Hi upskill, or this episode is a flashback from January, 2023, where we set our intentions, and we mapped out our goals, our plans, and our visions for the year. Now that 2023 has come to an end. I want you to go back to this episode and reflect on. How you embodied the word that you chose? To get to your. Definition of success. This year. It's also very relevant to relisten to this episode. And the concepts to prepare for 2024. What is the word that you want to choose to define 2024? What is your vision? I can share mine for me. The way that I define success in 2024 is peace. I want peace in my work. In my relationships. In my everyday life. And as you listened to this episode, I want you to think about what your word is and how you will achieve that. What does this word mean for you? For me, peace means that everything is running smoothly, Of course life will never be without its problems. So my intention for 2020 for what success means to me is taking whatever comes my way and turning it into a learning experience while being happy and enjoying the process. So going into this episode, I want you to think about what intention you set for this entire year. How you embodied it and what's coming up for the next year Welcome to Upskill Talks, I'm your host, Michelle Shaw, Lead Upskiller at Upskill Community. Upskill Talks is a podcast for leaders. Leaders who are actively seeking innovative and creative ways to interact. Lead themselves and others in every episode through real life stories and enlightening conversations. We will explore the challenges and opportunities real leaders face in today's ever changing workplace. We will present you with real strategies for you to leverage your soft skills and produce transformative results. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Let us begin. It's a new year. I want you to take some time to reflect on last year, the things that worked really well for you, the things that did not work well for you, the things that you had not included that ought to have been included into last year. That's a great starting point for us as we look towards 2023. This new journey, this new leg of our journey ahead of us, I want to invite you to think about this journey as a new event that you're about to plan. And whenever we're making plans, we're always taking steps and I want to invite you to take four little steps with us in 2023. When we're planning events, we think about things like what will the theme of the event be? I want you to think about the theme of 2023. At Upskill Community, we have been exploring our theme for the year, and we have been selecting a single word or phrase that will define how we go about business in 2023. I want to invite you to come on that journey with us. To pick a single word or phrase. That will define how you go about 2023. For me, I chose the word clarity. Clarity is really important for me this year, because I have been very busy, and I want to make sure that I am busy doing the right things. Peter Drucker says, there is nothing so useless as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all. And so given the limited time that we have to do all of these amazing things that are out there for us to do, sometimes we are so busy in the busyness business. That we are not really clear on which of these things that keep us busy are really, truly worthy of our time. And that's what I want to get clear on this year. I want to get clear on which of the very important things that I'm doing really need to rise to the top. Who are the people that I'm doing it with that need to rise to the top? What are the projects? What are the causes? What are the things that I'm doing that really need to be front and center? Because I can't bring everything with me on this journey. I want to invite you to think about your own journey. What is going to be most important for you? What theme, word or phrase is going to help you? When I started asking this question of leaders at Upskill Community and leaders with whom we work or partner, a number of words and phrases started coming in. I heard words like impact, execute, plan, confidence. I heard words like self care, self assurance, emotional control. I heard phrases like just do it, get up and get out, go after it, let's go. What's your word or phrase going to be for this year? That's the first thing that I'd like to invite you to do this year. Once you have chosen your word, I want to invite you to take another step. I want to invite you to take the second step with us, to think about one activity that you can do every day to support your word or phrase, to honor your word or phrase. For instance, if you chose self care, what's that one thing you'll do every day as part of that self care routine? If you chose execute, what is that going to look like? Does that look like waking up half an hour earlier to plan the action items? For your day to ensure that it is delivered on, does that look like reflecting at the end of every day to see what you've executed on? Well, to learn from it so that you can better execute the following day, really think about one single activity that you can work on day by day that will. Help you to honor the word or the phrase that you've chosen for yourself. That's number two. One is to choose that word, that theme, that phrase that's going to define your year and number two is to think about one activity. For some of you, it may be more than one activity. It may be a series of activities, but I don't want you to overwhelm yourself. I want you to think about the bite size activity, something you can get done in 15 to 20 minutes per day. It may be just reflecting on where you are in terms of this. Word or phrase or theme that you've chosen for yourself, be thinking about it, be doing something about it, keeping it front and center. So step one is choosing this theme, this word, this phrase. Step two is choosing that activity that takes 15, 20 minutes, maximum 30 minutes per day that will honor you. This word or phrase and help