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January Reset Day 2: Create Your Vision
20 Plays5 days ago
Welcome to the January Reset for High Achieving Women! This five day transformative program meets daily at 10am EST the first full week of January to support ambitious women in starting the New Year off strong with a renewed sense of purpose, actionable goals, and a plan to thrive both personally and professionally. If you’d like to attend live tomorrow, register here {https://www.linkedin.com/events/januaryresetday3-takestock7281421169096855552/theater/}.
In Day 2’s session, we worked on imagining your ideal future so you can create your 2025 vision. Define what you want to look, feel, and be different a year from now—and in the long run.
Subscribe {subscribepage.io/janreset} to receive reminders, recordings, and worksheets for the rest of the January Reset.
Connect with Leanna on Linkedin {https://www.linkedin.com/in/leannalaskey/}.
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Background
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to the Executive Coach for Moms podcast, where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy while simultaneously leading people at work and at home. I'm your host, Leanne Alaska McGrath, former tech exec turned full-time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic and certified executive coach. Hi, everyone.
Introduction to January Reset Program
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome to this special bonus episode of the January reset.
00:00:36
Speaker
The January Reset for High Achieving Women is a five-day transformative program to support ambitious women in starting the new year off strong with a renewed sense of purpose, actionable goals, and a plan to thrive both personally and professionally. I do this every year and this year I decided to do it on LinkedIn Live and to then share the recording here on the podcast so that everybody in the world can listen to it and benefit from what I'm teaching.
00:01:05
Speaker
If you would like to receive the associated worksheets, there's a worksheet for each day to help you in your practice to setting you up for an intentional year to create the kind of life and career that you want to this year.
Purpose and Encouragement for January Reset
00:01:21
Speaker
then just go to the show notes and you can sign up for it. So I hope you will join me all week long. I know that it will help to set you up for an amazing year. And now onto today's episode.
00:01:38
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Welcome to day two of the January reset. I am So excited to see everybody here today. And I'm so excited to be talking about this topic today. Today is definitely in the top ones because today we're going to talk about dreaming big. and looking at your vision and creating your vision for not just 2025 but beyond so that later in the week we can talk about what steps you want to take in 2025 to work toward that vision. Let's go ahead and jump in because we've got a lot to cover today and I appreciate all of you so much for being here today.
00:02:16
Speaker
What is the January reset? If you missed yesterday, I just want to kind of give you a quick overview of what that is. So I started this program last year and we had an amazing group of women come together to really kind of develop their plan for the year
Challenges Faced by High Achievers
00:02:31
Speaker
ahead. And this year I decided to do it in ah with a wider audience. So doing, I'm doing it um live on LinkedIn and YouTube and Facebook. So.
00:02:41
Speaker
You may be joining from any one of those platforms. Welcome. I'm also putting it out on my podcast so you may be listening later. Thank you for listening. I'm just so glad that all of you are here and I have designed this so that you can change your life this year and create the kind of life that you want to. That was my wish for you. You are in the right place if you are a high achiever.
00:03:03
Speaker
who has high expectations of yourself, and that may lead to some overworking or workaholic tendencies. And I think that a lot of times we have kind of a tendency to let work take over our lives, and then we kind of feel like we're missing out on everything else. You might feel like there's more that you want to do with your life, but you kind of feel stuck in a cycle, whether that's a cycle of work, parent, sleep, eat,
00:03:32
Speaker
sometimes sleep, sometimes not repeat. And you just kind of go over and over again, repeating the same day over and over and just wishing that you could make a change and feeling like inside of you, there's something telling you that there's more, like there's more that you should be doing or want to be doing with this one and only precious life.
Leanne's Personal Journey and Transition
00:03:53
Speaker
You feel like you can never stop though. You feel like you're always going and charging forward. And there's just really never any time to step back. It feels like if the weight of the world is on your shoulders and if you stop, you're afraid of what might happen because everything might just come crumbling down. And finally, you might even feel afraid to dream. You might have a hard time letting yourself dream because you feel tethered by your current circumstances, whatever they may be, maybe, maybe You have a mortgage or maybe you have children or a partner or just ah you you're in a job that looks really good on paper. You're in a situation that looks really good on paper, but you feeling maybe out of alignment and maybe that you want something different, but you think, who am I to want that? Who am I to to wish for more when I have everything so great? So if any of those or all of those describe you, then you're definitely in the right place today.
