Episode 191 - End-of-Year Check-In: Evaluate and Realign for the Last Quarter of 2024
Take a moment to reflect on your personal and professional growth over the last 9 months. Are you still aligned with your goals and moving in a direction that feels authentic and fulfilling? In this episode, I’ll share my own self-reflection, what worked, what didn’t, and my intentions for the last 3 months of the year. Grab your journal and join me for an exercise to evaluate your progress, celebrate your wins and set new goals. Let’s reset your focus to wrap up the year with purpose and momentum!
Topics
Words of the Year Review
Unexpected Collaborative Partnerships
Top Three Learnings of 2024
Plans for the Last Quarter of 2024
Links
👉 Want to dig deeper into what you learned in the podcast? Go to selfgrowthnerds.com/school to work 1-on-1 with me! 👈
Transcript
[AUTO-GENERATED]
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:00:06]:
Welcome to the Self Growth Nerds podcast. I'm your host, Marie A. Courage coach, creative soul, and adventure seeker. Since through hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2019, I'm on a mission to help you embrace your most confident self so you can achieve your dreams too. If you're eager for deep conversations, big questions and meaningful connections, join me on the quest to discovering how we can create a more magical and memorable life. Hello Nerds. How are you? I'm doing good right now. We are on a Monday morning and I can feel a part of me who wants to just rush.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:00:51]:
I know I have a lot to do this week and there's this part of me who just wants to go, go, go. And I've been trying all morning to tell that part of me, slow down, it's okay. Everything's gonna get done. Or maybe not everything, but everything that truly matters is gonna get done. There is no rush. Let's just, you know, enjoy ourselves and take it one step, step at a time and really be present in what we are doing. This episode today feels a bit like a gift to myself, and I hope a gift to you as well. We're at the beginning of October entering fall.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:01:39]:
There's three months left to 2024, and I want to take a moment to pause, look at how far we've come, make sure we're still in alignment, and be intentional about how we want to end this year. So I'll do this exercise for myself. I'll share about my personal and professional life, and I encourage you to do this exercise, too. There is going to be three parts. The first part where I'm going to look back on my words of the year that I had shared back in January. The second part, I'm going to share my top three learnings of 2024 so far. And lastly, I'm going to reflect on what I want to do and who I want to be moving forward in the next three months, October, November and December. Okay, so let's get started.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:02:39]:
My words of the year were stability, collaboration, groundedness, discipline and excellence. I find it mind blowing how much these words have truly informed my year so far. So first, stability. I was craving a reliable flow of clients coming in instead of peaks and valleys. There are seasons of my life where I have truly enjoyed the adventure of being a business owner and not knowing what to expect. But right now in my life, I wanted to. I wanted less surprises. So back in January, what I wrote down in my notes is, quote Ize, this will require a growth of my audience through advertising and creation of content on multiple platforms or a diversification of my revenue streams, like coaching in a company, for example.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:03:48]:
Now, guess what? I started out the year by trying to advertise, but it turns out my account was blocked by a bot and I couldn't find a way to speak with a human at Meta. So this has been put on hold for now. Then I tried TikTok and I tried to restart my YouTube channel, but both were very short lived. It just didn't feel right. It felt like I was trying to force a circle inside a square. So I let all of that go. And back in July. It was actually July 29.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:04:27]:
I have it in my diary. I asked myself, what do you really want? What would you do if you were bold? And what came up to the surface was I would get a part time job so that I have stable income that removes pressure and allows me to only do what I love in my business. This felt delicious. This felt like a full body. Yes. And in about a month, I had manifested this reality for myself. I saw online that a coaching firm here in Montreal was looking for someone to coach for them and also take care of their marketing. This is two things I can do very well.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:05:18]:
So I applied, I got an interview, then another interview, then another interview. And every step of the way felt easy. Felt like a full body. Yes. Like this is where I'm meant to be. And it was reciprocal. They said, we. We would love to work with you.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:05:37]:
And I started working there two weeks ago. You know how I was talking about trying to fit a circle inside a square earlier? This feels like the circle arriving home. Kind of like when you put on a piece of clothing and it fits perfectly. This leads me to my second word. My second word of the year was collaboration. I wrote, I don't want to do it alone. I am manifesting a partner in this business journey. This is so funny.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:06:09]:
I think I was picturing someone to join me in my business, but turns out I'm actually joining others in their business now. I have a team of people who have the same values as me, people who have the same mission, the same passion, and plus, they are local. I cannot tell you how happy I am about being able to be in their energy and see them face to face. I love the flexibility of having an online business and being able to have clients all over the world. But there's nothing that can replace in person connection, which is one of the reasons I'm really excited about my retreat coming up. When this comes out, I will actually be at the retreat. It will be the last morning of my brave new path retreat that I'm hosting with my friend Rachel Meltzer. It's the first time I do an in person event in my business and with another business owner.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:07:20]:
This is part of my intention to collaborate more, and it's happening. I'm really excited. One more thing I'm really excited about is that in my new job, I'm responsible for the marketing, but I get to delegate. I get to create really interesting content and ask my team members to be the ones on video or writing the blog article. We're a team instead of one woman show. There's so much lightheartedness for me here, and I've been talking about my professional life a lot. But I have to say that a lot of stability and collaboration have come from my partner. We met in the beginning of February, and only three months later we were moving in.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:08:12]:
I was moving in with him while we were renovating my place, and now we're both moved back into my place for good. It was very clear from the very beginning that we were both looking for a solid life partner. We were both 100% committed, which gave us really strong foundations to start building on. Actually, my third word of the year was groundedness. I wanted to be less in my head, in my anxiety spirals, and better rooted. And a big part of this came from my choice of partner. If you choose to be with someone who communicates clearly, who is reliable, who always does what they say they were going to do, it leaves a lot less room for inner turbulence and freak outs. You know, I used to put it all on me, tell myself if I'm spiraling, it's because I need to work on myself.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:09:18]:
And sure, it's good to take responsibility, but I think we overdo it sometimes and we underestimate the impact of who we hang out with. To quote Robin Williams, be careful who you let into your weird little world. Going back to the word groundedness, I was considering at the start of the year maybe doing meditation. I did not touch meditation at all. I did not even dip my toe in the pool. What I have done, however, is get more familiar with ifs internal family systems. I've told you a lot about this here on the podcast, and it's helped me feel more grounded because I get to know the different parts of me and become more aware when one of them is activated. When a part of me feels rushed or scattered, unfocused, restless, disconnected, I am better able to be there for myself to ask that part of me what it needs in order to come back down, come back to presence.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:10:35]:
So, you know, don't should yourself. Don't tell yourself. You should meditate. If, like me, internal family systems is what makes you feel curious, follow your curiosity, and you will figure out what works for you. Okay. The fourth word of the year was discipline. Having a firm but loving discipline again, my partner has helped a lot in this realm because, let's say we're watching a show in the evening, and we always tend to go to bed around 930, 1010, 30, he's the one who's gonna turn off the tv, who's gonna say, that's it, it's enough, we're going to bed. Whereas I've, you know, I have a lot less self control.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:11:26]:
Let's. Let's say it like that. And so we go to bed early. We wake up early. I mean, last weekend, by noon, we had woken up, we had relaxed, but we had also cleaned the whole house. And back when we moved in, within three days, everything was out of the boxes. The art was on the wall. I had also shared with him that I would like to sit down and look at our finances and do our bookkeeping.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:11:57]:
And the next day, he was sitting me down, making a Google sheet, and we were done in an hour. It was super simple. These are things that I craved for in the past, but they were not reciprocal desires in my relationships. Um, and it takes two to tango. I kind of felt sometimes like I'm the boring one who wants to clean the house, or I'm the boring one who wants to think about money. And these parts of me were put aside for some time, and now it's been healing to realize that they are actually welcomed and even celebrated. I find that in the world of self development, there's a lot of emphasis put on the individual. If you want to be more disciplined, it's all on you.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:12:50]:
But I don't think that's true. It might actually be on you to change your environment and create an environment that's going to help you be more disciplined. And for me, that meant changing partner. Okay. I've talked about discipline in the context of my personal life. Now in my professional life, I've started tracking my data more. I've created a big database with all the clients I ever had. I now know how many hours I've worked with each person individually.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:13:27]:
I know how many discovery calls I've been on. I take notes after every single call. And so that's a massive improvement. Now, I'm not in my emotions as much because I can look at numbers instead of saying, oh, I think I'm improving as a coach. I can say I have coached for 716 hours so far. This is the amount of time I have practiced my craft. Bringing in some objectivity when you tend to be more of a feelings oriented person like me can be very grounding. Okay.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:14:12]:
Last word of the year for me was excellence. Instead of broadening my knowledge, I wanted to deepen it. And I'm so proud of myself because in the last few years I went through a lot of different trainings and this is fun for me because I love to learn. But in the last nine months I did not sign up. I don't think no to any training. I really wanted to apply and embody what I have spent the last few years learning. And as part of my desire to hone my skills, I decided to work towards a PCC credential. I'm gonna explain what that means.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:15:02]:
There's the ICF, which is the international Coaching Federation. Our industry is not a regulated industry like therapists, but the closest thing that we have is this ICF. And within ICF there's different levels. The first level is ACC for accredited coaches, and then the second level is PCC for professional coaches. When you have acquired over 500 hours of coaching and there's different criteria, one of them is that you have to hire a mentor slash supervisor to work with you for a certain number of hours to listen to your coaching, give you feedback, and then you have to pass an exam. And I started this. I hired someone who I'm working with. It's a very humbling process because you're face to face with, yes, your strengths, but also your weaknesses, and you have someone pointing them out and working on them with you.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:16:07]:
It's been very rewarding, but also hard on the ego sometimes that's all part of working towards excellence. So that's it for my five words of the stability, collaboration, groundedness, discipline and excellence. Actually, there's two things I want to add to collaboration. I have collaborated a lot with AI, with chat DPT. I was really resistant at first, but then I started playing and realized it can be a great partner. For example, I copy paste my episode descriptions for this podcast in chat GPT every week and it optimizes them for search engines so that it's easier for people to find the self growth Nerds podcast when they look for something specific on Google or on Spotify. This has made my life so much easier. And the other thing I want to add is my friend Flo.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:17:08]:
She's also her own boss. And we've met regularly to keep track of each other's progress and not just talk about what's going on in our businesses, but also how we feel and what we really want. We create a shame free space where we can talk freely about our desires. And that's been very healing. We go deep and we challenge each other, both on our mental obstacles and also on bold actions we can take. She was the one who had the idea to offer clarity boost sessions, which I've really loved. These are 90 minutes intensives, one off intensives that anyone can book, and they have been amazing. That came from her because I was stuck in my idea that in order for me to coach someone, it needs to be inside, like a long term process, a long term journey.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:18:12]:
And she was like, not necessarily. One off sessions can be very powerful as well. Not everyone needs to work with you for four or six months. And she was totally right. So don't underestimate who you surround yourself with. It makes a massive difference on my quality of life. All right, now, part two. What are my top three learnings from the last nine months? Number one, in moments of desperation, I just need to keep taking action.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:18:53]:
When I feel like I'm drowning in uncertainty, I've learned that I just need to remain in motion. Imagine if you wanted to cross a lake. You start swimming and halfway through you're really tired. If you completely stop, you're going to sink to the bottom. Whereas if you just slow down and keep swimming, but slowly, you are going to make it to the other side eventually. And sometimes you can take intentional breaks where you turn around and float on your back before you keep going. My second learning is actually quite tied to this one, and it's just reach out to people. Don't try and fix everything on your own, especially when you're in a liminal space, in a period of transition, when you don't really know what's next.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:19:44]:
It's always helpful to build relationships, to have conversations, not necessarily to ask people, what should I do? No, just to broaden your perspective of the possibilities that exist. Many people are afraid of disturbing others. They don't want to be a burden. But most people love to connect and love to help. I was told that one of the reasons why I got the job that I have now is because they loved the way I approached them. I just contacted them online, had a conversation, an exchange of voice notes, and it felt very authentic, very equal to equal versus trying to be professional and formal. And there was no power imbalance we're all just humans. And sometimes there's a.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:20:43]:
There's weird dynamics that are created when you consider that another human is above or below you because of social conditioning. So this is my learning. Just talk to people who seem interesting to you, whether they're an intern, whether they're a CEO. We're all the same. And you don't lose anything by asking someone for a conversation. The worst thing that's going to happen is they're going to say, no, I don't have the capacity right now. You move on and that's it. My third learning is that you want to be firm on your end goal, but flexible on the path to get there.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:21:28]:
Like I was telling you earlier, at the start of the year, I craved stability, but I did not know how I was going to get there. I had to use the scientific method, come up with a hypothesis and test it. Okay, I think I need to grow my audience. One way to do that could be to go on TikTok, for example. I tested this hypothesis. I paid attention to how it made me feel to the results that I was getting, and from there, I had more data to make the next hypothesis, test it, and keep going until I found what was best for me. So the end goal always remains the same, stability. But we try different ways to get there.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:22:16]:
Now, the final part of this episode I want to share with you what I envisioned for the next three months, for October, November and December. When it comes to my personal life, I foresee a lot of coziness. After a summertime of restlessness and a lot of action taking. Now it's time for slowing down and getting warm and cozy. When it comes to my new job, it's all going to be about getting acquainted, getting comfortable, finding my footing. And when it comes to my business, I want to simplify my offerings, make it really, really clear how you can work with me and have different points of entry for different budgets. Speaking of which, I want to start implementing pricing transparency right now. To get more details about the cost of working with me one on one, you have to get on a discovery call.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:23:24]:
And in the next few weeks, months, I want to start showing my prices directly on my website so that, you know, it's not a secret, it's right there, and you can make an informed decision. And the people that are in front of me on a discovery call already know how much it is, and they already know if it's something that they can afford, and they're only there to validate if we're a good fit and to have more information, I think that's going to feel more aligned with my values because personally, when I want to hire a coach, I want to know. I want to know how much it is, because I'm not going to waste my time and have a, like a 30 minutes conversation with you if I, if I already know that your thing is too expensive for what I'm looking for right now. So that's coming very soon, and I cannot wait. I'm also in the middle of teaching my course the courage to start new to a small group where we're spending eight weeks together, and that's been a very enjoyable experience. So I can already tell that I'm going to do it again. Offer this again not long after this one is finished, so keep your eyes peeled for this one. If you feel like you're in a period of transition or approaching one.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:24:53]:
All right, that's it for this week. It was a very personal time of reflection. I hope it helped you reflect on your own life. Like I said at the beginning, I invite you to take a moment to really sit with your journal, with a warm drink with your journal, and write these things down for yourself. It's important to make sure you're going in the right direction and you're being who you want to be and not getting lost in other people's expectations. All right, I'm sending you so much love, and I will talk to you next week. Bye. Hey, if you love what you're hearing on the self Growth Nerds podcast and you want individual help finding a new direction for your life and developing the courage to make your dreams a reality, you have to check out how we can work together on selfgrowthnerds.com or message me on Instagram elfgrowthnerds.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:26:00]:
My clients say they would have needed that support years ago. So if you're tired of feeling like you're wasting your life, don't wait. Get in touch now. And I cannot wait to meet you.