Episode 044 – How to effectively review your 2020, moving past failure, goal setting using the RESET ACT process, the importance of starting the process early and more

Harms: Hey, it’s Harms here and welcome to another episode of the Seekardo show. 

Now, for many people as a whole in 2020 we all experienced the strangest year in existence. Or what I feel in existence has happened to us right now. In particular, however, I want to focus on those people who have experienced a 2020 strangest year, but are also very goal orientated. Talking about people who in December took the time to set out their goals ready for the following year. 

If you go back to 2019 December comes typically between early December or between Christmas and New Year’s and people sit down and plan next year. What do I want to go and achieve? 

If you’re listening to this thinking, yes, I am one of those people, but because of the events of 2020 my goals just went out of the window. I achieved some of them, I had lots of time for my personal education goals, personal development goals, I got to invest in some fantastic programs and I’ve learned so much this year. Also I’ve achieved some of my family goals by the very nature of being locked down. I got to spend time with them and we did some cool, creative things that we had planned. 

However, my financial goals well I couldn’t get started with. If you’re listening to this right now and you’re in that scenario, don’t worry because you are listening to the right episode today as Ro shared with me a really cool acronym that he uses when coaching clients and has used it throughout many years with clients and he will be working through that process with you, the listener and myself. 

Which is actually very timely and very appropriate in terms of what it means and when you understand what it means you’ll be like yes, that is so appropriate. Hi Ro over to you to share with the listeners what we will be sharing with them today.

Dr Ro: Hello thanks Harms, greetings everybody again, thanks for joining us here on Seekardo show and actually Harms has just really jumped straight in with a great framing because this time of year that whole period between December and January everyone seems to suddenly pack in this right, I’ve got to do the whole process of checking in to set my goals for next year. It seems to start at the end of December as opposed to early. 

Everyone is getting busy, has the socials, the piss ups and they finally settle into a sense of calmness sometime just before the New Year and it really is crammed in. I thought I wanted to share with you back in the day when I did coaching with people on a one to one basis I would get them looking at this back end of November early December and they would say, I want to do this towards the end of the year and I’ll say I know but that’s what everybody else does. Let’s not behave like everybody else. 

Let’s do something different and approach it in a slightly different way. And one might argue well, I’m wrapping up the end of the year late November early December, sorting myself out for Christmas. I get all that. 

But actually, you’re also in the thick of it and you’re in the flow of the genuine dynamics of how life is, so it’s quite a good time to do it because it allows you to keep your finger on the pulse whilst going through this process. 

The acronym is called RESETACT. 

Reset and then act. 

You can apply this to your professional life. You can apply this to your personal life, definitely financial life and actually to some extent on a relationship level as well.

Harms: You’ve raised two awesome points there. 

One is you’re using the acronym resetact that is what people are feeling they need to do in 2020, they want to reset after 2020 and then act going into next year and make up for lost time. I think there’s something critical in starting early at this time because when you think about when you go on holiday and you come back from holiday you have that two-week lag before you actually really get going. I guess listeners have to ask themselves the question when January 1 strikes. 

Do they want to know exactly what they’re doing with that year? 

Do they want to get started immediately or do they want to get started in February because if you start planning late in December one of the challenges that could occur is you have this overspill you’re still not sure what you want to do. 

And then come quarter one you’re still not sure what you want to do and quarter two comes along and you’ve lost three months in the business year in that context.

Dr Ro: Exactly and what I found was when I was working with somebody on this because we were tackling it late November early December, which is exactly where we are now it actually meant that going through the December period, going through Christmas, going towards the end of the year these areas they need to focus on, the questions being raised from the coaching very quickly people were going that has put that into my horizon now. 

So, whilst they were wrapping up the year, possibly looking at how projects had performed, et cetera in the back of their mind’s concept of reset act and it allowed them to fine tune things. So as we do this now it’s stage one and then there is a refinement stage two which is really that final stage at the back end of the year. 

A bit like a sandwich where you start it, we at least establish some of the core principles in place and do them. Then there is a period where we just go mad. We celebrate Christmas, which is great, then at the back end of the year we revisit again. It’s the two outer layers of the sandwich, consolidating it as we go into the New Year.

Harms: It is almost like an artist’s canvas. The perception is we will just do this in a seven-hour window. Whereas the artist will keep layering, layering and layering on the canvas and it could take them six months but we’re talking about goal setting. 

We want to get it done in a short period of time, but there are layers to this process

Dr Ro: You mentioned reset now.

I laugh because you don’t know this, but actually it had three stages to it. Reset act and then there was now but I’m not going to give the acronym for now. We might do it towards the end of the year as that was more geared towards the end of the year.

Harms: Let’s focus on the reset act. 

I want to leave the listeners with something practical so they can act now based on the acronym. 

What is the first part?

Dr Ro: This is an objective review process. 

We’re not allowing ourselves to go into an emotional space. So the best way to do this is find a clean space to do it, grab yourself a nice calming drink, have your journals out ,have your computer if you need it so you have a blank journal. 

What we’re doing Harms and I used to get people to have a smiley face or an unhappy face or a tick and a cross, and I get people to literally sit down and do the complete review of what the year was for them in terms of what their targets were. Talking about money, what were your financial targets for the year.

Let’s review that you hit them, how did you get on? On the business side what were your targets at the start of the year? Reviewing back did you hit those targets maybe on a personal side where there were specific goals, health, et cetera. 

First of all we look at what did we start this year with your objectives and then we review, did we hit those? 

That’s the first part of the review process.

Harms: The key there is the phrase objective. What we’re saying is did you achieve this financial goal? 

What we’re not expecting the person to say, we sort of did I give myself you know half a tick. That’s not the process we’re asking them to dive into here.

Correct.

If somebody is in that frame of mind and they have the awareness to say I’m not an objective person. I get quite passionate about this subject. 

What can they do? 

They feel like they’re not answering the questions as true as possible in terms of the review. They’re shaping the year into what they wanted it to be rather than what it actually was.

Dr Ro: In the process of Communicating with Impact one of the areas of the system involves you adopting one of four different archetypes. 

One of those archetypes in terms of the principle is sovereignty so that’s where you take a very wise older mindset, you reflect on something, you have a bigger objective and you look over it. It has that sitting on the throne sense of approach. 

That’s the way we’ve got to do this we go into the review process with the air of sovereignty we sit down. Another way to do it is you emotionally remove yourself from your body. In other words, you flow out of your body, you imagine you sitting next to yourself having a conversation and in front of you are all the things you set out for the start of the year. 

We can look at our financial targets, projects we were planning to complete even down to relationships, family it needs to all be set out because that your life won’t be one-dimensional. There’s going to be a whole different set of goals and objectives that you set out. I’m not talking here about the tiny little weekly objectives I’m referring to what were the big hits that you wanted for 2020? 