00:04:49
Speaker
How do I know that? Because I've definitely been there. I've felt all of these things. And now I am a coach for high achieving women and moms. And I talk to you all the time. And this is what I hear, that these are your experiences.
00:05:03
Speaker
So a little bit about me, if you're new to me, I know that there are many of you who I know and have known from different parts of my life and many of you who are new to me. So a little bit about me, I'm a mom, a business owner and a podcast host. I am a recovering perfectionist and workaholic. And so I, at some point along my journey realized that I wanted to live differently. So it was probably about four years ago where I decided to make ah pretty big life change because I just realized I wasn't feeling in alignment with how I was spending my time versus what my priorities were and are. And I decided to to make some changes to my life. So um I'll talk a little bit more about that today. But I am now living my dream. I am a certified executive career and life coach, and I help other women live their dreams now.
00:05:56
Speaker
In my past life, which many of you I know from there, I was a former startup exec, so I was a corporate executive and executive mom. And I spent about 12 years building and leading companies and global teams, did lots of company-wide change management initiatives and the least fun of all, M&A.
Success Stories and Offers
00:06:19
Speaker
So that's a little bit about me. To just let you know kind of what you can expect to walk away with this week is a little bit more or a lot more clarity about what you want and about what's most important to you. A clear vision for the year ahead and beyond.
00:06:36
Speaker
And that's really what we're going to focus on today. And then also a plan for how to get there. And that's what we'll focus on. And I just want to share with you, Carrie attended this program last year and she posted this last night. I woke up to this this morning and it just made my whole day. So thank you, Carrie, for sharing this. But the reason why I wanted to share it with all of you in case you didn't see it is because Carrie is an example of what's possible for you whenever you invest in yourself.
00:07:03
Speaker
So Carrie said, my schedule may be a bit more complicated this year, but honestly, it's because of this program. Thank goodness I took the time to invest in myself at this time last year. Now I am confident in my decisions and investing in myself. Thank you, Leanna. Our connections have helped me achieve my goals. It just makes my heart so happy. And that's what I want for all of you. And I just wanted to share this because I want you to know that that's possible for you. I hope that at this time next year, you're saying, oh my gosh, I took 2025.
00:07:33
Speaker
It was the year that I transformed my life. I know Carrie's been on a very consistent workout schedule. She just achieved an amazing new job and promotion. And this is all while she is parenting three kids as a single mom. So you're amazing, Carrie. And thank you so much for sharing your story like so that you can inspire all of us and everyone here today to know that this is possible for you as well. So one thing I want to offer before we jump in is a free gift that I have for you.
00:08:02
Speaker
for attending. So it is a one-hour 2025 vision call for us to kind of dive in further for you to get some feedback. Obviously, I'm sharing all these concepts today and this week. I'm going to be going through a lot of information. And if you would like kind of a more customized one-on-one conversation where we can go through all of the things that you're learning, all of the things that you are reflecting on, and just you know, bounce ideas and get some feedback. I can also share how I can help you ah throughout the year in achieving these goals. I would love, love, love to talk to you. So this is the 2025 Vision Call. You can go ahead and just pick a time on my calendar and I would love to talk
Daily Schedule and Exercises
00:08:43
Speaker
to you. Okay.
00:08:44
Speaker
This week, I am live every morning at 10 a.m. Eastern time. Yesterday was day one and it was take stock. And the question, we have different questions each day. And yesterday's question was, where are you now?
00:08:58
Speaker
And today is day two, create your vision. And so we're going to get into a new question today. And then the next three days we will continue. So I hope that you're able to attend every day. If you can't, that's why there are replays. There are worksheets every day, but especially today there is a worksheet because there are so many exercises that we're going to cover today and work through. So I hope that you will get all of that information. Just go ahead and Subscribe and I will send it all to you. All right. Our question for today is where would you like to be? In coaching, we have these four meta questions. The first one was where are you now? And that's what we worked on yesterday. And now the next question is where would you like to be?
