Bonus Episode: Reflections, Resolutions, and Goals
Episode 92
If you didn’t start the year with all of your goals planned out, you’re not behind - you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. In this bonus episode, I’m sharing some of my favorite prompts that will help you reflect on and celebrate what’s working and rethink what’s not, so that you can set business and podcast goals for 2023 that feel good. Plus, learn about where Podcast & Amplify is headed this year. Here’s to a fantastic year!
Transcript
Hey friends. Welcome back to Podcast and Amplify. I'm your host, Kristin, and Happy New Year. So I know we are officially in between seasons, but I did mention last year that I wanted to come back and I would be doing some bonus episodes in between season three and season four. Season four starts, March.
And so you'll be getting an episode this week and then I think I plan to do another one in February because I think that could be really fun. But for this episode, I wanted to come back and talk about some ways to reflect back on 2022 in a way that will help you sort of bring those learnings forward into 2023 and really, you know, start the year.
You know, reflecting is always great because it really helps us think about what we've learned through our experiences, and it helps us to rethink things that we have done in the past and, and maybe ways that we can change things up moving forward. So last year at this time, I sent out my first Captivate and Convert email.
That's where I would send you four or five prompts to help you think about the month and think about things like your growth, your learnings, your successes, your failures, and to hopefully help you to create content for your audience that would resonate. You know, tapping into those really meaningful experiences and learnings that you had each month.
And also to just capture that, to have a record of where was I every month of the year. If so, if you've been in my community for a year, then you've been receiving those emails and hopefully you've been taking the time to sit down and journal, um, using the prompt. Because now you have a whole year's record of all of those really juicy, uh, moments and stories that hopefully you've been able to share with your audience.
Hopefully it's sparked content, ideas, you know, really meaningful points of connection. But now you have this record and you can look back and see the evolution of your entire. If you didn't get in on those emails, totally fine if you don't have those reflections from every month. That's why I wanna go over the questions in this podcast episode because I wanna give you the opportunity to just think back on the entire year if you haven't done that yet.
Um, if you do, great, you can look back at those and if not, We're gonna go over some of the prompts today so that you can think about them. I'll share some of my learnings, what I want to change moving forward. We ended the year with a death in the family, which was quite, I don't wanna say it was sudden, it was expected, but it's still hard to process, I guess is what I'll say.
And. It's not shocking, but it feels like a shock to the system, if that makes sense. So we ended our year that way. I really didn't have the energy or the space or the time to sit down and reflect on the past year, which is totally okay. I gave myself Grace. I gave myself that space to just be in. The processing space that I was in, and so I know a lot of you may have not had the chance as well to sit down and look back at your year, so this is a great opportunity to do it.
We're just barely in the first few days of. The new year, and so I hope you come along with me on this podcast episode, and this helps you to think about how you want to show up in 2023 if you've already done your reflections. This is just another opportunity to sort of like solidify. What you came up with.
And so let's dive into some of the prompts that I'm using to reflect on last year and to help me move forward in a more intentional way. So the first thing that I like to think about when I'm reflecting and journaling on the past is moments of joy. So thinking about those moments. That really felt joyous.
It's so important to incorporate joy into our lives, and at the end of last year, I really started to try to do that in these small little ways. For example, I began to do dance exercise videos. I hadn't done that in so long and I used to take dance classes way, way back, and then I just, I stopped. Um, but I started doing that and just moving my body and having the music.
I am not a great dancer, but I'm in my living room watching a YouTube video. No one can see me, so it doesn't matter. It's just about like moving my body and there's really nothing like it. And. I started incorporating that towards the end of last year. It's something that I'm definitely going to bring forward because you know, I have a rower machine, but it doesn't bring me joy , and that was like a little moment of joy that I could bring into my day.
So that's something that I will definitely be bringing into this year. Uh, what's one thing you did this last year that you were proud of? You know, we sh really need to celebrate our accomplishments and take that moment to be happy with ourselves, to be proud of ourselves, and my coach would always help me.
Last year to, and would always remind me to celebrate it. She'd be like, what are you doing that you, you know, after you hit this milestone or after you hit that goal, what are you doing? Let's write it down. Let's put it on the calendar. Let's commit to it. So thinking about, what were those moments that you really were like, damn, I did that.