Yes, you made a great point we’ve had Covid but we’re removing ourselves from any of that experience, removing ourselves from the pain, the joy or the frustration of the year. We’re simply looking at this as black-and-white. One of my projects was I wanted to acquire four properties this year, each one producing approximately 850 and above cash flow. 

Another objective was I wanted to get myself to another level of fitness where I could run three times a week and complete a marathon for the sake of argument at the end of the year.

Another objective I had was I wanted to get my financial systems in place, such that I had this much money in the bank account, I had been able to clear down my debts from 28,000 to 3,000 and be able to have a new system operational to assess my monthly cash flows. So that’s another objective that I might set myself for the year and these are stated. We’re not talking about projects, it’s the overall objectives. 

Remember I’m still only in the start of the review process there’s more. yes or no, simple as that. Cross or a tick.

This is your point of staying objective. 

I don’t go shot I didn’t get that you just say actually no and you’ve got to have a measure for that. You’d have started the year with a pretty clear measure of how it would feel at the end of the year if you achieve that target. 

That’s the first thing we review. 

We have achieved that, then we start to look in the review process of where are the areas that worked well and where are the areas that didn’t work well. You might want to break it down into how you managed your money? How have you managed your time? Did it work well? Didn’t it work well? How have you managed and worked with other people? Yes, no? 

There are lots of different areas. 

When I am going through this process normally I would know from the goals what questions to ask the person. You’ve got to look at whatever your objectives were for the start of the year and ask yourself what were the associated activities and things associated with that that you can reflect on. How did I operate in that space?

We’re looking at the big target now because in order to achieve the target certain things would have happened or wouldn’t have happened.

Harms: One of the assumptions is that to have a really good review process you have to have a good logging process a way to document, to journal at the end of every week or every month and you can look back at say okay quarter to March, April around that time these things went really well or I had no activity in that month. We’re saying look back and objectively what worked well, what didn’t work well.

Dr Ro: I know we can all lean on the excuse of Covid for 2020 and there’s no doubt this has had an impact, but in the process of the impact as you mentioned earlier on there are changes that people have made. Some people have improved their learning, health et cetera so we have to take that into account. 

Another way to look at this is I used to tell people to tell me a destination where it’s quite a long drive you’ve done in the past. I drove up to Scotland. 

Where abouts? I went to Glasgow. You’ve got to Glasgow but it has taken you longer than you should have done if you looked back on that route, you can tell where the points were. We were on track there, but we lost it there. What were the reasons? 

We took a wrong turning. I was distracted. You could do the same thing with any project, targets you set for the year. We can use the timeline process where you reflect back through the year and we walk through from January 5, if someone feels overwhelmed and says there are so many things to do that they think went wrong, sorry things that went well and wrong. 

That is no problem, let’s start in January. What went well then? How was your time management? How was your money management? How is your project management? How was your interaction with other people? Where did it go right or wrong? You can break it down month by month if you want to be really detailed, but now we’re getting into another level of understanding of this.

Harms: Fantastic, I love the example because now it’s like creating a timeline in your mind, jumping back to the start walking through your year and like you’re travelling to Glasgow identifying what kept you on track and what knocked you off track. 

Once you establish that, what comes next?

Dr Ro: Learning. 

I would write down the title learnings and again as you said, stay objective. So what have I learnt from this year? Where I went wrong I’m not going to make the same mistakes, I’m not going to turn left at the junction next time. I looked at the sign. 

Might be to do with whether I allowed myself to get distracted by lots of other projects that are coming along or get the shiny coin syndrome.

Harms:  Or I watched way more Netflix than I spent time on my business.

Dr Ro: Again it is floating out of your body and asking the question, what did I learn from this and positively as well as constructively. Meaning this went really well. 

Well what did I learn from that? That whole process during those two months we were flying. We managed our time well, money well, really connecting with people around me, communicating really effectively with my customers. What did I learn from that? Because the following month it didn’t go so well, so what did we learn from those two months? What have I learned constructively about the bad period?

Was it because I allowed myself to get distracted? Was my mood down because you can still review your mood, something we don’t talk a lot about particularly in the left brain side of coaching people get distracted by the functionality of a result, but actually our moods play a massive part in our success and this year, particularly mental health has been a big part. You can go back and review this and start to ask questions. 

Harms what do you think the mood is amongst the younger generation at the moment because I can give an indication where I think the older generation are at as a result of this whole year, but what do you think is going on amongst the millennials?

Harms: Good question if you remember back one of the actions on a previous podcast I suggested to logical thinkers who need to get closer to the emotional side in a nice way is they could score themselves at the end of every day or week out of 10 and logging how they felt that day and mood. 

Not think too much about it but this is so useful now because this should give them a reference point of why those things are important reviewing and looking back now, sometimes it’s quite hard to find out when did I feel my best? What was I doing when I felt great or my mood was in a good place? What days was I off-track and my mood was a 2/10? 

Just reminding listeners of that also myself.

In terms of answering your question, I think because of the way 2020 has panned out I think the mood would have gone from and this is a general assessment. I know some budding entrepreneurs whose stuff just doesn’t affect them. 

They know how to manage their mood but as an overall feeling observing sort of commentary on social media, the current news coming out from media outlets, headline wise, I would say the mood maybe had went from year 10 out of 10 to 7 out of 10 to 5 out of 10 to three out of 10 and then we could no longer score it. 

It was an apathy thing and you’ll understand what I mean by this Ro. People were no longer logging their mood, people were no longer aware of their mood. What’s happened is there’s just this general apathy on well I’m number, I feel numb, everything is happening around me. I don’t know if I feel happy or sad. 

Does that make sense?

Dr Ro: That word you just used certainly was inside my mouth. Numb. There’s another word for it called satiation. Satiated is when you have so much of something you lose the taste for it. You can love ice cream but have too much of it you become satiated with it. 

Numbing is a different word but says the same thing, but I think numbing reflects better actually where we’re at. We’re just numb to the news. 

The older generation I think is a little bit like we’ve been through stuff before, but this time round there is a frustration with the way the government is dealing with it. But the people I speak to in my generation tend to be a little bit more laid back about it and almost resisting. I know it’s a slightly different resistance from the younger generation, it’s like a semi-aggressive kickback. 

Whereas the older generation is like, we’re going to do our own thing anyway. What I do find with my generation is parenting has become interesting in the sense that the mood has swung between the joy spent over the kids, but also the frustration of seeing them not being able to connect with their own friends and us having to manage that space we wouldn’t normally be managing. For example at the moment both my kids are at home and as a parent you’re going back into the child space and being there present with your kids. 

There is a frustration a lot of parents think not feeling necessary they’re able to hit some of the targets they set because they’re having to go into that space of being a parent. 

Not that they don’t love it, but it’s finding that balance, it’s a real conflict by the way of values because we want to be amazing parents but equally keep growing as human beings as well.

Harms: I think that’s fascinating because what you’re saying there is when a parent is going through this review process is a case of being honest because we do have as parents and you spoke to me about this privately, we have parents and adults as part of your own natural evolution have these ambitions and the children are not your whole life as. 

