Uncensored Money Season Three: Design Your Best Year Yet
Melissa Browne: Ex-Accountant, Ex-Financial Advisor, Ex-Working Till I Drop, Now Serial Entrepreneur & Author, Financial Wellness Advocate, Living a Life by Design | 28/12/2022
Show Notes
The New Year is fast approaching and our attention can turn to New Year’s resolutions. Given that 80% of people abandon their resolutions by February, in this episode Mel and Lawsie discuss goal setting and Mel shares a process Mel uses called Your Best Year Yet that helps her intentionally design her year, and life.
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Transcript
Mel: Welcome to our very last podcast for 2022, and I feel like it's fitting for the end of 2022 that once again my voice is going on me. It's just the year that was right?
But now if you followed along here for a while, you'll know that both Lawsie and I are dirty little planners. Personally planning a goals is like catnip to me. I mean, I could also say it's like porn to me, Catnip means you really want it. This is how you attract me. Now, I know some women find it sexy when their partners do housework or take them on romantic dates. The bald sexy man knows it for me, he just needs to look at me, and he is done it before, and he goes, honey wanna do some planning? Make of that what you will.
Now that the silly season's over, we know a lot of people are gonna be thinking about New Year's resolutions. And I don't know about you, but I don't do New Year's resolutions. You don't either, do your Lawsie?
Lawsie: No.
Mel: I didn't think so.
Lawsie: I would say that I do like that whole, it is a new year and I feel like you get that reset, but I don't go…
Mel: We don't do what's your New Year's resolution? And it's probably because you and I manage our planning throughout the year that we find them to be a bit of a time waster, but it's also because, let's be honest, traditional New Year's resolutions are usually made while under the influence of many, many champagne cocktails or in the gripe of a raging hangover the next day when someone happens to ask, what's your New Years resolution? And you pluck out whatever you happen to be thinking of. Either way, I don't believe there is a real recipe for success.
And research backs this up. According to Forbes, 80% of people surveyed admitted to abandoning New Years’ resolutions by February. 80%. So to set you up for success and help you be part of the successful 20%, I wanna share something that I've been doing for the last seven years with my very reluctant goal-setting husband. It's something called the Best Year Yet.
It's a concept introduced at an EO, which is Entrepreneur's Organization New York conference by a lesbian monk. I dunno why that has stuck with me, but it struck a chord with me and I've been doing it ever since.
Now, before you tune out, this does not mean that things will just sail along. Since doing this about seven years ago, Tony and I have had years of cancer diagnosis. Loved ones have passed away. We've had a falling out with business partners. I had a compressed nerve in my neck. This year Tony was dealing with a very serious health issue for about three months. And in other years I've chosen to deal with trauma. None of these have made this a fun year, but in all the years, we could honestly say at the end that it was still our best year.
I gotta be honest, this one scraped in there with me saying that it is our Best Year Yet. Now, it wasn't the best year yet because of the shitty stuff that happened in there. But because we were intentional about our relationship. We were intentional about our finances, our health, fun, our businesses, and so on, so that even during those shitty years, Tony and I still felt like we both came through stronger, both separately and together.
Now, did it mean during some years that we ticked everything off our Best Year Yet lists? Abso-freaking-lutely not. This year was a perfect example, but rather than feeling like we'd failed or we'd lost focus, we chose to be intentional about what we were going to focus on. And trust me, I still described having lost focus during the year, but I actually didn't when I was called on it.
So for example, in this dumpster fire of a year, because we have a system that is all around this Best Year Yet because we've got the financial system to support that it meant we had buffers where we could grab to throw money at health issues, or we could pivot to financial goals that took up less time or create systems and processes or hire people so that when bumps in the road happened again, we'd be okay. Now I think the process is about designing a life you don't want to escape from, rather than living a life by default.
It's something we spend a whole lesson on in the My Financial Focus minicourse, which is my goal-setting course. So if you've listened to me and gone, you know what? That sounds like a system that I could implement, and let me tell you, if my reluctant goal-setting husband loves this, then you can do it.
