How to Make 2024 the Best Year: 6 Questions to Ask Yourself

(24:15):

If it matters to you to not be hyperventilating when you go up a flight of stairs, you'll do something about it. And that's why answering question number two and digging into your challenges is so important. Your challenges are trying to teach you something. So take this part of it. Seriously, what was the hardest aspect of this year for you? Maybe you lost somebody you love this year and you've been grieving. And by writing that down and unpacking it, you realize that when you look ahead, you want to give yourself permission to be happy again. You want to work on that sense of connection and happiness and meaning in the wake of this. And when your goals are informed by the things that you've struggled with and that you're moving through those goals, take on a richness to them, a meaning to them. And that's why this matters so much.

 

(25:09):

Alright, let's jump into the third question. What did you learn about yourself this year? And again, I invite you to have your camera roll. I invite you to have your journal from mel robbins.com/best year. I invite you to break it down into these five categories, health and wellness, career, money and school relationships, love and friendship, fun and happiness. Remember that fun and happiness, purpose, spirituality and meaning. And so as you're looking at your photo roll and your calendar and you're working through the free beautiful journal that you've downloaded, this is one of those questions that, boy oh boy, does it help if you do this with other people? What did you learn about yourself this year? You're going to shortchange yourself, but when you do this with other people, oh, they're going to remind you. They're going to tell you how you showed up. They're going to be your cheerleading squad.

 

(26:02):

And oh, remember that thing that you're not giving yourself credit for? Well, here are some of the big things that I learned about myself this year, and I share this with you, not only because we're friends, but also because it might stir something up in you. I learned that with regard to my health and wellness, the things that I used to do when I was younger in terms of diet and exercise, they're not going to work. They're not going to work now that my hormones have changed. If I want to feel better in my body, I need to change what I'm doing. And maybe some area of your life is like that, that all of a sudden this past year you hit a wall that the way that you had always been showing up in your marriage, it's not working anymore. The way that you keep showing up at work, it's not leading to the promotion or the responsibilities that you want.

 

(26:47):

The other thing that I learned this year, I'll share another one that was a big point of knowledge for me, is that I learned a lot this year about how to not take on the responsibility of managing other people's emotional reactions and breakdowns. See, there's a big difference between supporting somebody that you care about in your life and feeling responsible for them, supporting somebody versus being responsible for their emotions. And that has been a revelation, and I loved that this was a huge thing that I learned from this past year of my life. Okay, so let's recap question number one. What were the highlights of this past year of your life? Question number two, what were the hardest aspects of these past 12 months for you? And question number three, what are all the amazing things that you learned about yourself this year? Maybe you're more resilient.

(28:35):

When we return, stay with me. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And you and I are walking through a ritual that my husband, our three kids, we do this every single year. It is a year-end ritual. I also use this exact same ritual of asking myself six questions whenever I'm going to do any new business goals, business planning, any big pivots in my life. I absolutely love this. We've already gone through the first three questions, which we're all about identifying the wisdom and the knowledge that you need so that you know exactly where you are right now, and you can now tap into all of that wisdom as we answer question four, five, and six. And what I love about questions four, five, and six is that these questions now have us looking forward. This is the set of directions that a Google Maps is going to point out because we now know where you are.

 

(29:35):

Now let's talk about what do you want and where are we going? How cool is this? Okay, you cool? Alright, let's put these insights into a plan for the final three questions of this year end audit. Let's borrow a very simple business and strategy planning tool. This is a tool that is used by the top global brands that you know and love. This is used by publicly traded companies. This is used by executive teams everywhere. And now guess what? You are going to use these three questions because they are super simple. They get right to the heart of what it is that you want, and here it is, you ready? Drum roll, please.

 

(30:16):

Stop, start, continue. That's it. These three questions come from a transformational business consulting practice called Stop, start, continue. And one of the reasons why I love these three questions, stop, start, continue, is because it makes you focus on what you truly want when you want to change. Or it's the beginning of a new year. It is so tempting, isn't it? To do more, to do better, to get bigger, to move faster change. But what about just making things simpler? What about doing more of what is working and less of what is not working? What if you focused on what you are going to continue doing in order to make this next 12 months, one of the greatest years of your life? I mean, you need consistency, right? And a lot of times when we go to set goals, it's about more better, different. Well, what about what you're going to stop?

