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2026 Overview
9 Plays3 days ago
In this episode, Tracey outlines her goals and intentions for making an impact as a creator in 2026. For her, that means considering leadership, writing, publishing and podcasting and collaborating to build two important non-profit companies.
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Transcript
Introduction and Leadership Focus
00:00:00
Speaker
My name is Tracey Ariel and I am Unapologetically Canadian.
00:00:07
Speaker
My word of the year is leadership. And leadership to me is the inspiring person that sets the vision and the strategy for moving forward and doesn't necessarily implement that strategy. And so I'm going to be working on stepping back from a lot of the implementation that I'm doing both in the co-op and in my
Creative Planning and Seasonal Focus
00:00:32
Speaker
own projects. And I'm going to be taught basically focusing on the impact that I'm making as a creator personally, and the impact that I'm making in creating a nonprofit co-op that really works and a and nonprofit,
00:00:53
Speaker
educational company about electromagnetic fields uh that actually works and i think that's going to be super fun i'm looking forward to basically thinking about it in terms of seasons i actually think about seasons in terms of canada having eight seasons so i divide up the year into roughly six week ah ah sections.
Seasonal Transitions and Project Planning
00:01:22
Speaker
So basically January and the first two weeks of February are completely different to me in terms of a season than the last week of February and March. Because in the last week of February and March, it you end up getting a lot of birds coming back. You end up getting
00:01:42
Speaker
Right now is deep winter. It's cold, it's dark, ah it's snowy. Basically we're in deep winter. By the end of February and in March, the sun is starting to come out, the birds are starting to come out. You can actually get quite a few hot days. that You can't even ski anymore.
00:02:03
Speaker
It really is a different period of time. And also you're so busy starting to plan for the summer that you almost feel like you're in summer. So it really is ah late winter basically. March 21st is the official beginning of spring.
00:02:20
Speaker
And so from March 21st through until the end of April, it's often snowy and rainy and mixture like it's really wet and and miserable. my egg do not like early spring. But late spring is extraordinary. The sun comes out, I can get my bike out, I can even start planting peas and The birds are back and it's basically late spring is almost as good as early summer.
00:02:49
Speaker
So this year I'm going to be planning everything in terms of seasonality and in terms of creative impact.
Health and Personal Goals
00:03:00
Speaker
um And so on creative impact, um obviously the podcast is one of those things. I also have I'm going to be focusing on each section is going to have a different creative project. So right now I'm focusing on genealogy workshops. I have one to give at the end of this month and I want to have the ones that I've given before in so that you can actually get them online and follow them because I think it's really important to share. And so, um,
00:03:33
Speaker
I have three books that I want to get published. I really want to make sure that my creative life gets renewed this year. On the health side, I want to continue fasting frequently and feasting well. I want to do strength cleaning treatment training as I've been doing three times a week.
00:03:57
Speaker
cardio three times a week and two long three-day fasts to reset my mitochondria. I'm super excited about that. And I want to get my vaccines and I want to test my biomarkers so that I can actually build habits, but with some actual knowledge about what it is that I'm like, you know, I've been fooling around with supplements and with all sorts of things. I don't actually have a scientific background or scientific um stats to to really do that well. So that is on the plan for this year, 2026. On the social life, I wanna take at least one full day off every week and at least one, two day,
00:04:45
Speaker
full day weekend every month.
Business Systems and Growth Management
00:04:47
Speaker
It doesn't sound a lot for the people who have every weekend off, but as an entrepreneur, I haven't had every weekend off for years and I don't really care. about I don't really care to have it. I mean, so much of what I'm doing is working for nonprofits and for the public. I consider that my volunteer time. So I'm not always um oh my at my day job.
00:05:08
Speaker
And so I do not want to slack off. At the same time, I want to learn to relax more and back. off So that's the note under the health area. Under all of my businesses, I want to set up systems. I'm really going to be focusing on systems and turning systems into habits. So for bookkeeping particularly and training and marketing, um the regular activities need to be put into a system so that they don't end up taking more than my of my time than they need. And I did this very well for one of the companies last year. i don't i didn't do it well for my other activities, but I'm going to transfer some of the things I learned last year into the new activities. And I think that will really help.
00:05:55
Speaker
If you read James Clear's Atomic Habits, you know that you have to set the conditions up for habits and that those habits are what create results.
00:06:07
Speaker
And so I really want to focus on doing that. And of course, that means setting up KPIs for all of the activities. and That's why I was talking about three times, you know, specific three times a week. In terms of systems, I have three systems that I need to set up. um i really want to
00:06:30
Speaker
I really want to lead a team that knows exactly what direction it's going in. And that will help us manage growth and change the co-op is growing so fast we're creating a family food hub in verdun and it's really fun and there are three main people that we're aiming at we have people who use our food banks and our free fridges and they have they have specific needs but then we also have people who really love quebec products and they come for to find the new products and and the kinds of, basically the kinds of things that that local entrepreneurs are are are growing or creating in in the area of food. And then we have a whole other group that are coming for health reasons. They want our gluten-free products. They want our vegan and products. They want some of the really nutritional products that we
Global Awareness and Relationship Building
00:07:29
Speaker
have. They want fresh farm food. It's really, really fun.