Lawsie: Does he love it?
Mel: Do you know what? If you go and listen to the goals episode he and I recorded a few episodes ago, he actually admits to loving it simply because he knows it works for us. So he still doesn't love goal setting, but he loves that we've found a process that means he can get away with the bare minimum but he knows we're being intentional and that he's still contributing.
And he also knows what he has to do. He knows his KPIs and as I said, it's something we spend a lesson on in the My Financial Focus mini course. So go and look for that in the way in the show notes if you wanna know more.
But we are gonna talk about this particular piece of the puzzle today. So Lawsie, tell me about your goal setting. What do you and Adam do when it comes to goal setting, or what do you do?
Lawsie: Yeah, I was gonna say, one of us sets goals and one of us does not. And even then, me being the one that would set goals is not as intentional about it as I could otherwise be, but I would do it and follow that process when it comes to things that I feel like it works well. So I'm not gonna set goals for my entire life.
And I feel like I can say back in the day, a couple of years ago and earlier when I was doing long-distance running events and cycling events and all those things, that's probably the easiest thing to describe where I would have. That is all about setting the goal for the race, the event is the ultimate goal that you're working towards.
And then it's quite easy to work backwards. I say easy, assuming that life goes to plan and there are no hiccups along the way. But it is quite easy and it's a process, isn't it? Like it's just, yep, I've got this many weeks, or this many months until this event. I know what my current level of fitness is or what my starting point is. I know where I've gotta be and then fill in the blanks for what I'm gonna do each week, each month, or whatever to make sure that I'm on track to hit that goal or complete that event. And not all of them went to plan, but at least still you've got that goal, you know what you're wanting to do. Is it just to finish? Is it to do it in a certain time? Whatever the parameters are, and then put the steps in play to get there. So I definitely do it. So rather than goal setting per se, I prefer just to go, okay, that's what I'm working towards. Figure out a process, automate it and then it'll just get done.
Mel: That is a goal though. You are just not calling it a goal.
Lawsie: yeah. Yeah. So I think that's how I would do things with my finances because it's easy. That's how I work. Whereas I know for others they'd be like, oh my God, that just sounds horrific. Whereas to me, I'm like, yeah, cool. I know what I'm doing. Set that process and then off you go and just follow it. But that's also because I'll do what I say I'm going to do and I'm very disciplined with that
Mel: Absolutely. And it works because if she says she's gonna do something, she does it, which is why she runs our accountability inside the alumni membership for My Financial Adulting Plan because she is Ms discipline.
Lawsie: There's no other way to be.
Mel: Ah, not so much, but you do. So your goal setting is simply this is where I wanna go, and then these are the steps.
Lawsie: No, no. I think it's more, I was gonna say project based. That's not quite right, but you know, it is a project. I definitely don't do that for all aspects of my life. It's just for things where, like I said, for doing those endurance sports or finances or things that are really tangible, I'm a doer. I like just to work towards something, but I'm not gonna do it on for more intangible things.
Mel: Which we will get into today,
Lawsie: Yes.
Mel: So, and I hope you can hear that like Lawsie', very successful and disciplined in so many different parts of her life, including her finances, and yet her and I have very different approaches to goal setting. And I guess that's part of what I wanna show is that there is not one size-fits all approach to goal setting.
And as we talk today, the Best Year Yet is something I do and see through to the nth degree. Lawsie, not so much. And inside the goals mini-course, we are gonna show you a whole bunch of different ways, going from long to medium to Best Year Yet to your sprints so that you can find something that will work for you. Some of you will piecemeal it. Personally I think you need to know the long term so that you know what you're gonna do in the short and medium term. But again, it's figuring out the approach that works for you. My husband like if I said to him, honey, tell me where you see yourself in 10 years time? He just looks at me and the eyes glaze over and I feel like if he could cry at that point, he would. Like, it's just torture to him cause he is very much like you. He's like, I'll just do it. But that's also not necessarily served him. Whereas you, I know it, that's different because you do sit down in that project way and say, right. And we've talked about where you're going, right? So I just am gonna do another thing to say, will I have enough? Like I'm gonna run the numbers. So you do it, but it's just not at a particular moment in time. It just might be when it comes up.