to support it and keep it front of mind and help you to deliver on it. And the third thing is to think about resources whether human resources or other resources That you will need to support you with this So for instance when I chose clarity One of the things that I have to do is a daily reflection to ensure that i'm staying on track Questioning what I'm doing, who I'm doing it with, why I'm doing it, where is this going? How meaningful is this to me? How purposeful is this to me? Who is this impacting? Is it impacting the people that I want to impact in the way that I want to impact them? These are questions that I need to be asking myself. Daily, and one resource that can help me with that is a journal. So thinking about the theme, the activity, the journal, that step three is what resources, who do you need to support you? What do you need to support you? Perhaps if this is the first time you're doing this, and you're not really clear on how to break down the big thing that you need to do into very, very small action bites, maybe you need to get someone to support you. coach, a colleague, a supervisor to help you to break it down. So you have something that's daily, a daily action item that may be what you need to do. That would be step three. And the final step step four is making sure there is a specific block of time in your calendar to deliver on this. Because a lot of times we have something that we want to do, we know what we want to do, but when to get it done is a real challenge. So block off time in your calendar, whether that's at the beginning of your day, in the middle of your day, or the end of your day, you have to know what works for you based on your situation. Choose a block of time and block that off in order to be able to deliver on this activity, which will honor the theme that you have chosen for your year. Make this year a themed year for you. Choose a theme that's going to make a big difference in your life. Whether that's a verb that's going to tell you the action that you need to do, whether that's an adjective that's going to describe how you go about it, whether that's an outcome or a result that you're looking for in your life, whether that's a way that you want to show up, whatever that is for you. No judgment, it's your word, that word is joy, that word is peace, that word is love, that word is more openness, that word is more welcoming, that word is more forgiving, whatever your word is, choose a word that you know you need to be working on. A word that you know, if you really focus on it for the full year, you will succeed, you will move yourself forward, you'll feel better. The one thing that I want to say, because a lot of people say, I don't set goals, I don't make resolutions, I don't pick words, what a rubbish concept, I just go about my business and do my thing. And that may work for some people. What I have seen, and clearly, the research suggests, that people who set goals, people who write them down, people who have an action plan, Are more likely to achieve it than people who don't in fact, the research suggests that if you have a clearly defined goal, a theme, for instance, that you're working on an activity that you're going to do every day. A resource to support you and you block off that time to get it done and you then make yourself accountable to someone, a peer, a friend, your partner, whomever, even a child. If you make yourself accountable, even to your children to deliver on this accountability and discussing this theme, this word, this phrase, what you're doing frequently. It helps you 95 percent of the time to hit the target you set for yourself. In this case, we're not talking about a specific goal like I want to lose weight or I want to earn money. We're talking about a way that we're going to conduct ourselves, something we're going to focus on. And when you deal with it this way, you will deliver on multiple goals along the way because we're resetting our focus, we're resetting our discipline. We're defining our resources. We're focusing on our supports and we're bringing everything into one place. This methodology, this way of going about it, reminding yourself of it, putting that sticker up with your word on it, putting that activity into your calendar, this will help you to stay on track, to focus on this word. That means something very important to you. And I want to just let you know, it's 365 days in the year. By the time you listen to this, many of those days would have gone. That's not a problem. If you have 50 days in the year left, and you really do this for 50 days, if you are in the beginning of the year, say January, and two weeks have gone, or three weeks have gone, and you have 330 remaining, even if you mess up on 150 of those days and you deliver on this for 200 of those days to yourself, you are ahead of the people who are not even thinking about this. You will do better than you did last year when you had not thought about this. I'm encouraging you to put it in your calendar, put it up where you can see it on your mirror behind your door, in front of your office, on your screensaver. Focus on that word and let's go get it this year. Make it something that we decide on a theme for us. Whatever your theme is, I'm wishing you all the best for the year. That's 2023 in four little steps. Thank you for listening to this episode of Upskill Talks we bring you new episodes every Monday. Please take a moment to subscribe, leave a five star rating, and a written review at Apple Podcasts. Or follow us on Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Don't forget to share upskill talks with other leaders like yourself, so they too may gain the skills and insights to produce amazing results. Please go to upskillcommunity. com to review show notes and learn how you can join a community of leaders from across the globe. Collaborating to lead in a more meaningful and impactful way. I'm your host, Michelle Shaw. And again, thank you for joining me on this episode of Upskill Talks.