You’ve got your values you want to hit, you’ve got your ambitions to hits. We’re saying to parents you can be honest in this review when you are establishing your mood and you don’t have to say, yeah, I spent all the time with the kids that must mean my year was amazing. 

You don’t have to put that false statement on yourself when really you had some other goals that you didn’t achieve and that made you feel bad.

Dr Ro: Yeah I used to call them personal side note, or note to self, so there’d be the objective reviews, but there would be that side of you that’s like why am I feeling this frustration? 

For example, a mum who’s in her 40s or late 30s and early 40s. The kids have got to a certain age, they’re in a balancing act between her and her partner about how the family is going to grow and who does what workwise, or it could be other way around husband looking after the kids it depends on the dynamic of the family. 

But there was a target this year to break away and the kids will be out more, which often will happen at a certain point and he or she then can pursue that dream of starting a business, writing a book or creating a product whatever it is, of course that has probably been not back this year by a year or more. 

I’m seeing it in my own family so that’s your classic example of there’s got to be a side note, a personal reflection, a personal note to self so that you can separate the two but equally understand they do sit in the same pot. If this isn’t done right, then the rest of the process is a bit of a pointless exercise.

Harms: That makes sense. 

Once they have established what they have learnt, functional side and also a mood site plus this bonus which you added which is make a note to yourself why am I feeling frustrated? Why am I feeling elated as well. 

So once that’s established what happens next?

Dr Ro: That’s review, review, review. E stands for establish improvements that you can make so having done the review is great. 

Whilst we’re doing that our brain is probably thinking if I did it this way, if I hadn’t taken that left turning, if I just followed the navigation system. If I hadn’t been distracted by that phone call whatever this is the route up to Scotland all those things, I could have improved the way I did things and got here quicker. 

I’m using the review process to also either unconsciously or even just a little bullet points to the side, these things I could probably do better. Part of the review process is also filtering it we’re putting a whole bunch of soil into a sieve and reviewing and we’re leaving the big blocks at the top. They are the things that stand out through the sieve goes things that we now start to see we can do better with. 

We start to filter so as you are reviewing you’ve got to be conscious the next step which is establishing what improvements can be made so I can improve my money management, I can improve my time management, relationships, how get back to people, I can improve my ability to say no to things always of saying yes to things. It has to be clear, establishment of improvements that would have made that journey better through the year so that you can take those forward into the next year. It’s tied quite closely to the review but is different. 

Reviews are an objective setting out what’s happened and what didn’t happen, but out of that comes I need to do this next time round, so that E is establishing improvements and a list of improvements in these key categories, time management, money management, people management, project management, emotional management.

Harms: Is it fair to say to highlight, document or journal these established improvements sometimes they may be popping out to you whilst you are doing the review process? 

It may be worth having a separate page on the side and just make a note for now and then when you get to this stage, after the review process now have a look at them and finalise that list.

Dr Ro: Adding to what Harms is saying there are a couple of things you can do. In the journal on a separate page it would say establish improvements to be made and then you could even have titles for categories so it could like money, time, consistency people and as stuff jumps out in review you just throw it down as a bullet point for now into one of those categories. That is one way to do it, mind map is another cracking way.

Harms: I like the IMAP route. 

Some people may prefer written but I like IMAP route for this kind of review and goal planning because it’s easy to refer back to. even if you have a couple of months where you maybe don’t look at it, it exists on your computer, easy to access, and on a phone, et cetera. From a practical sense, it starts to work quite well.

Dr Ro: If I’m honest, if it were me sitting down with somebody doing this we would do it pretty much all on mind mapping, we’d start with review in the middle and then we have the goals that were set for the year as a separate branch for each of the mind maps. 

Then it becomes really simple because then you go off that and you have your wins and you maybe not wins or losses. But the positive or negative. The constructive and the deconstructive, but you have these branches and you add to the branches. Then you have another mind map that says to establish improvements in time, money management people and of course you quickly wing off different elements to it. 

The two mind maps can work parallel to each other.

Harms: Once they’ve established improvements are there any more stages within the E category establish improvements or do we get to move on to S?

Dr Ro: Not really this stage is just literally defining what improvements need to be. You don’t need to go too deep at this stage. There is a big learning process sometimes it’s so freaking obvious having reviewed somebody you go to, actually I need to do this differently next time. 

This isn’t so much about detail that has to come in the integration process further down the line. For now it’s just being really clear, otherwise we get caught in this and this is where although reset act is a nice simple acronym we can easily get stuck in the mud in one of these. I want people to go. 

I need to change that, improve that, and how that gets done is facilitated later down the line.

Harms: That’s the key question I wanted to ask. 

This is not the how part this is just writing down a description of established improvements.

Dr Ro: We’re now onto the S part of the process. S is three not one S. 

It stands for systems, strategies and support. 

This is really, really important. What we’re looking at here is we’ve done a review we’re establishing improvements that we need to make, now what we’re looking at is our systems as they are, but how we want them to be. So what systems do I have for how I manage my time, what systems do I have for how I start my day. What systems do I have for how I manage my money? What systems do I have in place for organising the family. As ultimately I don’t like to use the word structure or systems but we live on a daily basis within some form of systematic or structured approach. 

These are the elements that bind our life together. They bind us picking up our kids at a certain time with then making the zoom call to my business partner to establish that deal, which then binds me to a moment in the afternoon where I take half an hour to go for a run, which then binds me to a moment afterwards where I then go back. It is systems we can’t avoid, think about the systems that you have that enable you to create a good result in what you’re doing.

Harms: You’ve described systems in a refreshing way in the past when you’ve spoken to small audiences and explained in an engineering way in the sense that if you have a system in place it removes a lot of the daily or weekly emotional rollercoasters and turmoil. 

You specifically talk about it when you have a financial system in place.

Dr Ro: Essentially it’s a logical approach to things. Here’s a classic example project. Most people pile into projects and just get going with them, but there is a systematic approach to a project. 

If you’re wondering what’s the difference between a project and to do list a project is something that involves two or more items then that becomes a small project. Now if it becomes 30 items, but three or four of those items are clubbed together in other words they serve to get a similar result, then that becomes another project. If you have a big project like establishing a property portfolio this year. So what has to happen there? 

I need to start raising my money. I need to learn how to do it. I need to go find the properties, I need a team in place. Each one of those is a separate project, so you need systems. 

Now the project model is a big project down to smaller projects and then down to macro level as in where it gets done. I talk about 50,000 feet going in at 30,000 feet, 10,000 feet and then down to ground level, so there are systems just for that. How you approach a project needs to be broken down into the big picture, then you’ve got the different micro or macro projects and then beneath each of those the system is who needs to be involved, what needs to be done and then what are my targets, so there’s even a system there. 

But otherwise you’re just piling in and running down a track which you don’t even know if it’s the right track.