Lawsie: Yeah, it's not that I'm gonna sit down on the 1st of January and do it. It's like, oh, actually now I'm thinking of changing our direction or wanting to do that particular event or whatever it is. And that's my trigger for it rather than a structured every 90 days, where I'm going to look at my goals and set new goals for the next 90 days.
Cause I don't. I prefer a bit more of a fluid time zone timeframe, but that's because of the nature of what I'm doing longer term and all that kind of stuff.
Mel: So if you are not as disciplined as my co-host, then you may like a structure that can actually push you through, and that's what the Best Year Yet can provide.
So what is it? It is simply looking at the different parts of your life. So health and fitness, money and investing, relationships, family, spirituality, fun and social, personal development, contributions and giving back.
And those might not all apply to you and you might have others that you wanna put in. I did say family. I was gonna say family for me means my husband. But for others, they might have framily in there, rather than family.
So what the idea is for each of those pies, you write down the different buckets and then you write down what if you were here in a year's time, what would need to happen for the best year yet. For you to say when it comes to health and fitness, this was my best year yet. And we want that to be tangible. So for example it might be if I was to have worked out three to four times a year consistently, oh my god.
Lawsie: You wished you only worked out three or four times a year.
Mel: Three to four times a week, or maybe it's that by the end of the year I've run a marathon. Or maybe for me last year it was by the end of the year, I wanna do a pull-up. It's looking at well, what does it mean to you? Is it a goal as in something that I've done? Or is it the continuity of doing something regularly? And we'll talk through like Lawsie and I are gonna talk about what we would include in each of these buckets so you can see what they look like.
But the Best Year Yet is all those different buckets, including money and investing. Now, the reason that we are talking about all of them on a finance podcast and not just money and investing is because we don't operate in a silo. If my relationship bucket is empty, then potentially that could affect my money and investing bucket, either cause I'm looking for a dopamine hit. If my health and fitness bucket is empty, again that might affect my money and investing or that might affect my family bucket. So it's making sure that they're all being filled up and one's not leaking. And it's really important to include money and investing in this cause money and investing affects all of them.
If you want your health and fitness to improve and you’re thinking, oh I think I'll join a gym or get a personal trainer, then you need some money and investing for that. If you're thinking personal development and wanting to do some courses, you're gonna need money in investing. So money and investing if you want contributions and giving back, you're gonna need that. So it is at the core of all of this, even though you might not think it should be. So it's really important that we don't neglect that when we are talking about all of it. So Lawsie I know you wanna start with spirituality?
Lawsie: Yes, that's definitely the one that I spent the most time thinking
Mel: It is the one you've spent the most time on.
Let's talk through some of the buckets and talk about some of the things that might be in our bucket for 2023 so listeners can hear maybe some things, and we might be things that we've heard of others include. So health and fitness. We'll start with an easy one for you.
Lawsie: Oh, thank you. Thank you. It's a little less awkward. So for me, yes health and fitness is daily movement, which might sound a little bit bizarre, but I think because for so long I've been doing endurance sports and everything. And there's always the concept of actually having a rest day, and I've been transitioning out of that a little bit as well as with some other health stuff that's been going on.
My one is just daily movement and reframing in my head that going for a walk is actually okay and counts as movement. I know it's a big year. It's gonna be a big year. So that is definitely mine. And, but also with that is, for me, having the adventures along the way, so it's yes, absolutely to go out and move and do something every day, but I need to make it like, I love being outdoors and I love being active. So I'm not like you where it's oh my God, I've gotta have this thing around moving three to four times a week or whatever. For me it's a thing that I actually want to do, but it is also I don't necessarily love going to the gym, so it is trying to reframe that a little bit that it is still like how that would all work.