(32:29):

So I'm going to stop accepting speaking engagements. There's a handful that I'm willing to do if they meet certain criteria, but typically at this time of year, I would be fully booked a year ahead. There were years where I would have 120 speeches booked for the 12 months ahead, not this year, last year, I don't know. I did 25. Maybe you know how many I've agreed to this year? One February, the MGM Arena, Keller Williams, let's go. 10,000 of you. We're going to corrupt us that place with motivation and tactical advice. However, I'm going to stop saying yes, I'm going to stop saying yes to these opportunities. I'm also going to stop saying yes to all the people that come at us and want us to create content for them. And I'm going to focus on the project that are ours. So that's one thing that I'm going to stop doing.

 

(33:29):

Another thing that I'm going to stop doing because it's really helpful, and again, if you get your download@melrobbins.com slash best year, listing out the things you're going to stop doing in each of the five categories is going to help you gain a lot of clarity because I realize there's something else I need to stop doing and that's bitching about menopause. I have spent a lot of time and on some podcast episodes with you complaining about my body, complaining about my hormone changes, complaining about how stubborn it's been to try to figure out how to be healthy, complaining about hot flashes. I need to stop. I need stop doing that, and I need to have a different relationship with where I'm at with my hormones and where I am with my body. And so I want you to ask yourself this fourth question, what are you going to stop doing in the area of health and wellness?

 

(34:16):

What are you going to stop doing? Career, money school? Maybe you need to stop complaining about your job and show up differently. Maybe you need to stop complaining about the lack of money that you have and start showing up differently around it. Maybe you need to stop complaining about relationship, love and friendship and create a different relationship, fun and happiness, purpose, spirituality and meaning these five categories, what are you going to stop doing and stopping doing something that can lead to massive transformation in your life? We've talked about that a lot. Sometimes it's more effective to stop doing something than it is to constantly focus on the new thing that you're going to do in some cases. And so I want you to really, really go deep on this question that brings us to question number five. What do you want to continue doing this year?

 

(35:05):

I love this question because when you make goals, goals never prompt you to think about, well, what am I going to keep doing that's working? This question is so important because it gets you out of that whack-a-mole thing. You know how you can get into these phases in your life, or at least I do, where I'm super focused on fitness and so I focus, focus on fitness, and then I ignore my relationship with Chris, or I'm super focused on getting out of debt and then I ignore the fact that I need to carve out time for happiness. And so when you also take the time to answer question number five, what are you going to continue doing in the next year of your life? Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to continue doing. I'm going to continue using my Let Them Theory. I love letting people have their emotional reactions and not managing 'em.

 

(35:52):

I love letting people just show me who they are so I can figure out what I'm going to do in response. I love not being responsible for managing everybody else's emotional meltdowns and reactions and tantrums and childhood wounds and all that crap that we're all dealing with. And just let people be human, let them have their reactions. And I love the feeling of peace and control that it gives me in my life. And the final question that's going to help you create one of the best years of your life next year, what are you going to start doing in the next 12 months in all five areas of your life, which again are listed in the journal, the beautiful journal that we created for you that you can print out at mel robbins.com/best year. Whatcha going to start doing well for me when it comes to health and wellness?

 

(36:45):

Thanks to Dr. G who did the Muscle Centric Medicine episode with us, I am going to be strength training three days a week period. Another thing that I'm going to start doing, you're going to love this. I'm going to start writing my next book, which is the Let Them Theory. That's right. I'm doing a whole book on it and it's going to be incredible. I'm excited for it. I bet you're going to be excited for it too. Another thing I'm going to start doing is I'm experimenting with an entirely new way of working. I mentioned earlier that I'm stopping down the work travel way too much work travel last year. So I'm taking it seriously this year to change that. And we're trying out this experiment where our team has one week on where we do productions together in our new studio space in Boston, and then one week off, not like off, you're not working, but off you are in the deep pocket doing the deeper work to get all the stuff that we did during the other week across the finish line.

 

(37:48):

And I think that rhythm could be really, really cool. I'm going to start also getting aggressive about saving money again. We moved up to southern Vermont, as you probably know, and we did a renovation project up here. And like most everybody that does a little home renovation project, we went a little over budget and I might've gone a little over budget on our new studio build out in Boston. But now that our daughters are both out of college and our house project and our studio project in Boston is done, I really want to start focusing again on saving money and investing in startup companies again. And I want to remind you about something. Don't forget that starting also includes starting something that you used to do, something that you used to do in the past. You can start it up again. Maybe you need to start listening to music again.

 

(38:47):

You know how you used to love to create playlists and you always had music going in the house? Maybe that's something you want to take on this year. Maybe you want to start playing your guitar again or playing the piano again. Or maybe you want to start traveling again, even if you don't have the money to go on some big fancy pants trip. Maybe it's just taking day trips and exploring where you live and going to new places. Or maybe it's time to start cleaning out your social media accounts. Again, I'm a huge fan of what I call Unfollow Friday and making it a point every week to align your social media accounts, the input with accounts that match what you want the coming year to look like. Imagine that. Imagine if your social media didn't make you feel bad. Imagine if you took the time to align all the input you get on social media to match what you want to do more of this year.

