Episode 344: Ask December You: The Time Travel Trick for Better Decisions

Episode 344.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 344.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
And by fax I mean what you have done or have not done in pursuit of your declared desire. Because that’s what a good goal or theme does, by the way. It leads you forward towards something you want, something you chose as meaningful.

Speaker2:
Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is the Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy’s goal is simple to teach you to understand why horses do what they do, as well as the action steps for creating clear, confident communication with your horses.

Speaker1:
Hi, I’m Stacy Westfall and I’m here to help you understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. Today I want to talk about doing a mid-year check in, why it’s useful, why I resist it, and why I do it anyway. Back in January, I recorded several podcasts about setting goals and choosing yearly themes. And many of you wrote and shared your goals with me, and some even asked if I would check in with you later in the year. Here I am checking in with you. So how’s it going? Let me be more specific without looking. Do you remember your one main goal? Or if you picked a theme this year without looking? Do you remember what it was? Just answering those questions will tell you a lot. When I first started doing this kind of work, years and years and years ago, setting goals, choosing themes, there were many years when I would get to the mid year and not be able to remember what I’d picked, especially the theme. That one took me a little longer to get hold of and that was a clear sign. It meant that I wasn’t interacting with the goal or the theme regularly enough to feel connected to it, and that makes me think of someone looking at a group of, let’s say, four horses in a pasture that are all the same color. I don’t care if you picture them in your head as all black or all sorrel or all bay.

Speaker1:
It doesn’t really matter. But just imagine they’re all the same color to the untrained eye, or someone who does not know those horses. They kind of all look the same. Hard to tell apart. But if it’s your group of sorrel horses, you know them. You’ve worked with them. You know how they move. It’s easy for you to tell them apart because you have a relationship with them. It’s the same with your goals or your yearly theme. If you’ve been interacting with it regularly, you won’t have a hard time identifying it or describing what your experience of it has been so far this year. Could be positive, could be negative, but you’ll have a relationship with it. So point number one of this podcast is this is your baseline. Can you answer the question. Have you interacted with your goal or your theme enough in the first half of the year that you can clearly identify it. If you haven’t, you might feel some resistance to even listening to this podcast. You might feel resistant to doing a mid year check in because at least when I went through it, somewhere in your mind, the idea of skipping the check in feels a little bit like skipping the pain of acknowledging that disconnect. But here’s what I have found to be true. I still know on some level the goal or the idea of a theme that I picked in January, even if I don’t choose to keep it front of mind, there’s this nagging sensation that I’m leaving something undone.

Speaker1:
And again, I’ve talked about it in other podcasts. I think that’s why people resist goals in general, because if you don’t set a goal, you can’t actually declare that you’re failing, but you also can’t really declare that you’re succeeding either. That’s the rub. So what I know is that when I choose to look at it, I have more options. The number two reason why you might resist doing a mid-year check in, this is what I run into, is that I will often resist pausing at the end of June, beginning of July, and doing a mid-year check in if I suspect I’m behind or not on track. It is so tempting to avoid looking. I experienced this slightly differently than the first point I made, because in this case, I know the goal, or I know the theme, and I still have the urge to not look too closely. Because if I sense that I can’t say I’m on track, then I kind of don’t want to look at all. Does that make sense? It’s almost like my brain’s like, no, don’t look in June, let’s give it till August. And then, you know, it’s going to happen in August, right? It’s going to be like, oh, we can push that off to September. October. So it’s almost like my mind is secretly keeping score. It knows what we’re after, but it wants to delay the factual looking until I think it might look a little bit better.

Speaker1:
If I were going to make this into an analogy. It would be almost like handling money, but real sloppy. So that would be knowing that you had money in the bank, but you’re not sure how much, and you kind of don’t want to look until you suspect maybe it’s improved. So definitely not last week because of what you just did shopping. And maybe next week after that payment comes in. If you contrast that with the idea of having a regular set aside time to reconcile your bank account, let’s say every month when you get your bank statement, that’s the difference between keeping your hands on your eyes, on your goal or your theme or not, and just kind of guessing and rolling with it. That’s what this mid-year check in is for me. It’s a time bound review point, and because it’s time bound, I don’t get to play the game of waiting until next month when maybe I’ve caught up a little bit more. I’m doing it end of June, beginning of July. This is also a chance for me to look at the facts and then bring things into alignment. Like actually make sure that I’m on the path I want to be on. Without this secret scorekeeping in the background waiting for it to feel like it’s an okay time. What I’d like you to see in both cases, whether you forgot your goal or you kind of know it, but you’re avoiding checking in with it for real.

