This week we are talking about 3 easy things to help you be happier in 2021. We are doing this by taking a look back at 2020 for our annual review with a focus on gratitude, forgiveness and optimism. We can only move ahead into 2021 with evaluated experience when we take an honest look at the past year and learn from it. Before we can welcome the new year with an open mind, we must first properly acknowledge the lessons of 2020. As Angela Duckworth said, “When you keep looking for ways of changing things for the better, you stand a better chance of finding them!”
Resources I referenced this week:
Grit by Angela Duckworth
Values Course with Doris Belland from Your Financial Launchpad
Knowing Your Values Will Help You Find Your Happier – Episode 30, The Happier You Podcast
I hope you enjoy this week’s podcast. Don’t forget we’d love to see you over on the Facebook Group, The Happier You Podcast!
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Episode Transcript
Hi, Happy People. And welcome back. This week we’re talking about how evaluated experience makes you wiser. We are coming to the end of 2020. And before you head into 2021, with all your new great ideas and goals and dreams, you want to perform your annual review of 2020. So you can learn from your experiences and move forward with better clarity.
That’s the evaluated experience we’re talking about. I was listening to Angela Duckworth’s book grit the other day. And she said, “When you keep looking for ways of changing things for the better, you stand a better chance of finding them.” Isn’t that the truth.
If you’re looking, you have a better chance of finding things.
So in your annual review, you’re looking back at your year and trying to figure out, “Did I live a life true to my values? Did I live a life that I’m proud of and that I want to do again?” Or “What can I learn from it? What can I change? What can I improve? And what do I want to hold on to?” When you do your annual review, I want you to remember that,
Gratitude, Forgiveness and Optimism are important parts of happiness.
So gratitude. I am grateful for everything that I’ve learned in the experiences that I’ve had this year. I’m grateful for the little things for sure, but I’m also grateful for the forced experiences. Not necessarily the ones I expected, but there was still good stuff that happened in 2020. I’m absolutely grateful for that.
I’m glad that I learned not to take the little things for granted.
In order to move forward and learn from your mistakes. You may need to forgive yourself for the decisions that you made or the actions that you took this year. It was a very different year. Most of us couldn’t draw on previous experience to help us navigate this one.
Many of us lost our focus.
I know personally, I tried eating my way through this pandemic. I had to forgive myself for that. Learn from it and move forward with the experience to help with the next decisions.
I need to mourn the mistakes and screw ups of this year, but not get stuck in them.
In the forgiveness category, we may need to forgive other people as well. Remember, forgiving others is a bigger gift to ourselves than it is to them. So give yourself that gift.
Optimism. We want to take this year’s experiences and move forward with the belief that with this knowledge, we can do better learn from our mistakes and move forward.
Accept our situation, but change our outlook.
2021 is not going to solve all the issues we came up against in 2020. So changing your outlook, you can head into 2021 with a positive attitude that “I’ve got this!” You’ve learned from 2020, so you can deal with it differently.
Hope and optimism are powerful things!
So how do we go about doing this annual review? A couple of weeks ago, in episode 30, we talked about knowing your values and we had Doris Belland on because she’s the lady who taught this to me a couple of years ago. If you’ve already done your values exercise, you can look at your year and say,
“Did I live a year true to my values? Are there things that I can change. Are there things that I can make better?”
And you’re always working towards living your authentic life, according to your values. If you haven’t done a values exercise, don’t worry. There’s another way you can look at this. Look back at your year and think about three things that you did this year that you’re really happy with. And you want to keep doing. Make sure you write those down.
Then think about three things you did that you want to stop doing, or maybe do slightly differently. That’s the evaluated experience part. Acknowledging what you’ve done, what you want to keep and what you want to do differently.
When our family talked about this, we came up with a few things that we want to keep and others that need some changing. I’m going to share a few of our examples with you, hopefully to inspire you to come up with some of your own.
For example, we missed out on some pretty exciting international travel this year. However, we discovered that local travel can be a lot of fun and still allows us to connect as a family.