But my tangible goal is that there has to be daily movement. And then just bringing in the adventure and the fun back into that, particularly if I'm not gonna be doing as much endurance things, which is where I get my hit normally.
Mel: I like that. Interesting. Mine is also daily movement. So for exactly, for the same thing is I I'm quite sedentary in my job as are you.
Lawsie: Really?
Mel: I know, right? So it's just making sure that I'm moving every day. So just going for a walk or just getting up and doing stuff. But I also want two strength and two cardio for most weeks. I'm not gonna say every week, I'm not stupid. And I'm getting to that age where I just have to do more strength. So two strength, two cardio. Like it has to be broken up like that.
Lawsie: Yep.
Mel: And I'll just they can do anything as long as it's strength and cardio. So yeah.
Money and investing.
Lawsie: Yeah, so for me, I've got two things around this. I have an amount that I wanna make sure gets invested every month. So again, just continuing with my bigger goal, there you go in our goal-setting episode. So yeah, in terms of my bigger goal of setting up to be financially independent, I invest quite a proportion of our income.
But I just wanna make sure that the minimum of that is happening every month. It should, short of any life things happening, but it is just one of those things where I've obviously set my little targets and I've already got my little process in place, so it will all happen automatically, but obviously things untoward happen or whatever.
So I've just sort of set that as the minimum. And then by the end of the year I've got a certain dollar figure that I want our net worth excluding our home to be worth, which is a little bit out of my control because it does assume there might actually be some rate of returns and some investments in the coming 12 months.
But it's still like a conservative balance, I think. But yeah, looking at the last 12 months, if I'm not gonna hit that target. If you know what's happened historically in the last 12 months occurs again, but surely things will improve slightly. So that's my two for money and investing.
What about you?
Mel: Nice. So if I was to pluck two out for me, so one of them is gonna be either one or the other. So I want either the renovation at Glenbrook. I have said this for three years in a row now to be done or so by the end of the year for that to be done for downstairs or to buy a property, an office for Tone.
So one of the two needs to happen. I don't mind which one, but as long as one of the two happens. And the third is we've got a loan on an investment property. And I just want it, like NAB have pissed me off this year and I just want it refinanced. So I've just been a bit lazy.
So I've gone to my business manager and asked them to sharpen their pencils and done all the things that I tell everyone else to do, but I actually just need to take it away from them and get that refinanced. So I want that done by the end of the year as well, which will work beautifully if we do the investment loan cause if we do the office, cause we'll do that inside a self-managed super fund.
So they're our two big ones for this. So I will be very happy if those two things happen. And I also have some business goals around revenue that I really wanna hit this calendar year and the next financial year. So two separate ones. And over the next 10 years, I've got really big giving back goals. So those revenue targets are really important so that my giving back targets are hit. So that's really, really important to me. That's part of why I'm pushing my business at the moment is both impact and also giving back.
Relationships.
Lawsie: You make me laugh. Relationships, they just exist. You know, I'm a very highly emotive person that likes to really dig into these things.
Mel: about us? What have we decided?
Lawsie: Well, we have to do more fun
Mel: See, that needs to go into our Best Year Yet.
Lawsie: well I put that under fun.
Mel: Good. Oh yeah. Nice.
Lawsie: A different bucket. But to be fair, it should also fit in relationships.
Cause I think, yeah, much as we love what we do, we get stuck doing work a lot. And then forget that outside of work, we actually sometimes can be friends, like to play together, go to the park. No. So yeah, we definitely need that. But I think that's probably a consistent thing for me across all relationships is I think sometimes stuff just gets transactional and a bit work focused rather than actually doing the fun stuff. And making sure that there is that sort of thrown into the mix. Cause it shouldn't be all work and no play.