Speaker1:
I want you to notice in both of those places that your emotions are what’s impacting your willingness to look at the facts. And by facts, I mean what you have done or have not done in pursuit of your declared desire. Because that’s what a good goal or theme does, by the way, it leads you forward towards something you want. Something you chose as meaningful. But the reality of setting goals in January is that you made an educated guess about how you were going to achieve that outcome, but it was just a guess. And that’s why a time bound check in is so important, because it gives you a chance to actually pause, look at what is working, look at what is not working, and look at what you have learned. Because from there you can then decide if your plans need to change. Which brings me to point number three. Changing the plan makes sense when you have more information, which you will between January and June, you’re going to have gathered more information one way or the other. When you have more information, you can often make a better plan. Here’s where people get stuck. They often cling to the January plan even when the facts have changed. Even when a adjusted path or a new path might get you where you want to go better.

Speaker1:
So how do you know if you’re changing the plan because you’re giving up, or because it got hard, or because you found a better way? You answered this question. Do you like your reasons? Do you like your reasons for changing? And one of the best ways I’ve found to really know if I like my reasons is by asking this. What would December me think about this decision I’m about to make in July? I even sent out an email recently with the exact subject line, what would December you think about this decision? It resonated because it helps you zoom out. It helps you gain perspective. I like to think of it as a form of time travel. You let your future self weigh in with your decisions right now. And I know I sound a little crazy, but the good news is you already do this more than you realize. Every time you say, I’ll be glad I did this. Like me, when I exercise, I’ll be glad I did this. That’s me now. Thinking about my future. Me who’s glad that I did it. Because me in the moment. Not so glad about the exercise, but me in the future is going to be glad I did the exercise today. And when you say I might regret that later, that’s also you listening to a version of your future self. What I’m asking you to do differently in this podcast is sit down and do this on purpose.

Speaker1:
So when you’re making decisions now, for me, this is almost July. Especially ones about adjusting your plans or redefining the things that you want to do or the path you’re going to take. Pause and ask what would December me think about this? Here are some of the responses that I got after sending out that email. One person wrote December me would be thrilled to know several of the questions that she faced have been answered and disappointed that the thesis wasn’t finished this spring and that I have not found a new horse. Even so, it’s good to remember the progress that has been made. That’s the kind of clarity that I’m looking for when I talk to December. Me it’s not about perfection. It’s not about a checklist. It’s about an accounting report from someone who knows the why behind the original goal. That’s what I’m letting this do. Another person wrote in and said, the thought that I have to report to my December me is, well, rather stimulating. I’m proud of what I’ve done so far and I want to continue being proud. That’s what it does for me too. It’s this different perspective change that I find really useful. And someone else wrote in to say my goals keep getting sidetracked due to my body not cooperating with me. I’m hoping after my surgery my knee will be healed and I’ll be able to sit on a horse for more than ten minutes.

Speaker1:
What I want you to hear in this is that she’s not abandoning her goal. She’s adjusting the time line. And can you hear inside of each of these? An answer to the question. Do you like your reasons? Would December you agree with the choices you’re making? Knee surgery does not sound fun, but for this person, it sounds like a good choice to get out of pain, and it’s helping her look forward to a better future. And so I would call that liking the reason for choosing this path, even though it sounds like she would have preferred a path without knee surgery. Yeah. Me too. And here’s one of my favorite replies. Thank you for checking in mid-year. I’m seriously going to implement this suggestion today. The new December Diane is now in action, and what she was implementing was literally the suggestion to sit down and ask yourself the December version of you, what to do now. So I love that she has December. Diane is now in action. I also recognize that sometimes people struggle with the idea of seeing things from the December point of view. I have a suggestion for you. A great way to get familiar with this mental time travel is to actually start by going back in time. I find it easier to sit here in June and look back at January. Me, who was setting goals and recognize what January me was thinking about, what I knew and what I didn’t know.