00:09:45
Speaker
I'm going to take you through a series of five exercises. And in the interest of time, I'm going to go through them a little bit more quickly than I would in, say, a workshop. And that's usually whenever I go through these is we work through them together and we all share what we're writing and things like that. But let me just give you some options is to choose your own adventure of kind of how you want to interact with this lesson.
00:10:07
Speaker
If you want to just listen and kind of like let it wash over you and think about the answers to the questions as they come up and just leave it in your head. That's an option. Another option is to write down some things as we're going through today.
00:10:20
Speaker
And then another option to kind of take it a little bit further is to listen to this on replay and pause as we're going and actually take the time and and write it down. Maybe block out 30 minutes or an hour on your calendar to actually listen back to it and or just go through the worksheet with the questions. I think with anything, it's kind of like what you put in is what you get out of it. So exercise one.
00:10:45
Speaker
is values and priorities.
Living in Alignment with Values
00:10:47
Speaker
I think this is always the best place to start and there are lots of values exercises we could do but today I'm just going to ask you to answer one question and that is what is most important to me in this season? And so this is really building on yesterday's exercises as you were reflecting some things may have come up to kind of inform your answers to this question. So And one thing I just want to go back to is just like we talked about yesterday, judgment is not going to help you in these exercises. What's most important to you might be totally different than what's most important to anybody else. You need to be really clear about what's important to you without judging yourself about that.
00:11:31
Speaker
What's most important to me in this season, whatever season of life you're in, whether you are in a season with young children or children about to graduate or you are in retirement or getting close to it, whatever season you are in, I think different seasons call for different things and different things are important in different seasons and there's nothing wrong with that.
00:11:55
Speaker
When I was single with no children, what was most important to me was very different from what's important to me in this season with a young child. It's really largely why I made a huge career change because what I was so passionate about for 15 years that lit me up and I just absolutely loved and it really kind of propelled me forward in my career. It didn't feel as important to me any anymore at at some point. and other things in my life started to feel more important and I was just starting to feel out of alignment. and so I think this is what it means to live a values aligned life is that we are regularly checking in and making sure that we're spending our time in alignment with our priorities in each season of our lives. and That might look different depending on the season that we're in. okay so That's the first exercise and first question. The second exercise is begin with the end in mind.
00:12:50
Speaker
This is actually habit number two. um If you remember the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, it might've been the first self-help book I read a long, long time ago. And the habit number two is called begin with the end in mind. And I love this exercise of going to the end and looking back. So I'm going to invite you to go all the way to the end of your life. Hopefully it's a very long time away and you're super old, but let's just say you're at the end of your life. And so when you're looking back on your life, what do you notice? And particularly in this season, how do you feel about how you chose to spend your time? What do you feel really proud of?
00:13:30
Speaker
What do you wish you had done differently? We have a tendency to regret the things that we didn't do much more than the things we did, because even if we regret something we did,
00:13:43
Speaker
I think often what we really regret is what we didn't do afterwards, that we didn't apologize, that we didn't make amends, we didn't attempt to repair. So it's really you know kind of thinking about those things that we might regret if we didn't do them. I think that's another good question to ask yourself. I read this book a while ago called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, and I actually loved it so much. I did a podcast episode on it. It's episode 27 if you want to go back and listen to it. It's called Go to the End and Look Back.
00:14:11
Speaker
and This woman worked in palliative care, so she was with patients that were at the end of their lives and they had lots of conversations and it always came up, biggest regrets. And the number one and number two top regrets that people say say at the end of their lives is number one, I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
00:14:37
Speaker
And I think that one is so powerful to think about because we have the ability to make that change right now if we so choose. I think a lot of times we get on career paths, we get on life plans that are kind of set in motion from forces outside of ourselves. Maybe our parents, maybe our culture, maybe our society and our societal expectations.
00:15:04
Speaker
And it doesn't always feel true to us. And I believe that we are all put on this earth for a very specific reason and that our jobs as humans is to figure out what that is and then realize it.
Visualizing Future and Setting Goals
00:15:18
Speaker
and do the thing that we are meant to do. And I think for so many of us, unfortunately, we are doing the thing that we think we should be doing. We are doing the things that we everybody else is expecting of us instead of what we know to be true inside of us.