Harms: The idea of a project in my mind is you want to create some sort of rules/boundaries so you stay on track. Otherwise you are travelling to Glasgow, you’re going to veer off the motorway driving through country roads or country fields and that’s not going to get you to the target. 

What about strategies? How does that play a role here?

Dr Ro: Strategies is how you do things. 

Going back to the property example, what are my strategies I’m going to have in place in order for me to achieve this goal? One might be buying and renting out family lets, another might be buying and renting out to government social housing or buying and renting out HMOs they would be different strategies from a property perspective. 

But equally it might be in your business selling products and you’re doing it online so what are your strategies that are in place to enable you to get the marketing going because that’s part of your project but equally you could have a strategy that involves you writing and creating the product as well. Things have to be given very clear strategies of how to get there. 

But it could be something as simple as family. If you are wanting to manage the family situation where you’ve got your work going on, your business going on, and you want to be able to operate as a parent in the family. 

What are your strategies for that? It might be that you agree once a week you’ve got a strategy combining families where two or three parents agree that on Wednesday the strategy is one parent takes the other two families’ kids. 

We do that with one of our daughters, so that allows the other two parents to go do what they need to do on that day. For example, one of our strategies at the moment is our house is going through a third phase of renovation where we’re doing sanding the floors, et cetera so we decided to put a strategy in place where our youngest daughter goes and spend some time with her best friend in kindergarten and the parents were great about that. So for us that is a strategy of managing our kids. I know it sounds a bit strange but it’s a way of putting logic behind what can be quite emotional.

Harms: I think that example is important because they can scale it up. For example in property, your strategy would be I’m focusing on buy to let this year, so it works across the board. Then the final one is the support

Dr Ro: By the way this now links back to the previous one, so support is about people that’s what this is about and it’s one of those areas I think we’ve become so adept at doing stuff ourselves. 

There are so many tools now from a phone app that can suddenly edit a photograph for us, to the software that allows us to do analysis of something or to do research. People go to YouTube, so support is very much digital these days, but what I’m talking about here is what support do you need from people? 

Go back to the review process. What if you had different people in place during the course of this year? What if you’ve reached out to other people that could have helped you with the skill set or an energy, passion and enthusiasm that you were lacking? Or that had maybe a stronger mindset when you were in a difficult place. 

This is about the key players you need to have around you and a great book from Jim Rohn he wrote a book called seven strategies for wealth and happiness he talks about who have got around you to support your success. That’s what I’m talking about here. People who are key players that will help you on that journey to getting it this should be an amazing year.

Harms: I love that one and that one is so important because when we did the podcast in the past Ro on coaches and mentors and how important they are, and there’s a reason it was an early podcast because people who play a supporting role in your life can just transform it. 

The results you get because you have those three, four or five people around you supporting you in whatever realm is required in your business is seriously powerful and I think a lot of people underplay it and I think there’s always a challenge there. 

There’s also paid support versus free support and I think you have to have a balance of both, but I would encourage listeners not to be afraid of paid support.

Dr Ro: I think there’s a very clear distinction here and you’ve raised a great point. 

Think about people around you who are objective and not emotionally if you say invested in you. So yes, it’s great to have people that can support you on a family basis, on an intimate basis on a loving basis, but sometimes you need objective support and it can still be a friend doesn’t have to be paid but someone that can give you an objective feedback without it feeling personal or an attack on you.

Harms: I think a good example is recently we are working on a web based project for communicating with impact and you went out to somebody who falls into that category in your world and the feedback was amazing because they fell into that category. 

It wasn’t personal feedback. It was objective business owner to business owner feedback and that was super useful and it was based on friendship level and that’s why the feedback was so open and radically honest.

Dr Ro: It is great because it didn’t take a lot of time in terms of their time, but it still took them an hour of their time to go through but it was so clean and crisp. 

There was no noise in the feedback. It was pure straight feedback.

Harms: I think that’s the kind of person you want around you, it’s worthwhile seeking them out. Maybe one way to seek them out is to do something in return to start with or do something for them feedback wise to start with as it’s quite hard to source these people. 

You’ve done it well Ro the years and these are some of the relationships you’ve built, which I as a result can take advantage of, but some people could go their whole life and not have these kinds of people around them, so I think the support part of system strategies and support is so critical. You may have to go seek these people out.

Dr Ro: On this note, please understand there is a difference between a coach and a mentor but equally some people argue that a coach has to be doing exactly what you’re wanting to do and I’ve seen on social media people criticising other organisations and coaches because they don’t do exactly what you want to do and that’s slightly different to mentoring. 

A coach who is a really well trained, experienced coach doesn’t have to be able to do what you want to do. If you want to build a great business, an Internet business, you have to actually have a coach that has built an Internet business if you don’t need someone to coach you in that particular area meaning a mentor who has built the business can guide you through how to build the business. 

But equally a coach can get you through the process of asking the right questions to keep you on track. They guide you through the process of asking really clever questions and it’s those questions that elicit a response from you that give you the actions you need to operate off.

So yes, it’s very helpful if they understand that field, but I in the past when I do live interventions on stage where they’ve come up and the thing they need to sort out has nothing to do with what I do. I dig deep open that person up and start to ask questions and the answers inside them we’re just helping them find the answer and then get the needle set to take the right direction. Big distinction.

Harms: I think there’s a big distinction as people go into 2021 there’s going to be a serious advantage for those that tap into coaches and mentors. I think there’s a really good distinction there because I think people who talk about coaches in a certain way have a fundamental misunderstanding of what a coach is. 

I think last year I was blessed to meet somebody who trains the retired police force to help coach vulnerable young teenagers who are labelled destructive or have anger issues and things like that. 

Now the retired police officer is not a teenager who has anger issues. They are a coach so in the same way a trading expert may not know every field of trading, but they can coach you on your specific style of trading there is a critical distinction there. I think coaches and mentors are worthwhile exploring and I deep dive in the episode.

Dr Ro: Systems, strategies and support that is the S which takes us to the next E. E stands for economic assessment, so this is an economic assessment of your situation, not the global economic system. 

I’m talking about going out and starting to read the financial Times and start looking on Bloomberg and trying to assess the global economy. 

What we’re talking about is your financial world and that’s where the system comes in really handy. This is where a system works so well because what we are looking at is breaking down your cash flow, your income, your expenses, your assets, your liabilities and your behaviour pattern around your money. 

If you look at someone’s situation and you take a snapshot of it, you can ask the question: have I ended the year financially in a better position than I started the year? It’s an objective one and how do you measure that? 

One could be a measure of assets you’ve acquired things you bought that put money in your pocket. 

That’s essentially what an asset is another way to look at it would be cash you’ve got in the bank. Goals you hit the earnings that you might have achieved that should be your income. Assets, income and liabilities and expenses so you could say okay did I increase my income this year? Did I increase my asset base this year buying properties for example, or buying stocks in the stock market. 

