? So, for me, what I noticed as I looked at my top three emotions and the reason why I felt them so much that in the moments I experienced self-doubt in the moment, on the micro-level, sometimes it felt like it was never going to end. It felt like my brain's thoughts about my ability or inability were true.
Sometimes it felt all-consuming. But what I realized when I looked back at this is the determination and the excitement, those emotions, got me through. It got me unstuck out of my self-doubt. It kept me moving. It kept me taking action to spite my self-doubt. That was really useful to see. I also noticed; my year truly was 50/50. Meaning, half the time, I felt like shit, and half the time, I felt great. My top three emotions included what I would call two positive emotions: excitement and determination and one negative emotion, self-doubt. It ended up being all 50/50. Self-doubt could be louder sometimes or more constant, and the excitement could be more fleeting, but overall, it was 50/50. And that's the way life is, right?
So, at this point, it's really helpful to dive even deeper, right? So, we did the reflection on our answer. Let's dive deeper, ask yourself what was the emotion most useful and why? Which was the least useful, and why? Useful, meaning was it of use to feel that a lot? Did it serve you? Was it worth feeling a lot? We have this idea like, we can have a feeling we love to feel, but it doesn't mean it helps us get to our goals. We can have a feeling we didn't love to feel, but it actually did help us get us to our goals. This is why it's important to ask this question.
After you do that, I want you to ask yourself if you had known in the beginning of the year that those would be your top three emotions, would you have wanted to change them or keep them, and why? So, for me, my initial reaction is I wanted to say exciting was the most useful. But when I really thought about it, it wasn't. It was the most fun, that's for sure. I love feeling excited. It's very energizing. It feels good in your body. When I really think about it from a place of did it serve me the most out of those three emotions. My answer is no. Because the feeling of excitement only got me so far. It got me to maybe take action from a place of like, I'm ready, I'm into it, like, I can't wait.
It didn't get me past the door of fear, uncertainty, or doubt. That's kind of where the extent of excitement's use was for me in this year. Where on the other hand, determination did do that; the determination was the most useful. It got me to take action even when I was scared, anxious, or in doubt. It got me to take action even though I really didn't want to work that day, or I really didn't want to do the tasks I scheduled. It kept me moving, taking action towards my goals.
Maybe it wasn't as fun as excitement, right? But it kept me doing the work I needed to do, and that's so important to recognize. And then, self-doubt, on the other hand, is absolutely the most useless emotion for me. It did not help me get to my goals, and it probably slowed me down. And there's no shame in having this feeling. I am not shameful that I felt this way a lot of the year, and I don't feel shame recognizing it wasn't useful. It's good for me to know. It's normal to have self-doubt.
But, as I have been reflecting and doing this activity, what I saw was the time I spent in self-doubt was totally unnecessary. I indulged in it. I sat in it. It doesn't mean moving forward; I have to get to the point where I am in full confidence about myself. It just means I need to practice noticing the self-doubt and letting it come on the journey rather than letting it stop me. And after reflecting on those things, I probably would have chosen at the beginning of the year if I had the opportunity to dial down my excitement a little bit, dial down my self-doubt a little bit, and dial up my determination.
Listen, as I said, excitement is super fun. I don't want to get rid of that completely. I love that. But it only gets me so far in my goals, and that's what this activity helped me realize. And it isn't the emotion I want to rely on to get to my goals. I want it to be a part of the journey, but I don't really think that it's always going to be fueling the actions I need to take to keep going. And then, with self-doubt, that was a little bit too loud, I think. It might always be there, and that's okay, and in some ways, having self-doubt, and then using the other emotions, like, determination and confidence, and whatever else came up in the year to move through the self-doubt and move out of it is so empowering, right?
And that's how I know I can do that. I can do it more often. I can do it quicker, right? I can get out of the self-doubt. I know that and other emotions help me do that. What I want to do differently is not sit in it, right? And use the tool of leveraging other emotions to get out of it. Because it doesn't really help me move towards my goals.
The determination as I look back to 2021, MVP emotion of the year, for sure. Like, if I could give determination a trophy, if I could have it stand on a pedestal and give it flowers, like MVP. So, the purpose of this part of the activity, right? Thinking about your feelings in this way is to help you better understand the role of your emotions in your life and in your year. It helps your brain understand the power of your emotions, and it helps you leverage what you learned in this reflection to set up next year. From a place of emotional intention and power rather than reaction. Okay?