 

(39:36):

How cool would that be? Or maybe you want to start wearing your hair short or long again, or maybe you want to start speaking French again. You used to speak fluent French, but you haven't done it in 10 years. And so you want to really brush up on the language again. So again, what do you want to start doing? You want to start being more visible at work. You want to start taking classes to uplevel your skills. Go through every one of the five areas of your life and identify what you want to start doing. Alright, so now that I've explained the six questions I want to give them to you one more time. What were the highlights of your year? What were the hardest aspects of this past year for you? What did you learn about yourself over the past 12 months? What did this past year teach you about yourself, about life, about work, about what you want?

 

(40:28):

Where are all those lessons? Number four, what are the things you want to stop doing and not bring into the next year? Number five, what do you want to continue doing in the next year? And number six, what do you want to start doing for real really matters to you? What do you want to start doing in the coming year? Now, I don't know about you, but I'm feeling pretty excited and I haven't even done the exercise yet, for real. I mean my daughters as I'm recording this conversation for you, they're not home yet. So Chris and I and our three kids, we're all going to sit down about five days from now with our printouts. We're going to have our journal from mel robbins.com/best year. And I can't wait. And I kind of wish that you were sitting here with me because now that I've gone through these six questions, I'm like all fired up to really dig in to take an hour and go through my photos and to have the questions in front of me and to go back and forth with you.

 

(41:32):

And look, I know that you're here with me because you're listening to my voice or you're watching me on YouTube, but I would love to be able to see you and I want to see you doing this and I want to cheer you on. And so how about we make a deal? When you print out your journal, would you hold it up and take a photo of yourself? Or if you're going to put it on the screen, wherever it is that you download it, will you take a photo of yourself with it on your phone or whatever and then post it and tag me because I really do want to find you and give you a virtual high five. Okay? And one other thing, bookmark this episode. No joke, bookmark this episode. I want you to come back to these six questions over and over and over again.

 

(42:13):

I'll tell you why. Because every time you come back to these six questions, you are in a different place. And before you drive ahead and before you set new goals and benchmarks for yourself, I want you to take the time to figure out where you are exactly beyond your emotional state. I do this ritual all the time. It's the six questions I ask myself that made me finally go, that's it. I'm going to start doing the podcast. That's it. I'm going to stop making excuses. Yeah, I'm going to continue doing the things that make me successful, but by God, I'm going to start this podcast. And so please bookmark this episode. Please share this with your friends and family, and I want you to do it together. It's such a great exercise to do with your family and with your friends because it will make you feel more connected.

 

(43:01):

And speaking of connected, now that I've gone through these six questions and I've glanced at my photos and I've kind of thought about the last year, I feel like my Google maths just connected. I feel like I got a sense of direction, and I don't know about you, but I can't wait to dig into this exercise for real, and I cannot wait for you to do the same thing, to print out your journal, to write down your answers, to go through your phone and your calendar, to unearth all that wisdom and to truly chart a course for yourself for the coming year that really matters and speaks to you. I do believe that this next year could be the best year of your life. I do believe that some of the people that you will love deeply in your life you haven't even met yet, they're waiting for you in the next 12 months.

 

(43:55):

I do believe that all of the things that you want deeply in your heart and the things that you learned, when you get serious about what you're going to start doing and stop doing and continue doing, you can make it happen. And I also believe in you. I love you, and I believe in your ability to create an extraordinary year in this coming year and to create the set of directions that are unique to you that you need to follow in order to get there. Because the truth is, you do deserve to have the best year of your life. You are brave enough to start. You can gain the clarity to know what you want, and you do have the courage to go after it. And when you do that, I promise you, this will be one of the best years of your life. And your friend, Mel Robbins, will be here cheering for you every step of the way.

 

(44:49):

And I look forward to spending so much more time with you in the coming year. I'll talk to you in a few days and for you watching on YouTube, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for being here. You can find a link to mel robbins.com/best year right in the description below the video. Also, if you have not subscribed, please subscribe. I mean, for real, I can bring this to you for free because of our advertiser support. Subscribers are a huge deal and only 36% of the people that watch this are subscribed. I need you. I need you. I need you. Please, please share this with everybody that you know. And by the way, I know you're like, oh, I got to learn about this. Let them. Siri, here it is. You're going to watch this next.