00:07:33
Speaker
um On the personal side, i have two big trips coming up this year. We're going to Japan. The entire family is going for two weeks at the end of April. And then the whole family is going to Cancun for a wedding in November. I'm super excited about that. I'm really glad that it's keeping my eyes on the bigger world, as I mentioned last year. i i don't want to forget.
00:07:56
Speaker
It's very, very easy when you're working completely locally and you know walk to work, I work within in my own little neighborhood to to forget that Canadians and and local creators here have links and collaborations with people around the world. I also want to keep building the collaboration with the Kenyans. feel like they are new friends in my life and I want to keep building our relationship somehow with them. I haven't actually come up with the plan of what I want to create in that area, but that's definitely going to be something that I want to happen.
00:08:36
Speaker
um On the relationship side, i'm really I'm super happy. My husband and i have been married for more than 30 years now. It's like mind blowing to me that we can create a partnership that's so deep and so, ah longstanding. And obviously, I, I want to keep building on that with him. Uh, he's really the most wonderful person ever. And, um, I think that I'm so lucky to have him in my life and I want to keep building that. I also have two amazing children who are now adults and, uh, continuing to, um,
00:09:10
Speaker
continuing a wonderful family life with them is cool. We've got some sister trips coming up too. and like the Japan trip includes my sisters, but we're also doing spa day together with my aunt. And it's just been building the relationships with the family has been super, super important.
Tools for Goal Setting and Time Management
00:09:32
Speaker
ah So those are my directions for the coming year. ah I don't know what your directions are, but I'd love to hear about it. Do you have a specific way that you do your planning? Do you have, I created two new tools, well, I actually re-painted I've recommitted to two tools to make this planning and to make my goals set in front of me.
00:09:57
Speaker
One is I'm doing the five minute journal again. at the beginning of the day, I talk about my three things that I'm grateful for. At the end of the day, I talk about three things that went well. And this is my attempt to make sure that my brain does not go into the negative you know looking at the negative side and having all of the problems that you're trying to solve be top of mind all the time instead of the things that you've accomplished or the things that you're proud of or the things that you're grateful for or the people that you love.
00:10:28
Speaker
I think that's a really good. I'm super happy that I've instituted that and I'm really happy. I'm really i know that it'll make a difference because when I was doing it regularly, it did make a difference.
00:10:42
Speaker
I've also, there's a habit tracker where you count, actually, you you put the number of times you want to do for five big goals that month, and then you count in the month with a check mark the days that you actually do those things. And so I've actually implemented that as well. And that is ah super cool because it keeps in front of you your goals on a very,
00:11:10
Speaker
visceral level. It's another, I mean, both of them are handwritten. They don't have anything to do with technology. I'm getting, and I'm keeping, my calendar is super important. So I'm actually moving and I'm also actually I just put up a wall calendar and those two things i actually made a mistake on my wall calendar i i I set it up the way that I use my count my my my calendar in my phone and I put all of the tasks in and when I would do them and that was actually a mistake it took away the big picture
00:11:47
Speaker
view that i want to have and so for February I'm going to actually and actually I'm going to change the rest of January to put the big goals in and then the little time periods just as blocks of time and not actually put what I'm going to do in those blocks of time because I want to keep the big picture there I am a creator and so I'm really inspired by Leila and Alex Hermozzi's version of the maker versus manager
00:12:20
Speaker
ah Time basically setting up your week and if you're a maker, you set up your week to have big four hour blocks of time to actually make something. And if you're a manager, you you set up your time with lots of meetings, but both parties have certain time setting aside for makeup time. Like basically so you can actually managers have a full day, for example, to make something. and ah makers have a full day set aside for all of the meetings that they have to attend.
Inspiration and Closing Thoughts
00:12:52
Speaker
i am going to try and implement that. I think it's a brilliant system. And if I can make that work, I know that I'll get more correct created in 2016 than earn in Let's go years. um Anyway, in than I did in And so I'm super excited about that as well.
00:13:11
Speaker
um ah The other person that I've been super inspired by is Joanna Penn. She is a UK writer who sets up her time in big, like she's always talking about very big projects. Like right now she's doing a master's at university. And i mean, um she's very good about strategizing about how to make a creative business as a solopreneur. And so i started, i hadn't listened to her podcast in a while. And i I think that was a mistake. I'm really happy to get back back into podcasting and have some of my mentors
00:13:49
Speaker
inspire me again. Marc-Claude Lefe, for example, I've been listening to him again. And basically, these are people who have really active, wonderful writing careers. And I forgot how inspiring it is to listen to how someone else makes this kind of entrepreneurship work. Because like all businesses, entrepreneurship is hard.
00:14:12
Speaker
And I think setting yourself up with some really good systems so that it's a habit to create is important. And so that's what I'm doing in 2026. Let me know what you're doing. I'd love to hear about it.
00:14:28
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Unapologetically Canadian.