Because you get to determine how you feel with the way you're thinking. So, when you think intentional, you feel intentionally. So, it's really useful to reflect on your feelings the past year in this way, so then, you can think about next year differently from an emotional intention place. So, before we talk about the questions thinking about next year, I want to just touch on the various top three emotions you might have. So, when you do this reflection, you will either have all three emotions will be positive or all three will be negative, or two will be negative and one positive, or one negative and two positives. There's absolutely no right or wrong in the combination of emotions you felt. There's no right or wrong emotion, period.
Emotions aren't good or bad. They just are. Some are more useful than others, and that might change depending on the context and where you are if they're useful or not. When you do this if you start to have judgments of the make-up of your top three emotions. I want you to reflect on what I am about to share. So, for those of you who may be end up having all three negative emotions, you might want to feel shame or feel bad about that. You totally can, like, that's an option, but you don't have to at all. There's no shame in having a year of a lot of negative emotions.
Whether it's because you experienced a lot of hard challenges, which by the way you can choose instead of shaming yourself for it, reflecting and feeling badass for the fact that you processed those emotions and got through the year with them. Or it might be because you needed those hard, negative emotions to get to accomplish a huge goal. Which also is a moment to celebrate. So, don't reject your lived experience or your emotional experience. Learn from it. It doesn't mean you have to love it. It means you accept and honor it.
I promise if you let it, it will teach you something. And know you can always decide for next year to be different. For those of you who have all positive emotions, you might have had an amazing bomb-ass year, or you might not want to focus or reflect on the shitty parts of the year when you felt negative and hard emotions. Either way, the most beneficial work for you will be to spend some time getting curious about your beliefs about negative emotions. Do you allow them? Are you okay with them? Do you think they are even necessary? This will be really powerful because life is truly 50/50. You can't avoid negative emotions.
Being able to be with a negative emotion and allow it and even see it as useful sometimes is an important skill, and this might be our opportunity to start building that skill. For those of you who have a mix of some negative and some positive, know you are not alone. Maybe you like the mix, maybe you want a different mix, just remember life is 50/50. It's okay to feel it all. And in fact, it's often necessary. And here's the thing, in order to achieve many of the outcomes or goals or experiences you want in life, you will have to allow negative emotions. You'll have to learn to allow positive emotions.
You want to get a $10,000 raise or promotion next year? You might have to get comfortable allowing anxiety just to be in your body and not resist it. So, you can take the step of negotiating. You want to quit your job and run for public office, you probably have to allow yourself to get comfortable with experiencing rejection as you put yourself out there and be okay with that. Allowing is different than indulging. Indulging is wallowing or sitting in the emotion and getting stuck.
Allowing is giving it permission to show up, come on the ride, be in your body, and process it out so you can move forward. As you do new things, go for new goals, you will have thoughts that generate negative emotions, and that's okay. Going into it and expecting that to happen and embracing it will be transformational in your experience of that, and the same with positive emotions. Sometimes you need to be good at generating a positive emotion you're not comfortable with to have the year that you want.
If you want to take on a leadership role in your organization, such as a committee chair, you might need to learn how to generate confidence that does not rely on other people's opinions about you, right? You might need to learn that skill. If you want to actually use your vacation time next year, you probably need to practice allowing the feeling of trust or trusting. Trusting your team doesn't need you that week. So, just remember that as we go into the next part and the last part of this activity. Talking about next year.
So, first, I want you to ask yourself what are the three things you want to experience next year, and this can be outcome or goal-based, like, get a new job, or it can be experience-based like, feel more energized. Then, ask yourself what three emotions do you need to allow in order to achieve those things and why. So, for me, as an example, next year, I want to make $100,000 in my business. I want to buy a house with my partner, and I want the experience of more ease in my day-to-day routine.
When I think about these things in order to achieve them, I am actually going to have to allow discomfort, sadness, or grief, and certainty. Discomfort because it's uncomfortable to try new things, particularly in a business to grow it to $100,000. I'm going to have to put myself out there. I'm going to have to try things that I've never done. I'm going to have to get rejected by people. I'm going to have to fail a bunch. That's uncomfortable. But, in order to get to that goal, I have to be okay with that discomfort because there's no way around it. I have to be okay and get good at allowing it for the goal of buying a house with my partner.
It might surprise some of you, but what I recognized is, I actually need to allow sadness and grief because as we've been talking about this goal of ours, I've realized I'm holding on and avoiding sadness and grief. As we think about our future of buying a house, it will mean letting go of (a) some of our current life and (b) what I had imagined my future life to look like. So, with moving, we might be moving somewhere I never expected to live. We might be leaving where we currently live because it will allow us to buy a house. That was not in my mental plan, right? I am going to have to grieve that mental plan that I had before. I'm going to have to allow the sadness if I leave for the people I love and the memories I made. That's okay.