Mel: Well, I wanna suggest that under that for you, I've put a KPI. Would you like to know what it is?
Lawsie: Oh yes, please let me feel like Tony
Mel: Every six weeks you and I need to do something fun and or have an adventure, and we have to take it in turns to organise it.
Lawsie: Every six weeks. Please let me write that down.
Mel: Would you like the first one or do you want me to do the first one?
Lawsie: No, I'll do the first
Mel: You'll do the first one. Okay, beautiful. So you'll get from beginning Jan to half Feb. And I'll get nice.
Lawsie: All right, you're on.
Mel: Awesome.
Lawsie: Bungee jumping. Here we come!
Mel: That's not happening.
Lawsie: Jokes. Jokes.
Mel: And under family. So that's Tone for me. We've already had a chat about this, so we've got things that we wanna bring into next year and make sure we never stop. So we do Communication Sundays. It's really important that we just look at our diaries and go, right, what have we got coming up? And that's something that we've said we just need to make sure we do consistently. When he was not well it fell over. And when we get busy, sometimes it can fall over. And whenever it does, it's problematic. So we just really it.
Lawsie: You need it the most.
Mel: We need it the most. And we both said the same thing that one of the things that dropped off, rightly when everything happened this year, was we like to go on twice monthly dates. and I've become the social coordinator this year because he just really lost focus with stuff and I really let him off the hook cause he was so unwell.
And to be honest, I've let him off the hook for the whole year. So next year we're getting back to it. So our thing is we both have to organise a date every month. And it doesn't have to be an expensive date. It could to grab the chairs, go down to our park when we're in the city at the Botanical Gardens, bring a coffee, bring a paper or a book, and you just sit there and, just enjoy the beautiful day.
Or it could be, we both wanna do the Rocks walking tour which is a free tour that they do at night. it's just organising it though, and it is not just being left to the social coordinator, ie, me
Lawsie: Yes
Mel: But it's that reminder to him like it's that permission to go, I want you to do this. And he's good at it. So yeah. What do you have for family?
Lawsie: Yeah, I think, ours is again, like if I was looking at it with Adam, ours is again a similar thing like with you. Like it just needs to be, we need more fun. Yes, we'll go and do weekends away and we do those things, which is awesome. But I think during the week it just becomes very, like, we may as well be roommates. Like, I might not you wake up and I'll go to the gym and I'm walking the jog and I'm doing whatever. He's gone to work. I'm at home all day working. Come in, you make dinner, you go to bed. Our goal is to absolutely do more things, just more of the ad hoc and the random things. Not at always having to be that, you're going away on the weekends and doing that stuff. So that's something that we need to
Mel: I love the ad hoc and the random things. And I guess that's the thing with you and I, isn't it? Like we don't have kids, we can do ad hoc and random, so it's just pushing yourself out of that rut.
Lawsie: Yeah. And just doing it.
Mel: like this, you can say, right, how often do we wanna do that? Who's gonna organise it? Right? KPI go!
Lawsie: Yeah.
Mel: Boys love that. Personal development. Did you have anything for that?
Lawsie: I did for that one. You look, I know, I thought you looked surprised.
Mel: So good.
Lawsie: So because obviously, I think at the moment is now that the world's opened up travelling and because this year you and I will be in Spain, which is exciting. And then I've put more adventure into that. Surprise, surprise.
So I'll also dip my toe into Portugal and Morocco but I've decided that I'd like to learn Spanish just to actually feel like a little bit.
Mel: I love that.
Lawsie: To fit in. I know that, rather than looking like tourists entirely. And to actually do that in like a class environment and not to be trying to learn it through an app and online things and stuff like that, I'm like, no, actually for me, it's gonna work better just being in there and having someone teach that you can unit actually see. So that is my personal development. I've decided to not worry about learning Portuguese or Arabic or just focus on Spanish for the sake of that.