00:15:34
Speaker
And so that is what I really want to invite you today to be thinking about is what are the things that you want to be doing? What are the things that you feel called to be doing that maybe nobody else is doing or nobody else expects you to do? Or maybe they would be mad at you if you did it or you believe that or you know you believe that it would cause problems for you. But what is it that that you are specifically put on this earth to do in this one and only precious life?
00:16:03
Speaker
So that's the first regret. The second regret is I wish I hadn't worked so hard. And this one hits home for me as a recovering workaholic. And it might for you as well if you are spending a lot of your time working, because at the end, this is what a lot of people are saying is they just wish they hadn't spent their time in that way.
00:16:22
Speaker
And I think it's powerful to go out and look back because it widens our lens. I think when we're in it in the day-to-day, we just have such a narrow lens. If you think about like you're looking right down at what's in front of you, and it's just so hard sometimes to pick our heads up and zoom out and look from a different perspective. Sometimes think about like a camera, like just putting on the wide lens. You just see so much more. That's why it's so important to go out into a much wider lens and look back. So I love this exercise for that. And this is something we spend a lot of time doing. And coaching is really looking at things from different angles.
00:17:04
Speaker
Okay, exercise three, I know these are big questions. Exercise three is what do you want? I'm picturing that in the notebook where he's just like, what do you want? And I think it's such a hard question for us to answer, especially as women, because so much has put on to us so many expectations by other people from society. And we are also taught that our jobs are to make sure that everyone around us is happy and happy with us. And so a lot of times it's really hard to answer this. What do I actually want?
00:17:38
Speaker
But I think it's a really important question. I want to read a quote from Oprah. One of the things I love about Oprah is that she's talked to so many amazing people and she's learned so much. And the way that she explains it, it's like she's learned all these lessons and she synthesizes it. So here's what she said. People get to where they want to go because they know where they want to go. Most people don't know where they want to go.
00:18:05
Speaker
Most people, a lot of people are being driven by what they think they should do, what other people think they should do, what they have carried in their mind for a long time that they should do. But the most important question you could ever ask yourself is, what do I really want? If you answer no other question today, I think this is the question to answer. What is it that I really want?
00:18:28
Speaker
What do I want to do with my one and only precious life? What would I like to create in my life? What legacy would I like to leave? And what is your big dream? All right. So these are some big questions to ask yourself. And hopefully that's stirring up a lot in you, especially if you're living a life that maybe is not one that you wrote for yourself. And if you're,
00:18:55
Speaker
the main character in a story but someone else wrote it. So let's go to exercise four, your future self. So once you have kind of gotten clear on what it is that you want, what is your big dream. And by the way, I say big dreams, and you may be already living your big dream, or you may feel like, actually, I don't have a huge dream. My biggest dream is just that I can walk my kid to school every morning, or I can um get them off the bus in the afternoon, or that I can have dinner with my partner once a week, or
00:19:32
Speaker
whatever it might be. So maybe there are these like pieces that you envision and it doesn't encompass like a huge dream. And that's okay too. There's nothing wrong with the size of your dream where again, we're not judging, we're not judging your dream. But also if you do have a big big dream, I want to make sure that you are giving yourself permission to access it.
00:19:53
Speaker
So let's talk about your future self. Let's think about once you achieved your big dream, or maybe once you're living the life that you've always imagined, I want you to close your eyes and picture yourself once you're there. So you're in that life. What I want to invite you to do is just to look around and notice a few things. Where are you? What does it look like where you are?
00:20:18
Speaker
Who's there with you and what kind of relationships do you have with them and who's not there? What are you wearing? What are you doing? What are you thinking about? And most importantly, how are you feeling? I think all of these questions are really important, but perhaps the most important is how are you feeling about yourself, about your life, about the people in your life, about your situation, about everything, and how is it different?
00:20:46
Speaker
from how you're feeling most of the time now. I think that whenever we think about our future self, we can start to embody some of those components as we get more and more clear about it.