Speaker1:
I actually think going way back in time is even more interesting. For example, I remember writing a letter once with the intention of what would I tell myself if I could go back to the day that I graduated from high school. By sitting down and writing to high school. Me the day I was graduating from 20 years past that date. I found it easier for me to practice this time traveling exercise because I knew so much more after 20 years about the path that Stacy back in high school was about to travel, so I could actually give her some really good advice. I’ve also found that by writing to my past self, it’s made it easier for me to do that in reverse and to imagine myself in December giving myself advice right now. So just to recap, we’ve talked about doing a mid-year check in. I’ve explained several reasons why it can be really uncomfortable or why you might want to avoid it. And I shared my tip of thinking about things as you go forward. Would December me agree with this change to my plan, because it can help you be more clear and more confident as you make those decisions going forward. Now, I want to take this one step further by sharing a real example. Back in January, I recorded a podcast where I talked about the challenge of goal setting and why I pick a yearly theme each year.

Speaker1:
I’m going to play that podcast again. Now for a reminder of the importance of finding purpose inside your goal. My 2025 theme helped me start the year strong and now mid-year. I’m seeing it show up in areas of my life that I did not expect to see major changes in. My theme is keeping me grounded through change. And 2025 is definitely helping me reach my larger goal of learning more in the next four years than I did in the four years I spent in college. If you did this work goal work theme work back in January. Listen to this as a way to reflect on your theme and your goal. And if you didn’t do this work, listen and consider how it might benefit you, because mid-year can also be a new beginning. And I do have one more thing to add. At the very beginning of this audio, it’s especially funny to me because the weather here is 92 degrees with 54% humidity. Now here’s January me giving you a weather update. Brr. The actual temperature outside is 23 degrees and the feels-like temperature is eight degrees. I am okay dragging my feet. I’m slightly delaying heading outside. I am currently averaging about four hours a day in the barn working courses in this weather. And when I finish recording this, I’m going to head back out to ride Again. On days like this, it is important to know your why or your purpose.

Speaker1:
It’s very much needed in order to get myself moving and get out the door. The effort that it takes me to go from not moving to bundling up and walking out the door is the hardest thing that I do. Most days in weather like this, because in the morning when I go out to feed, it’s not that hard because I’m going out and I’m coming right back in. But when I have the intention of working multiple horses in this frigid weather, I need something more than just willpower. And for me, that’s a combination of purpose and process. I’m going to say it a different way. I need to know my why and what I’m going to create with that. This coming year. Here’s the question I have for you. Is your current Y strong enough to motivate you to do the hard things? If not, keep on listening. Okay, confession time when someone asks you about your 2025 goals, are you a. Yep. Here they are kind of person or a oh. Can everyone just quit talking about goals? No judgment. I’ve been in both of these places before, and because I’ve been there, I actually think that if you resist or hesitate to name a specific goal, it’s an indicator that you skipped a step. And when writers skip this step, they often have the experience of a goal feeling hollow or meaningless. And if you have a goal that feels hollow and meaningless, it’s going to be hard to pursue, which increases the likelihood of failing at that goal, which makes it even more likely for you to say, oh, stop talking about goals.

Speaker1:
And on top of this, as if that’s not enough, traditional goals tend to prioritize actions, not values. So if you are a writer who values something like relationship or connection, and someone says, what are your goals for 2025, it can be easier to simply say, I don’t set goals. Good news. What I’m talking about today has solved this problem for me. It has made it possible for me to find meaning inside of goals that once felt empty, like checklist items to me. I will share a very specific example from 2021. At the end of the podcast, and I’m also going to share the three simple steps that you can go through to join me on this meaningful journey of setting goals. It is January 2025. I don’t know when you’re listening to this, but right now I’m going through this process myself, and process is a great word to use here, and it also makes the challenge more clear. Many people who resist goal setting have a negative reaction to diving into a process, because what they want is less tangible. So if you desire mindfulness or connection, it can seem like goal setting is in competition with that. Like I can set this specific goal. To do this specific thing at this specific time or I don’t set a goal and I can be mindful.

Speaker1:
However, I promise they can complement each other. Here’s how I shared with you last week that my goal in the next four years is to learn more in that time period than I did during the four years that I spent in college. That’s an intention or a direction. It brings my awareness to something I want to do. The next thing I’m going to do is pick a theme for 2025. I haven’t actually settled on the theme yet. I will do that in the next few days. I’ve got some words floating around that I’m trying on, and this theme will be there as a guiding principle. I will pick a phrase or words that I want to learn about deeply, For example, back in 2021, my theme was relationship and results. So that year I wanted to focus on both these things that at times can seem like they are in conflict with each other, relationship and results. But my desire that year was to take something intangible like relationship, and I personally wanted to pit it against something which happened to be results in my world that was showing. I wanted to examine that all the way through 2021. So that deep desire that you have that might seem intangible, like connection that’s going to become your purpose. What it feels like to me is this theme becomes a measuring stick.