I'm the shit, what, what are ways that you're gonna try and celebrate yourself this year? . Another thing you can think about for last year is what were all of the challenges? that you experienced, and how did you overcome them? How did you learn from them? There's so much to be learned in challenges in quote unquote failures and reflecting on the way that you overcame them is such a confidence booster.
It's such a great way to kind of do a analysis. How did I solve that problem? You know, what was the solution I came up with? What was the mindset that I had and how can I use that moving forward? I always say that I love this prompt because I absolutely do. What's one story or belief that you're willing to let go is one of my favorite questions to ask myself.
a lot of the times I'm the one getting in my own way. So I'm getting in my way by sticking to these stories or beliefs that no longer serve me, but in some way they make me feel safe. I wanna make sure that you are thinking about the, these stories and these beliefs that you may. That are keeping you from realizing the fullest expression of yourself, because really at the end of the day, I mean, that's what it's all about, right?
It's like, who are we here to be? You know, how are we meant to show up? Because we all have a purpose, we all have a path, and it's just a matter of how can we get. So when we can rethink these stories and these beliefs and question them and examine them and hold them to the light and see if, you know they're really true, that helps us to sort of make the necessary adjustments that will help us to move forward, um, towards that bigger goal, towards any of our goals.
And so I also wanna remind you that, you know, you don't have to have all the answers right now. So I'm very much in a space where I know things are evolving. I know I am changing how I do things moving forward. Some of those things I can articulate some of them. I can't really articulate yet. It's not quite clear to me, but I'm just staying open to the change and trusting that I will know what that change is when it needs to happen, and trusting that I'll know what that looks like.
So you don't have to know, like right now, have all the answers. You have plenty of time to make adjustments and let that picture become clearer as you move forward. Um, the first of the year is it's really an arbitrary, you know, date set. I think I more align with seasons instead of like, strict dates gives you more wiggle room, right?
That gives you more play. So I wanted to also frame this, not just in terms of bigger goals. I also wanted to frame this in terms of how can we set some podcasting goals. So if you have a podcast, You know, what are some things that you want to do with your podcast moving forward? If you don't have a podcast and you want to have one, what do you want that to look like?
What are those goals that you're going to set to make that a reality? . But for those of us who have a podcast, some of the things that I've been thinking about, you know, moving forward in 2023, is I would really like to incorporate some guests that I feel like are kind of like aspirational. So they're people that like I really admire, but they seem a little out of reach for me.
So I'd like to stretch myself and reach out to those people to be guests. And so that's my goal for season. I also wanted to create sort of a easier backend experience for myself. So I invested in script and it has some really great tools that I think will make the editing process smoother, easier. And also they have a new feature that helps you create videos easily.
So I'm hoping to create more engaging content through videos. So something that I've invested in. So I will definitely keep you all posted on how that experience goes. And then one of my other goals is to put more energy into being on more aligned podcasts. So last year I think I was on a podcast or two every month and I really had these, these opportunities to be on podcasts come to me.
I didn't really pitch myself a lot until sort of the end of the year. Has helped me to line up podcasts, interviews for this year, but I want to be more proactive about it. It was great because I had so much going on that, you know, people were reaching out to me. It just, I was like, okay, I'm just gonna let this be really organic and say yes to.
These offers that feel really good, um, to, to come on and have conversations. But this year I want to put more of my energy towards that. I think it's gonna be a great way to support other podcasters and help support this show and help with growth because I really love the community aspect of podcasting.
And so if I can do more podcast swaps and things like that, Really love that idea. It's really in aligned with how I like to collaborate, how I like to connect through podcasting, how I love supporting other podcasters. That's so much a part of who, who I am, how I operate. And so if we zoom out from podcasting to my overall goal as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, Really just doubling down on connection, community collaboration in 2023, and that means with podcasters, it means with other business owners, it means.
Sharing my knowledge as a speaker, so I'm really looking forward to connecting with others, connecting my message with others who I think it can really help. And just that being the sort of through line for this next year, I can see myself actually dialing back on social media. , and I have a couple reasons for that.