Mel: Nice. I'm going back to French. I'm gonna have another hot crack at it. And the same deal. I wanna do it in the classroom. So I'm doing both business and personal. Personal development. So I'm in a bit of a masterclass with Wordfetti at the moment, which is amazing.
When that finishes, I'll find something else because I wanna make sure that I'm constantly being fed and learning when it comes to what I'm doing business-wise. There's a conference I'm going to next year and I'm looking for one more. So I want an additional conference. But personally I want to have another crack at French, but it needs to be in the classroom.
So after April, I'll start that so that I've got six months before we head away. And then it's just reading. So I want to read a non-fiction book a month. I have so many of them. If you could see the visual for where I am and I have so many that I haven't read. So I read a lot of fiction. I'm really good with that when it comes to switching off. But I want to get back. I wanna get back to reading nonfiction again.
Two left. Fun and social, which we kind of have touched on with the relationships.
Lawsie: Yeah, so my fun and social is around adventure, surprise, surprise. So I've got on there obviously being organised and making the most of our overseas adventure and parts of it have already been booked. So that's a huge step in the right direction. And then just finding the adventure in the everyday stuff as well.
Because for me, it's just that huge thing around. It is that outdoor and doing things that are a bit different and even if it's just exploring a new trail or doing those things, again, it's just making sure that I do that cause it can be easy just to go, oh, I just walk the same route, or run the same route, or do the same things at gym and all that kind of stuff.
So for me, it's definitely finding more adventure cause that is fun for me. And yeah, like we already said, just making sure that we're doing more of the fun and the social stuff, so it's not all just work. Even though we love what we do, you need to have that balance to obviously then be more productive and stuff at work and have those other ideas and things that, all go hand in hand as so many people tell us.
And as we get busy, we tend to forget and shove that to the furthest corner of our minds. But that's it for me. It's basically just making sure there's enough sort of fun and adventure and variety.
Mel: No, that's important.
Lawsie: What about you?
Mel: Well, I've talked in a little bit about fun and I reckon you might not have the spirituality in giving back so, I'll mention that or you do, cause I know you give back, but in the interest of time, I'll hit on that bucket. So, for me, spirituality. I haven't decided what it is, but my fear is that because so I grew up in a very fundamentalist Christian household, and I always have this fear or this desire that I don't wanna just turn my back on faith because of how it's been modelled to me by my family. And I really dislike how it's modelled to me. So this year it's about leaning back into that and I don't know what that looks like. I dunno if it's just reading or listening to podcasts or what have you. But I definitely wanna lean into that a little bit more and just remind myself that actually that's important to me.
And not to drop that just because certain people annoy me or certain people don't model it well, I think it would be very easy to go, I'll screw that. But the contributions in giving back as well. Yeah, for me it's, there's a dollar figure around. For me, it needs to be a minimum of 50K this year.
So, it's almost up there, but I want it to be a minimum of that amount with a real plan to ramp that up over the next few years.
But it's also really important, and I'm just going to mention this rather than spend time on it, but this is something that we teach in the course, is looking at the longer timeframe as well, so that you can decide what should be in your Best Year Yet, but also looking at sprints because it's one thing for us to talk about these things and for them to be really important, but what does that mean for the next 90 days, 30 days, seven days, and tomorrow?
So whilst the Best Year Yet is something that you wanna sit down and map out what's in your bucket, you also need to think about what does that mean for the next 90 days for each of those buckets? It might be that you don't need to be doing something every 90 days for every bucket, but most buckets would be in there because you're going to wanna be moving along and then putting that in your diary.
For me, I create an Anylist and write it down so that when Tone and I do Communication Sundays, not every time, but we pull it out sometimes and go, right, how are we doing with that? And it's just that check-in so that you both know exactly what you have to do. And again, we give you templates and everything for that inside the course.
But finally, one of the things that can help as well. This is something that I learned many years ago from Dr. Jason Fox, who, if you haven't heard of him, he's incredible. Go and Google him and check him out. But he says to use a word to describe your year, to give you intention, to show the energy, that you wanna put towards it.