Speaker1:
It becomes the fuel. It’s the green light that says, yes, you’re on the right track, or it’s the red light that says, wait a minute, you’re losing the point. So if you find yourself resisting goals and the word process seems cold compared to what you’re seeking, like connection, then what you’re missing is that way that you can have purpose inside of your goal. And the best way I know how to keep that purpose at the forefront is by picking a yearly theme. Picking a theme and sticking with it for an entire year teaches you how to redirect your mind, how to keep coming back to that one word or that one phrase. Your mind may wander, and then your job is to keep coming back to that one word or that one phrase. As this common through line, you’ll learn to deepen your knowledge of that one word or that one phrase by sticking with it for an entire calendar year. I believe in this process so much that I wrote an article and published it over on my website. It’s titled Not Just Another Goal. Your Path to Meaningful Progress. In that article, I outlined this with more specific examples than what I’m going to give here in the podcast. And I also created a two page PDF worksheet where you can literally circle words that stand out to you, fill in the blank, and come up in three simple steps with your own custom yearly theme.

Speaker1:
When you are coming up with a theme, I see three specific steps in creating it. The first one is to identify what you’re seeking. I’m going to talk more about that in just a second. The second one is to try on different formats. I’ll give you some here. And again you can actually find a fill in the blank version of it over on that PDF. And number three, you’re going to need to decide how you’re going to touch it on a regular basis. So let’s go over the three steps. The first step is identify what you’re seeking. I actually find that this will come out of people oftentimes when they’re frustrated. So you’ve probably said this word to yourself or someone else when it feels like it’s missing, when something’s not going well. So you might have said something like, I wish I had more patience, I wish I was more focused. I just wish I trusted my horse more or my horse trusted me more. I wish we had a better relationship. I wish I felt more connection. Look for the words that come out of you when you’re frustrated and you feel that lack, that area of lack is often pointing to something you deeply crave. These are subjects that make great themes because relationship focused phrases are often what riders are craving, and when you choose to actually focus on them by picking a theme, it can become the foundation of making meaningful progress, not just completing a checklist.

Speaker1:
So let’s put this in action. What this means is that if you pick a specific, measurable goal, one that I talked about on the podcast last year was competing in the Tevis Cup Virtual. Let’s say that you listened to those podcasts back in 2024, and you’ve decided that you’re going to ride in the Tevis Cup virtual in 2025. Then that specific, measurable goal of completing 100 miles in 100 days would become the goal. And the measuring stick of success wouldn’t just be the miles. It would be how you applied your theme to those miles. So imagine completing the goal of 100 miles with the focus on the year of discovery, or growing confidence, or creating joy or progress over perfection. So you still can set a specific, measurable goal like the Tevis Cup virtual 100 miles in 100 days. But instead of measuring the success purely in yes or no to the miles, you would actually be measuring the success in how well you did at focusing on joy while completing the 100 miles. Do you see how that shift changes everything? The second step in the process is choosing how you want to phrase your theme on the PDF, I outline that I typically choose either something that’s like the year of so the year of patience, or an action phrase like creating joy or something that sounds more like a guiding principle. Progress over perfection.

Speaker1:
What I know for sure is the phrase only needs to make sense to you. It matters more that it resonates with you, that you connect with it. Like I described in last week’s podcast, that matters more than whether or not it makes sense to anyone else, because the point of this is to focus yourself on one aspect or one way of being that you want to study for this year. So one of my students, one year, chose the year of patience, and if you chose the year of patience, you might choose to do exactly the same things in 2025 that you did in 2024. But the difference this year will be that you’re going to study patience while you’re doing it. Or maybe you choose the year of patience and you choose to do new things, and then you’ll be studying the year of patience. Either way, because you’re going to keep reminding yourself that you valued learning more about patience or impatience enough to come up with the phrase the year of patience. When people are resistant to setting goals. I’ll say it again it’s often because the goals seem hollow or shallow, and they will if you don’t give them a purpose or something bigger. For me, identifying a theme has been key to me enjoying my goals regardless of the outcome. The theme is a set of words that helps me remember the meaning that I’m searching for while I pursue my specific, measurable goal.