Creating a Vision for 2025
00:21:02
Speaker
And also we can make decisions from that place. So whenever we are kind of thinking about this future self, this future version of ourselves, and we have a decision in front of us, we're going to use the information that we have. But one data point might be to
00:21:20
Speaker
Think about your future self and ask, how would she approach this? How would she show up to this situation? what would she be considering as factors in this decision? And as you start to be clear about where you want to be and what your future self looks like, you can start to live into that. So it's not like you know all of a sudden and you just are suddenly this future person. It's you know small steps along the way to start living into that.
00:21:53
Speaker
And then finally, exercise five. So these are a lot of exercises and thank you for sticking with it. I am so excited to hear what you create from this. Exercise five is your vision statement. So bringing it all together and writing it down.
00:22:09
Speaker
and As you think about for 2025, if it feels too big, just choose one or two areas to focus on in 2025. We feel like, I want to change everything. That is fine. and Also, the best way to do that is to start with one thing and to really just start to get clear about what is it that you want? What do you want to create in your life? Specifically, what do you want to create in 2025? Then also, I think it's helpful to write it in the present tense.
00:22:37
Speaker
So I'm going to read my vision statement for this year, for 2025. I wrote this at the beginning of this year. I go through all of these exercises every year to help me create the life that I want to create. So here's mine, and I'm going to share it with you. At the beginning of each year, I always set two to three goals or intentions. And mine this year, I have a business one, a fitness one, and just a life balance one.
00:23:01
Speaker
And I chose with my vision statement to really lean into the business one. So I think a lot of times we think we have to boil the ocean and we have to include everything. And that's not true. Sometimes simple is better. Maybe just focus on one thing for this year or one thing to really set your vision and sights on. So here's mine. I am a successful entrepreneur and creator with a thriving seven-figure coaching and consulting business.
00:23:29
Speaker
I partner with individuals and organizations to positively impact the lives of executive women and moms. I am in high demand and am regularly sought after to speak, coach, and consult. I do this while maintaining a healthy balance and without missing out on precious time with my family and myself. I feel aligned, connected, engaged, and unstoppable. I am in love with my life.
00:23:53
Speaker
That last sentence, every time I read it, I get this huge smile on my face because I am in love with my life already and I will be in love with my life when I create this. And I think that whenever we write a vision statement, ah some of it might already be true. And that's really our work from yesterday is where are you now and looking at some of the things that we love about our life now so we can make sure to carry it into our future.
00:24:18
Speaker
So I read this every morning out loud to hear myself say it. And this is my first time sharing it with other people. So thank you for being a witness to that. So write yours, and then I would encourage you to revisit it, to remind you to live into it.
00:24:36
Speaker
All right, that's what I wanted to share today. I know there's so much, um but like I said, I want to give you everything to set you up for the best year possible and the best life possible. Again, I invite you to join me for a vision call. That way we can work through this together. What we'll be doing on that vision call is figuring out what do you want your vision for the year to be. So I can walk you through it. We can spend a lot more time specifically on your situation and what you're looking for.
00:25:06
Speaker
As a reminder, we're meeting again tomorrow at 10 a.m. Eastern time on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. And I hope you'll join me live. If you can't join me live, catch the replay or catch it on the podcast. As a recap, yesterday's question was, where are you now? And today's question that we looked at was, where would you like to be? I hope that some of the exercises today were helpful in helping you to figure that out for yourself and to start to create the life that you want.
00:25:35
Speaker
I would love to connect to you. I would love to hear from you and hear how it's going for you as you are setting yourself up here at the beginning of 2025 for an amazing, amazing year. And that is my wish for
Conclusion and Next Steps
00:25:47
Speaker
you.
00:25:47
Speaker
that you create the vision of your life that you genuinely want, that you want that nobody else is creating for you, that you're creating it for yourself, and that you start to live into that. In any way that I can help, please don't hesitate to reach out. I will see you all tomorrow. Thank you so much for tuning in today. We'll see you at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning, and we'll be talking about overcoming barriers. Thank you so much. Have a good one, everyone.
00:26:17
Speaker
Thanks so much for tuning in to the Executive Coach for Moms podcast. Please like, subscribe, or follow the show so you'll be notified when the next episode is available. I hope you'll join me again next time. Take care.