Liabilities is a measure of what debt you owe. So have I ended the year with more debt or less debt? Have I got things that are taking money out of my pocket? A loan on a car is taking money out of your pocket. So that’s another assessment you can look at. You’re saying right I started the year I had £5,000 worth of loans and I ended the year with £25,000 worth of loans. Okay, well are they personal or business loans? If it’s a personal loan then was it to buy something? 

If it’s a business loan, was it to buy some equipment or to educate yourself that’s slightly different now, we’re looking at something that will help your business long-term and then expenses. 

So how have you been spending your money and doing an assessment on your monthly expenses and starting to break that down. There are systems for this, but I’m just trying to give the headline points there.

Harms: The point is want to highlight there is if people spent more time focusing on their own personal economic assessment versus the global trying to work out the global economic assessment I think we would all be in a healthier place financially, just from an awareness.

The value of that time spent faffing around.

If we were with a live audience and you listed all of those items out how many people in the live audience have a snapshot of all of those items?

Dr Ro: Generally a few Harms. I think you’ll agree with as you’ve sat with so many people on our events that we run who’ve got no idea of their finances.

Harms: I’ve seen it in the high-level masterminds where people are financially orientated, goal oriented, they are achievers and even at this point in the year when the core hosts who are their coaches say put your hand up very few people do but the hand up. 

I think the listeners shouldn’t beat themselves up about this, take notes and say I want to put that in place that’s the whole point of this economic assessment.

Dr Ro: This is objective, so beating ourselves up it doesn’t help. This is an overall assessment our current situation as it stands, but then we need to dig a little bit deeper and start to look at what systems we have for managing our money coming in, because that’s where things go wrong as well as people are earning money on a monthly basis, but they don’t have a have a strong money management system.

One thing you need to be aware of is what is coming into the household and what percentage you are allocating to your living expenses? 

But what percentage are you allocated to debt pet, allocating across to, for example, investments and a lot of people don’t have a system for that. This is part of your economic assessment. This has to be done at this time of the year. If we don’t do it now you’re only going to start the New Year thing and it becomes a blur because you don’t have clarity. 

Clarity is the biggest thing, and also look at your behaviour around money as well. If there has been excessive spending was it pressure, the mood. 

January and February I was not in a good place. My spending went right up. Maybe you go make yourself feel better by spending so this whole approach is a good opportunity to reflect back as well on the review, finances combined and on your emotional state linked to all of that.

Harms: One of the things I’ve captured you talk about in the past Ro is that by having a system you can avoid those sort of erroneous behaviours caused by having no systems. 

For example, if you feel like you’re splurging or spending because you are in a certain mood by the very fact of you having a system in place you can avoid that and I think that’s one of the key benefits of focusing on here. 

Before we move onto the next one could you talk about how that plays out a role in relationships, because one of the core questions we get is my actually my partner is spending this much, I didn’t authorise that or I don’t have access to this part of bank account or whatever the personal situation is between a couple. By having a system we can avoid that.

Dr Ro: This is actually very good as well for those of you who are young as I think if you don’t get it right early then you get into a relationship with somebody and then further down the line it’s not working. 

Finances cause a lot of conflict between couples and it’s not so much money. But it’s people’s values associated with money and how they perceive money in their own world, so if they’ve had a lot of pain with money it might be that they want to hold onto it. They’re security driven, leave it in the bank, don’t look at it, but also don’t have an awareness of it as well. 

Where somebody else might be a really big spender and you’ve got somebody that is a very much safe and security driven person and the spender goes out and their way of dealing with stress is spending. Whereas security persons lock down and shut down now you’ve got a really interesting conversation happening over the dinner table. Because the two have a completely different perception. 

The nice thing about a system like this and I talk about this in the video series is once you’ve got a structured agreed system in place each of you can spend money we call it guilt free spending. There’s a percentage of what you are earning that you spend without the other person checking in on you and asking where that money comes from and why did you buy that, that’s one of the benefits of the system. But the other thing is, it’s making you both accountable. 

It’s allowing a dialogue that often doesn’t happen particularly in Britain in the United Kingdom people for some reason are really locked down and closed about money. Whereas other cultures are a bit more open about it. 

What the system does it removes the emotion away from it, it doesn’t mean to say there won’t be conflict and there may be differences in views and opinions, but the difference here is that it allows two people to talk to the same space in a logical way with a spreadsheet, with targets that were set, with percentages and not why did you let this happen? 

But how can we improve on this? What caused us to slip that area of our spending last month and what was the trigger? 

Doing it objectively because if we don’t do it objectively as a couple it just becomes a massive argument and it can really blow out of proportion.

Harms: It’s something which may have troubled many relationships this year because of the year we’ve gone through here and by having a system they could have tweaked it and for those who are not business owners, this is what a business has to do. 

They’ve got budgets people in different departments know what they can spend and it doesn’t cause a business to collapse, it doesn’t cause arguments, frustrations because there is a financial system in place. We’re just taking that applying it to personal scenarios as a relationship, a couple, family and leveraging very much simplified as well, leveraging the benefits of that.

Dr Ro: I know somebody who went through a divorce recently and her husband had somehow for three or four years just secretly hidden cards and borrowing and he’d spent tens of thousands of pounds on things without her even being aware of it. 

This lack of transparency can create bitterness and that wasn’t the main reason for the breakup, but it was certainly a big part of what happened between the two of them. I think if couples can find a way to walk back into a healthy space of talking and remember when you first met there would have been some level of transparency, albeit it is kind of covered a little bit by the joy of meeting, the love, the passion all those things early on.

The practical side of a relationship start is out the window because it is variety, excitement, intimate sexual, loving, fun let’s just spend. That’s both of you going into space of variety. 

Even someone who is very security driven when it comes to money when they’re first in a courtship that goes out the window because the chemistry of love and conviction just takes over, but there is a point where our core basic values around finance and money start to emerge. That’s when you get into the rhythm of life when one person maybe works or earns more than the other and then there’s the conflict over people’s values about do they feel valued enough to be respected in the relationship if one is earning more than the other? 

This all starts to get complicated and messy If we don’t have healthy conversations earlier on and I mean, we’ve all been through it. It’s not like anyone’s perfect but I think it’s an ongoing growth we have to keep doing, particularly in times of strife like you mentioned this year.

Harms: Amazing Ro. 

That highlights the economic assessment and again we’re still focusing on documenting and assessing review, establish, highlight systems and strategies and identify who is going to support you. 

We’ve then done an economic assessment and all of this is very much a self-reflection, documentation, pulling up paperwork, numbers, identifying where you are in the current state so that has taken us to reset and now we’ve got T. 

What is the T part of this process?

Dr Ro: The whole fundamental philosophy of reset is reboot the whole thing. Now we need to get our head up and look ahead. We’ve been down deep, we’ve looked at the emotional logic all the strategies and systems, economically now you look up to the next year but we’re looking at it now in December as opposed to the start of January. 