Speaker1:
So back in 2021, my theme was relationship and results. I chose it early in the year, and that happened to be the year that I ended up showing Willow at the AQR World Show in both Western dressage and traditional or classical dressage. The show, the AQR World Show is in November, so I had been practicing my theme all year, and I know without a doubt that it helped me at that show. Here are a few ways that it changed the way I approached that show. First, I chose to take only one horse. Usually, if I’m going to haul that far and go to something that big, I like to take multiple horses. But because my focus had been on relationship and results, I chose to take only one horse. Then while I was at the show, I paid attention to relationship in two areas relationship with Willow and relationship with myself. The aspect of the relationship with Willow was easy, because that’s an area where I’ve always prioritized my relationship with my horses, but the real weak area for me has usually been prioritizing relationship with myself. So even though relationship with myself sounds a little bit woo woo, I was actually able throughout the year to learn more about what that meant. I was able to make it measurable, so taking only one horse was actually something that was pro me. It was for me. It was better for my relationship with me.

Speaker1:
What it did was it made it easier for me to have a little more time, which meant I could plan my meals instead of just eating whenever and whatever. If you’ve ever been to a horse show and your main meals came from grabbing candy out of candy jars, you know what I’m talking about. No. This time I was planning my meals and prioritizing them because that’s part of my relationship with myself. Same thing with sleep. Instead of just grabbing sleep whenever I could and thinking that I could probably make up for at some later date, I actually planned my sleep when I was going to go to bed, and I made myself stick to it because it was about the relationship with myself, which also meant that I couldn’t say yes to everything. I had to say no to some other things, to say yes to my meal plan and my sleeping plan. And then really, one of the even bigger things for me that I had never done before this show was journaling. Not just at the end of the day or beginning of the day, I was journaling. Between my rides. So I was journaling at night before I went to bed. I was journaling in the morning when I got up, but a really big switch for me that was very much relationship based was journaling between my rides. And what that did for me is it gave me a very tangible way to empty out everything.

Speaker1:
I was thinking about what just happened and get very clear about what I was about to do. And so especially at a show where it’s really easy to focus only on the results, what the judge said worked or didn’t work. My theme helped me see the deeper areas of learning that were available to me. The environment of being at a horse show. Tested my ability to see and act on my theme. This is the power that themes have. Why am I headed out to ride when it feels like eight degrees? I know I’m riding on these days because I can see how each one of these rides moves me closer to the person I want to become. By the end of 2025, the goals that I want to achieve in 2025 have not been set yet, but I do know that my goals will involve physical sports type aspects, whether that turns into training, whether that’s trail riding, a lot of miles, whether that’s ranch riding my horses and I will be involved in some high level physical sports. So it requires a certain level of fitness and skills that I need to start building now in order to meet those requirements in the summer. And I’m also headed out in the freezing cold because I’m currently physically able to. There have been other times when I’ve been sick or under the weather and I can’t. But on this day when I’m physically able to, I will go out there.

Speaker1:
And because I have prioritized relationship in the past, I also realize I might run into some challenges where I might not be physically able to ride. But if I put my time in now when I can, even though it’s uncomfortable, and even though it’s hard, I know that I will be more mentally and physically prepared for the more fun days in the summer of 2025. So remember, I created a worksheet that makes coming up with your theme really straightforward. I give you ten examples of the most common areas that people choose to focus on. You could just circle one and that could become your word. And then I give you a fill in the blank template for how you can test it in three different formats. That. And then I also share the ways that I keep it at the front of my mind. If you’re new to goal setting or very resistant to goal setting, simply creating and applying your theme could be your 2025 goal, or your theme can be used to add fuel to your specific, measurable goals like it does for me. I would love to hear yours. Once you create it, go ahead and send me an email and let me know. Maybe your theme will show up here on a future podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m going to go. Bundle up. Go outside and ride some horses and I’ll talk to you again in the next episode.

Speaker2:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy’s podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall. Com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

Sonix is the world’s most advanced automated transcription, translation, and subtitling platform. Fast, accurate, and affordable.

Automatically convert your mp3 files to text (txt file), Microsoft Word (docx file), and SubRip Subtitle (srt file) in minutes.

Sonix has many features that you’d love including enterprise-grade admin tools, share transcripts, world-class support, generate automated summaries powered by AI, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.