But I recognize I have to embrace that and allow it, in order to make space to move forward, in order to make space for this new chapter, in order to let the feelings that will come from that new chapter in. I have to be okay and embrace the sadness and grief, to close this chapter and move forward. Now, that's a great thing to know and recognize. And then, lastly is certainty. I realize I need to generate certainty in myself and my actions, and my decisions. I have a lot of certainties, but learning from last year and how much self-doubt I experienced, I know this next year I need to leverage my certainty and stand in it.
Moving forward, I need to really be in certainty even when I make a decision that there's some doubt around. Even when I do something I have never done. I can still feel certain in that moment. Maybe I'm not certain of the outcome, but I am certain of myself and my internal knowing and my ability to have my own back and my ability to learn. And that will help me even when my brain is scared and is saying, no, no, no, don't do this, you're going to get rejected just hide under your covers. And no, I am certain, I am certain in myself, my ability to learn, my ability to try things, my ability to have my back. Other emotions will come up, of course, right?
There will be some excitement, joy, fulfillment, anxiety, fear, but these three emotions: certainty, sadness, or grief and discomfort, these are the ones I know I will need to either allow or harness to move forward towards my goals. When we think about achieving a goal, or we think about the point of the year, it's not always to feel happy, excited, and great all of the time. All of the emotions have a purpose they serve. And when you recognize that your emotions drive your actions, then you can harness the emotions to get to the goal you want through your actions. Setting your intention for the year from a place of emotion rather than action sets you up for success. Because our actions are 100% driven by how we feel.
So, when you set an emotional intention and anchor yourself to the emotions, you decide you need to allow or generate to have the year you want, then when other emotions come up, you're not thrown off. Then, when your brain tells you to quit, you can drop into the emotion you know that will help you keep moving forward despite your brain complaining. And the truth is, it just feels so much better to go into the year from a place of emotional intention. You feel way more in control, empowered, and centered, and the actions from that and that part is easy. And then the how, will come.
Okay, y'all, so that's the top three emotions tool. It is so powerful for this time of year. You can download the workbook for free to go through this yourself. mckoolcoaching.com/free, we will leave a link in the show notes. The last thing, this is really important. If you are not already on the waitlist for the burnout recovery resolution mini-course, you need to get on it. You have about a week. The waitlist will close at the end of January 9th. Everyone on the waitlist will get the three-part mini-course on January 10th, and if you don't get on it, or you're not on it, you're going to have to wait until February for the public release, and you don't want to do that. You do not want to do this. I just went through the final videos this week, and they are fire.
So, let me tell you a little bit about what to expect. The course is going to teach you exactly why you are stuck and feeling burnt out, right? Explain why the solutions you've tried and you've tried a bunch actually aren't working. It's not that you're going to be stuck in burnout, and you can't get out. It's that you are using the wrong solutions for the actual problem you're experiencing. I am going to teach you the strategies that you need that will actually help you get out of burnout.
In the second piece, you are going to learn what to do when you have a boss or leadership person or team who are making your stress, your work stress worse. I know, I know. You've tried complaining, you've tried changing them, you've tried waiting for them to change. You've tried all of the personal development panels, right? You've even looked for new jobs. It still doesn't work. So, in this part of the course, I am going to teach you, I guarantee the one thing you have not tried, you have not even thought of, and you're not doing that actually is going to help you. That is the key you're missing.
And lastly, you're going to learn the real reason your workload is too high. I promise it's not what you think. Once you learn the real reason your workload is too high, you can actually solve it. Your boss doesn't have to change. You don't need to hire more staff, right? Like, nothing external has to change. I'll teach you the solution you can implement immediately after you learn it. So, if you're not on that waitlist, you need to hustle, get your butt on over to mckoolcoaching.com/courses that's courses with plural by the end of January 9th, so you don't miss the thing, okay? We will leave a link in the show notes.
Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. I hope you have a great week. Bye, y'all.
Are you ready to make a change? Whether that's learning to love your job, making a career move, or anything in between, I can help. I'd be honored to coach you through figuring out what's next and navigating the steps to get there. So, head on over to mckoolcoaching.com/consult that's mckoolcoaching.com/consult to set up a time to chat and talk about how you can achieve the career of your dreams.
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