We start to need to put our targets in place and the T stands for targets and yes, it’s a bit left brain and a bit business focused, but it works well in the acronym but also it says what it does on the tin. It’s like there is a target that’s where I want to get to and when we talk about targets for projects so if you’ve got specific projects what is it you want to achieve with those projects?

 Please don’t measure your success and this comes down to an ego thing on how many big projects you’re taking on next year. 

You know somebody like that because they’ll often proliferate over I’m doing this next year, I’m going to climb this mountain, they bombard you with things they’re going to do. They probably won’t achieve them, but it sounds great to talk about it. This is not about impressing people. These have to be targets that are really meaningful 2021, this is my own view needs to be a meaningful year, a year that gives you a sense of fulfilment that you are achieving things that have more meaning to your life and the greater good of the world. 

Yes, it’s nice to have targets that are financial and projects that are going to expand but give it something that has meaning because that’s what will carry it through. it is by no means are we out of the shit yet and I think the first six months of next year personally I think will get tougher before they get better, so it has to be meaningful.

Harms: I think that’s a good reminder because the feeling would be to give into the kind of culture we live in now, which is sharing culture. I’m going to ask the question what kind of goal setting or targets do you want to create for next year? 

Is it a target that you can share with the world and show off to the world via social media and things like that? Or is it targets and goals for you and your family to be achieved personally to fulfil that meaningful outcome that you want to feel and achieve in 2021? If I was to go back five, six years ago I didn’t really see it, but certainly of the last five years in the whole wide array of my generation and your generation anybody who is really on social media is documenting their goals and saying this is what I will achieve and I’m going to 10 X my goals this year.

Dr Ro: I think it’s a fair observation actually it’s not to criticise any of this because people can choose whatever they want, but I just feel that this review process particularly this year gives you a chance to look at your emotional state, the moods. 

If you could find a project this coming year that would enable you to nourish your soul to give you a sense of always being consistently up, I don’t mean hyper up but just something that gives you a sense of value that you’re bringing something to the world, that benefits the greater good of the world but also yourself. For example, it could be a small project done with a charity. 

What if it’s in your community doing something as often we look beyond our community to something bigger. 

Who is to say that raising £50,000 for a charity overseas is any greater than maybe helping somebody local in your community that has been really struggling to look after their family and if you could spend the year going round and teaching the kids or financially supporting the kids or helping them a house, whatever it still has the same meaning. It’s a human life.

I think this is really about you thinking very carefully about what targets you set next year and making them a mixture of if this helps, financial targets and personal gain your business growth, expansion, but what about personal expansion? 

One could be, for example, one of my targets for next is getting my next book out so that is personal. I really have a deep yearning at the moment to get a great message out there. The turning point was one of those messages and there is a lot now stacked up to go out again so for me that’s really important, but equally I’ve got on a strategic level a really strong goal to get our CWI Communicating with Impact to a completely different level as a business because it can impact a lot of people. 

If we can have people come to our live events that generate revenue which means we can get the message out even greater we can’t expand it without some form of financial gain coming into the company. 

There are two very different objectives here and my children, the house and everything else on a personal level, we have a goal to spend more time as a family, nurturing the house now because we’ve been reconstructing and spending more time with my mum because we haven’t had access to her this year. 

That’s not a massive project, but it is still a project and that’s the thing, when you have things that are meaningful you put time on them. Where people go wrong is for example the family time thing if it isn’t perceived to be a big project and then you compare that to say launching a business guess where people gravitate to? They gravitate to the business. 

This is important, I’ve got to get on this, get this zoom call and the kids are like come do this, and then here you are, as this entrepreneur building a big business yeah next week kids. Hold on a minute let’s weigh this up. 

Give each project the same value and importance, even if one appears smaller than the other. I do think this year has to be a more meaningful approach to setting these projects and if it doesn’t feel meaningful, bloody drop it. Because it will just be ego driven, social media driven, whimsical it would be nice to have a goal target, leave it, next year is not about that. It’s going to be a tough year.

Harms: Something that came to mind Ro probably a joint book which is the meaning metric, when your goal setting has a meaning metric attached to each other. If each goal had a meaning metric and it scored low just said drop it because how truly important is that? 

It could be a financial goal which you’re pursuing purely because of finances, but it’s not meaningful in the grand scheme of your 2021 target.

Dr Ro: Pursuing is another word for chasing. 

When people say I’m pursuing something that’s great. It sounds very elegant, but if it becomes consistent, overwhelming, time-consuming at the cost of your family, your health and those things around you that redefine who you are as a person, which is actually the core of your being. If that gets compromised you’re not pursuing anything you’re just chasing something now. 

You’re chasing it because you can’t quite get it and then it becomes obsessive and it erodes your energy and you end up at the end of the year going man I went down the wrong turning and I was going 100 miles an hour down that country lane thinking if I carry on 100 miles an hour down the country lane I’ll get to Scotland. 

Guess what you were going south-east which is the wrong direction. With targets other things to be aware of is within that if you put some bullet points for the listener expectations. Your targets need to have certain expectations, physically and emotionally, financially, how does it look? How does it feel? 

That’s the question I’d be asking at the end of the year. 

This is the target how does it look? How does it feel and does that feel like something that you love to achieve this year? 

If people go yeah, then I go drop it. If they say 100%. Even if they say it would be really nice to get there. That is not enough conviction it has to be I really want to achieve this. 

Anything less than that, put yourself in that position a year down the line how does it feel to achieve this? Other things within the targets are who do I need? Who has to be in place to achieve those targets? Any risks? 

Look at the potential risk, what could stop me achieving those targets? That’s all part of this process. If I get to the end of the year and I haven’t achieved it, what will stop me? 

I could use this year as a review that will help, so whatever I learn from this year I can carry forward. Any learnings from the review process and establishing improvements need to be carried here. What we did in R and E in the reset gets carried into T and that gets wrapped together.

Harms: It shows you how important the review process is, and I did this in the early years. I didn’t really review very well and my targets were just a repeat of last year and I still didn’t achieve them. 

Now when I look back the reason I didn’t achieve those targets was I hadn’t extracted the learnings I had just said, I’m going to keep going for this target and I’ll get there eventually, and that persistent mindset is useful in some aspects but not when you’re setting targets, specific targets, focused targets, meaningful targets.

Dr Ro: For example we set a target almost a year ago and on reflection by the time we hit the summer I think what we’d established that was there was a member of the team that was not necessarily the right fit for the team and that’s something you can see through the review process now reflecting back, we now know that when we reset those targets for next year that element of the business needs to be addressed.

Harms: The challenge would be we would copy and paste the targets because we hadn’t got there yet. 

Run harder with less people, less support and then at some point five years down the line if you keep copy and pasting it’s going to be you yourself running towards this target, no family, nothing behind you, no support mechanism and it goes back to what you said Ro you just become blinkered and obsessed without any direction. You’re going at 100 mph and you’re chasing the target which will get you there? Who knows

Dr Ro: It is not to belittle any large targets and goals because I think they’re important to have there but I think it’s important to put them in context of where you’ve been, what your resources are and what’s achievable. 