I've certainly had songs as well. I remember when I was studying for my MBA, I had Work by Kelly Roland. Every time it was an exam or I needed to, you know, pump myself up, I'd play it in the car. But for the last two years I've had the Duchess cause I wanted that to be the energy. I wanted it to be a different energy instead of me feeling like I was playing catch up, I wanted to lead and not care as much what other people were doing. And I wanna ramp that up even more. So I want my word for next year is HRH. So her Royal Highness.
Lawsie: Oh.
Mel: which Tone calls me anyway. He goes, ah, HRH are you crying? And the reason I chose that, and I was really deliberate about that, is because we are pulling people on contractors to help. So for me, it's embracing that thing that there are just some things that I shouldn't be doing. There are just some things the Queen shouldn't be doing and that's okay, she just shouldn't be doing it. But there are other things and some of them are really menial and other things that it's really important that she shows up and she shows up diligently for that and with energy so that the people that have come to see the Queen feel like they're being seen as well, and they're not just being, that she's not just going through the motions.
Lawsie: Yeah.
Mel: I wanna make sure that I embody that energy this year. And I even in how I dress
Lawsie: I am looking forward to seeing that
Mel: What I've found for the last couple of years is I even slipped into that relaxed mode. I've dressed more casually than I ever have and I had a festival for my birthday this year and I bought outfits and I really went OTT. And I loved it. Like I felt myself totally embodied by how much I was dressing up. And it was that reminder too. And even when we were away overseas, I loved that. I loved the dressing-up part of it. So it was that reminder to me to really not care so much but to care about the right things, to be super intentional about what I shouldn't be doing, what I do care about, and really not to care about what others think because it's truly irrelevant.
Lawsie: Yeah.
Mel: Do you have a word Lawsie?
Lawsie: HRH hey?
Mel: I can just hear Adam go, oh God, help me now. Isn't she already?
Lawsie: Yeah. Exactly. No, I don't do the word thing. And I think this is one of those things where you and I are so different. Like you are the entrepreneur, you're big picture thinking, you are all of that. I am my happiest as an employee running along and doing all the doing.
Cause I've tried to do this a few times and I go, I just go back to the practical. So you already going, it's HRH. That's where I wanna direct my energy. There's all these things behind it. Like I'm just doing all of my things. So my default then, I think I've said the word like a thousand times already, is my word for the year can be adventure, but it doesn't mean anything. It's literally just the practical of that's actually what I wanna inject more into. But whether I have that as a word. It really doesn't matter cause I know it's almost become a value of mine where I'm like, no, that's just what I need to make sure I'm injecting into all of those things. And I don't need the word to remind me of that per se. Like adventure is a, what is it? A verb, a doing word as opposed to that sort of more aspirational title, I think like what you've got.
Mel: I've heard words like Soar and like definitely you can have a verb to be your word though, cause that could be the energy. So your energy can be the energy of imbued with adventure. I love it. Perfect.
Lawsie: Yep. So I will stay away, but I totally I absolutely get the value of it. Like I've picked up your phone like how many million times
Mel: I've got Duchess on my phone. Yeah.
Lawsie: On there, like I think it's actually a really cool thing, and for the right people that are that way, I can absolutely see the value and the benefit of it. Just for meI just go back to the practical and so it doesn't have that same.
Mel: And Tone's the same. Tone doesn't have a word. If I was to suggest that he had one, he would laugh at me, and that's that thing, right? You wanna grab the thing that will work for you and discard the stuff that doesn't.
And I hope when you've listened today you've really heard that with Lawsie and I. That both of us really value goals. Lawsie in that this is where I want to go, this is the thing, the project-based thing, that I really am working towards. And for me, it's that more process driven making sure that this is really what I want and that I'm on the page and everything is set up for that.
But wherever you fall in there just make sure you've created the system and the approach that it's not a New Year's resolution, but will actually take you to that life you want to.
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