We love discovering new and beautiful places and just getting away and connecting as a family. We don’t need to get on an airplane to do that.
My husband, also known as hot guy editor (HGE) . Isn’t just my editor. He has a real job too! And what he’s discovered is that there is a lot that he likes about working from home. But he’s also discovered that he really misses the social in the office. So, moving forward when he gets the opportunity, he’ll structure his work environment so that he has a good balance of both.
In the meantime, he’s figuring out how to keep up the social atmosphere of work outside of the work environment, but inside the restrictions of COVID.
We also discovered that connection is really important to us.
We found creative ways to connect with family and friends, despite the social distancing, the three of us get along great, but we definitely need connection with our friends and our community.
For me, the podcast is a definite keeper.
I’ve added new and positive people into my life because of it. It’s also changed my focus. I think I’m a more positive person. I think I’m at least 10% happier. I know that I’m more forgiving of myself, more accepting of myself. And I definitely like the me that I’m discovering with all this personal growth.
I intend to keep pushing myself outside my comfort zone for my own personal development, but also to help grow this community so other people can find their happier too.
When our son did this exercise, he realized that given that his schooling is all virtual, he’s spending way too much time indoors. So moving forward, he wants to add more activity and more outdoor activity into his life.
As a family, we reaffirmed that no distractions of screens at mealtimes creates a stronger family unit. It has created greater conversations and we take the time to listen, but also to voice our appreciation and concerns to one another. We’ve also found that we get together in the kitchen to prepare meals more because we’ve taken away this screen time.
Because we have spent so much time together this year, we found better ways to communicate, to ensure each of us feels valued and heard.
These are just a few of our examples. Honestly, once we got started, we seriously got on a roll. I think it’s really important to do this individually, but also as a family, something you might think is working may drive, a family member nuts. This is a great time to have a conversation about that evaluated experience.
Are you living the life you want to live?
Are there things that you can tweak that will make your life feel more authentic and happy? Are there things that you love about your life and want to make sure you prioritize and keep there? Remember the quote from Angela Duckworth?
When you keep looking for ways of changing things for the better you stand a better chance of finding them.
When you perform your annual review please remember to acknowledge the new happiness tools that you’ve put in your toolbox. I know that by focusing on this podcast and encouraging you to come on this journey with me, I’ve amassed way more happiness tools and resources than I’ve ever had before.
Also by starting this community, I’ve changed the conversations around me. Instead of negativity and complaints many of my conversations are about how people have implemented things in their lives and how it’s working for them.
Or some people will just ask me, how do I come up with my ideas or what’s next? And it creates a great conversation about happiness in their lives.
This was definitely the year to start changing the conversation, to changing my environment to more positive and finding more happy.
Despite the craziness of 2020, I am definitely happier.
I’m grateful for the lessons of this year. I have forgiven myself for this slip ups and I am definitely optimistic for 2021. I am not pinning my happiness on the vaccine.
I have learned that my happiness is inside of me.
That the more tools I have, the better I get at finding my happier and sharing it with others. Remember when you can’t find the sunshine, be the sunshine. I just love that saying.
So this week, your challenge is if you know your values, look back at your year and see if you lived a year true to your values. And if not, what can you change? And what can you improve?
If you don’t have your values set, don’t worry.
You just want to list three things that you did awesome and want to keep in your life from this year. And three things that you want to stop or do differently. Don’t forget to write those down individually, but also with your family. If you’re in a family unit.
As an aside, if you want to do the values exercise that we talked about in episode 30 with Doris Belland, I know that that course has just been released. It’s at a reduced rate and available only for a few days. So I will put the link to that in the show notes.
Please make sure that if you’re interested at all that you jump on that right away. I know she’s offering it an introductory rate. So you don’t want to miss this one. I highly recommend that course. It changed so much in my life.
I described that course as the course that I didn’t know that I needed.
All right. So I gave you this week’s quote already. So all that’s left is to encourage you to go and do your annual review in preparation for setting yourself up for even more success and happiness next year.