One, it started to feel really overwhelming last year, especially towards the end. I felt like it was on it too much and I wasn't really sure what my return on it that time investment was. And it could be the way that I was using it, you know, perhaps I wasn't reaching out to people as much. as I should have been.
Um, but it, it just felt like a real time suck and I feel like there are other ways that I can connect with people that feel more meaningful. It's not the best way to grow your podcast anyways, so just kind of thinking about what, where do I wanna be spending my time? What feels good and what feels.
Energizing. I'm gonna real work really hard at letting go of the things that feel like shoulds. So that will be a lot of my work this first quarter, and then we'll reevaluate and see where I need to make different adjustments. But that is my goal, I think especially. What we experienced, my husband and I, the end of this year with losing a loved one.
I think it's really helped me focus on what's important, what do I wanna be doing, and what is actually having impact. If you're feeling similar, I got you. I'm feeling the same way. And let me know. Let me know if any of this resonates with you. If any of the prompts you know, help you think about your goals for 2023 differently, or help you get more clarity on where you wanna go, where you wanna take your business.
Where you wanna take your podcast. If you're making any adjustments to your podcast, I'd love to hear about them. If you need support with that, I'm obviously here. I love to help grow and scale and create podcasts that are really working for you and your business. And finally, I just wanna wrap up with a few changes that I'm thinking about, and these might not be the last changes for this podcast, but you might have noticed that there wasn't the typical intro that you normally hear that we just started with me talking.
And so that's how season four is going to sound. , I am experimenting with leaving out the intro and just starting with this conversation and seeing how that works and you'll have an intro that plays out. But I was listening to some other podcasts and I kind of felt like, you know what, this feels like a really nice vibe and people don't have to skip through the intro that they've heard.
You know, a lot if they listen to every episode. So we're gonna try. . And the other thing that we're gonna do, and I started doing this last season, but I'm going to. Put all show notes on my website, so anything that you wanna know about the guest for that episode or any links that I talk about, it's all going to be@podcastandamplify.com.
And there'll be a link in the show notes to the website, so you'll be able to go to your podcast listening app and there'll be a link to podcast and amplify.com. and that will take you to our website and to the episode page, and you'll be able to access all the links, all of the information, um, that we've mentioned on the episode at the website.
The reason for that is because you have a podcast and you are looking to grow it and to track its growth downloads. It's just one metric of how your podcast is growing. But you also want to use your Google Analytics to help show you your website traffic. And so those two things working together are a great way to.
Measure the growth of your podcast to increase the growth of your podcast. You want people to be sending people to your website, then getting your website content higher ranked in the Google search algorithm. So it just all kind of adds together. So that's the strategy that I'm using. I may change that strategy, but for now, that's what makes the most sense to me, and I always wanna be transparent with you and to help give you tips on how you can grow your podcast.
And so hopefully by explaining the reasoning behind that approach that helps you with your podcast or you don't have a podcast yet to think about, hmm, maybe I want a website for my podcast. So that's all I have for you today. I just wanted to pop in to wish you a happy new year. I hope 2023. Everything that you want it to be and more, and I hope that this episode has helped you think about where you can take it and also think about what you're open to receiving.
Because we can set the intentions, we can set the goals, we can put in the energy, but we also have to be open for what can come our way unexpectedly. We have to. Block our blessings as they say. So also thinking about like what are the big things that you're open to receiving? I think that's always important as well.
It's just reminding yourself to be open and trusting. I know that could be hard, but it's really an important piece of the puzzle. It's part of the equation, right? Thank you for listening to this episode. I will be back in February with another bonus episode, and then the season will kick off in March. I am like rubbing my hands together, cannot wait to have these conversations with my latest roster of guests and to share them with you.
In Season four. Thanks for listening, and here's to a fantastic 2023. Thanks for listening to this episode of Podcast and amplify. If you love the show, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And the best way to support this show is by sharing rating and reviewing the podcast. For those of you who leave a review, you'll get the chance to win a 30 minute strategy session or a mini audit of your existing podcast.
Thanks for listening, and remember your voice and what you have to offer is needed in the world. Until next week, take care.
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