Some people have great expectations for a year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years, so that’s the reset process in terms of the first part. Act is an acronym. 

A is for action and maybe as cliché as it might sound that’s the next part of the process. We don’t break inertia unless we put moment movement in. 

Just remember, emotion creates motion. We need to be emotionally attached to these projects, targets, which I’m sharing in such a way that I am. Off the back of those targets you’ve got to act fairly swiftly. Here’s a classic example: to run the live events you may need a team of six or eight of us working together as an audience there and people really want to make a change, they’ve decided they want to get into property as a business or go learn about communicating with impact, whatever it is they want to do. 

At that point there if they didn’t commit there was a 95% or more chance they wouldn’t actually do anything with what that emotion was if they didn’t put money behind their commitment, time, sign on the dotted line and say right I’m going to come on this course and come and join you on the speaker training Dr Ro, or have the vocal coaching or whatever. 

If they didn’t do something, what we found was they didn’t necessarily apply what they’ve been learning, the targets they set didn’t get fulfilled because they didn’t act in the moment. I’m just talking into a space that we’re familiar with.

Harms: I think people understand this logically, but there’s still a block in order for them to actually go on and act in the moment.

Dr Ro: The block is often fear, but this is where the targets come in. 

If it’s just yeah, I’m going to do X, Y, and Z in the business. It’s very different from the emotion of it. If you’ve got a journey you’re going to go on, a holiday, if you attach meaning to these targets as a reward for yourself, it’s going to have a greater sense. 

Also the pain of maybe what’s happened in the past can be a drive for action as well. But the steps don’t need to be massive. We are now into different types of coaching and that is what is the first step?

The action is to be broken down into the project. 

The project is like this is the big project. These are the subprojects now we’re down at ground level. It’s the first step that gets you through 365 days of the year, so what’s the first action? It has to be something in each of the areas, if you’ve got a project in place what’s the action I need to do there? 

If you’ve got a project with money management and a system , what’s an action I need to do there? If it’s working on your relationship to improve it what needs to go there? 

But this is down to the process of time management, but the actions have to be clear and you have to ask yourself the question of whatever I do next. 

Is it taking me one step closer to Glasgow or is it taking me down a side road now, which is getting me further away? That action has to be a forward action not a sidestep, not an action just because you’re doing something and being busy being busy. Those early actions Harms must be progressive forward movement not treading water or appearing busy just to be doing something.

Harms: Thanks for creating a distinction there because one of the next steps people could write down is this may be a relevant step for you, but research. Easy thing to consider at their desk and just do, quick wins. 

But the harder steps which are the most important next step people don’t necessarily document. One of the questions I wanted to ask at this point is and is a slight tangent because this is part of the process, but what would you say to somebody who’s maybe a coaching client of yours they come back after a month and you find they haven’t done a lot of the next steps that they personally wrote down, what would that conversation be like?

Dr Ro: We’d do a mini review, we would ask a simple question. 

Okay, so let’s go back to what were the reasons you weren’t able to achieve those goals? I’ll just be silent and if you’re doing it with yourself you’ve got to ask yourself the question because that excuse, the reason the because whatever, could be time, money it could be support, it could be systems not working, could be strategies that aren’t operational. 

A set circumstances outside of your control that stopped you in your tracks. It’s going to be one or two things that are caused from an external circumstance like a death in the family or injury and accident that’s an external situation, that’s something they may not have been able to control. 

Then we have to ask the question, is it something they had control over and that will become very clear when a person reflects. The reason I didn’t hit this goal is because I had a car accident. I was in hospital for nearly a week and a half with the injuries recovering now, just that whole block of time was lost. 

Okay, well there’s not a lot they could’ve done under those circumstances. 

Whereas, well I’ve just lost momentum in the first week and then got side tracked with a few things I was doing for my mates and my boss asked me to do on late nights the following weeks. 

All of a sudden we’re back into what they learned from last year? Each one of those things there was controllable by their own commitment, their own emotional state, all of the things we’re talking about.

Harms: Is it fair to say that if at this point, you find that occurring repetitively that this is a really good point early in the year to spot when there’s something that is not meaningful to you?

Dr Ro: Exactly.

This is where if I was coaching we are now a month in very little progress in terms of what you’ve achieved. This area is going really well, this area is not. Maybe we’re coaching in two areas and one is going well the other one the coaching is dealing with the quote on quote shit going on in their heads, and we all have that. 

We have stuff that is happening and it can cause a lot of heaviness in our bodies, so I would ask the question, it seems to be associated with this particular project.

Let’s go back and revisit the project. Tell me why this is so important to you and then they start the conviction they thought they had at the beginning of the year, they go it was important. To be honest I wanted to prove a point. I thought if I got this project out the way it would really help me in this area of my life. 

That’s a very different meaning now we’re just trying to prove a point. If somebody comes to me after they set the targets often I’ll go back and check in on the targets. It’s like if my mortgage broker gets into contact that I passed through to them then the first thing they do is spend like 15, 20 minutes talking about their why. Why do you want to get into property? 

Why do you want to build a portfolio? Yeah I just want to get a mortgage. 

Forget that for a minute, I don’t want to be a mortgage broker and help you do this if I don’t think that you’re committed to it, it’s the same thing with any project you go into. That commitment can sometimes feel strong at the beginning, but wane if there’s not enough conviction. It might be dropping the project. 

As that creates space to be more effective in the other projects or it could be they’re taking on too many projects to start with.

Harms: Absolutely so I hope that’s a bit of insight to listeners if you look back at previous years as part of your review process.

Look for patterns.

My key message is try to identify them early. Don’t wait three months, six months if something is not meaningful find out ASAP because it can distract you for three months, two quarters of the year. 

Three quarters a year you could get to next December realise you haven’t moved on it but the amount of emotional thought process that’s gone into that. Imagine looking at that next step to do on your to-do list every single day and it not being ticked off for a year. We want to avoid that ideally.

Dr Ro: My approach when I’m working with somebody I’m like a drill. It’s question, question, question, each question reveals an answer, which then leads to another question. We get very quickly to the core of it. So get good at asking questions or find a coach that can go through that with you. 

So that’s the A. the C stands for consistency. So having put the action place we’ve now got to be consistent. This is where Jeff Olson’s great book the slight edge I think is a great read. I know there are other books that have similar themes but it’s an iconic book the way it was written and people love it because it’s simple. 

There’s not a lot to say here, apart from simply acting on a consistent regular basis goes back to your time, planning, making sure that you’re doing the small steps. 

You’re not running a sprint, we’re running a marathon and we’re building up pace and time, so be consistent with the meetings you’re supposed to have. Be consistent with the phone calls, be consistent with the way you review your finances, be consistent with checking in with your team and these various things.

Be consistent with looking after yourself, reviewing your emotional state and doing it on a consistent regular basis, like taking such food supplements or drinking water regularly. All these things are about consistency and where people break down and this is where the review process works because in the review they might say, I was really consistent for about a week or two months, three months and then it went astray. okay, so when you’re consistent you got results?

Yes. Look here, revenue, our business, whatever it is was really good for January, February, March. Okay what happened then? I went away and I lost the rhythm of it. So when you’re in a consistent place you get results. So there’s a big clue there.

Harms: I think that this is the same where people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years and what you can do in 10 years is because of this specific step consistency.

Dr Ro: Compounding as well. 

Compounding everyone’s thinking is money and correct you put £100 in the bank and 10% it grows it will double in 7.2 years. But what if you are consistently eating well think about what that does on a cellular level. 

If you are consistently exercising even if it’s just a walk or something that keeps your heart pumping. What if you’re consistently kind and loving towards your kids, they’re going to grow up to have a different approach and feeling of the world to somebody that has parents that are rarely there, and when they are they’re grumpy. 

What if you are consistently caring and loving towards your partner in such a way that as you get older together that this is that history of it. It plays out. What if you consistently just listen to personal development, inspirational audios once a week?

I used to have a philosophy of 15 minutes a day that’s what I taught myself at a young age, 15 minutes a day of something positive. It could be audio tapes and books. 

After a while it just becomes the core of who you are so consistency creates a core change in your body.

Harms: I think you’ve really raised a powerful point there because what we sometimes fall into the trap of certainly in today’s culture is we want it now instantly. The result will come immediately.

Dr Ro: I’m like that still. 

I don’t think that has changed for me and Harms knows there are times when I’m ancy and I want to get this done, but there is a difference.

Harms: Yeah that’s a personality, that’s an ambition that’s wanting to get the result, but I think what people do is they just don’t realise that it’s going to take some time, but also outside of just the finances. 

Often people apply the consistency rule to business and finance, and personal economics whereas you’ve raised some other fantastic areas and going back to this powerful word you mentioned, meaningful. 

There are other areas which are so much more meaningful to the grand scheme of our lives that are worth consistently working at and I think some people have nailed it spending time in the health area, with their family and this goes back to the targets of next year. Are they balanced? 

One question I’m going to fire back at you Ro around the target is how do you balance these categories? One may be business, finances, spiritual category, personal education, family. 

What’s your approach to explain to a coaching client or listener at home, how should they balance what they do within each area? Is it just one in every item or do you go with a gut feel?

Dr Ro: We have a life balance time management video series actually and from memory I talk about this on video and saying life balance I’m not convinced. I believe in the concept of life balance in the real sense of it because balance suggests everything is static, it has to stay completely still and balanced. 

Whereas life isn’t like that it’s kind of a state of flux, so I think it’s more about flow. 

Our lives are moving all the time. Even when you’re still and you went to a silent retreat last you, even when you’re still your heart is thumping, your soul is flying in tune with the universe, you’re perspiring, your hair is moving up and down on your skin. 

All these beautiful things are happening. I think that people try to get balance. That’s the problem in their unconscious mind; they’re wanting to get everything exactly right and stand there. 

You’ve got this picture of somebody holding five or six different things like plates and cups saying I’ve got the balance, but how long can you stay like that? You can’t because there’s flow going on all the time. If I rephrase that sentence to say how do I achieve flow a lot of it’s down to priority and prioritising what’s important that brings me onto the T.

Time management. I think in answer to your question, it’s really about what is important and we’re measuring money against family so that’s where the conflict comes in. it comes down to your values and as odd as this sounds, the decisions made on a daily basis even the big decisions are still a reflection on your core values. 

So how you create the flow and flow meaning to me is how my soul feels right, so when I feel a little bit of centre ,off balance, something doesn’t feel like it’s going in the right direction it’s because I’m spending more time than I want to in that area and it’s not completely aligned with me. We’re talking about values alignments, core identity, who you are as a person. 

That goes back to a previous podcast we talked about and then these targets, these projects I set up are they in alignment? Do they fit my core values? 

Yes, they do right so one is a charity project, one is family, one is expanding your business, one is building on an existing business writing my book. Five projects for the year three to five projects that will feel very aligned now which ones are the most important to me? 

Then I start to consider where I want to put my time to enable the flow because I spend lots and lots time with my kids which I love doing. However, I’ve really got an aspirational goal to finish the book and maybe launch the charity for example.

Harms: That’s the key with the word important. The reason it is important as the higher the importance the more time you will be committing to it.

Dr Ro: And that’s a tough one because how do you argue which is more important and that comes down to a feeling. There’s me taking these values and pulling the values away. 

Somebody has three or four projects in front of them and they say Ro how do I choose which one is the most important? 

Get somebody opposite you to put one project in one hand and another project in the other and you say time with your kids and for the sake building your project this year is building up a tree house and creating a wonderland in the garden, versus launching your new online product. You hold it out in front of you and you say which one is most important? 

And they walk away from you with those two projects and as you’re looking at the two you have to grab one, which one would you keep given a choice? 

You naturally go for it, or if you throw them in the air. 

You imagine those two projects in your hands and you throw them in the air and then you put one hand behind your back coming out of the air in your mind is the project with the kids building that garden wonderland, the tree house and the other side is the project you’ve got to catch one, and you will instinctively reach for the one that is more important. You’ve witnessed it so you know what it’s like Harms.

Harms: I’ve done it, it does work, if you repeat the process and often or not you will just naturally gravitate naturally, grab or reach out to the important thing you want to focus on, and it may sound wacky but I would try it.

Have some fun with your partner and kids. Help them decide.

Dr Ro: The other way to do it Harms is the rocking chair review which is where you and I would sit on a rocking chair and we’re looking out over the lake and it’s the end of 2021, and which of those projects has given you the most satisfaction? 

All four projects we started, but not all of them made it to the end which ones do you really want to see get to the end? It is quite nice because it’s imagining you’re there in the future, a bit calmer not starting it now but you’ve finished them and maybe only two out of the four for example, which ones would you like it to be? 

You go okay let’s put that aside, out of the remaining three back in the rocking chair now out of the three the remaining which one of those would you love to finish? 

Then you pull that one aside so you have two left. It’s a kind of reverse psychology, but as though you’ve gone through the year.

Harms: There is a range of ways to identify the importance because we are in time management and we are talking about layer one. 

Time management can get really nitty-gritty and how you manage your daily tasks but as a starting point and you dive into that. 

Tier two or three and in the early days when Covid started we gave the time management series away for free to the public so that they could manage the time. I love this because this is purely identifying where I would like to spend most of my time this year that is based on what is important. 

I think that is a really important distinction because as part of the review process we’re almost filtering out because no doubt when you start the year you’re going to start with 10 things.

Dr Ro: What’s lovely about doing it now is that they might set out the project targets but as you go through December you go I’m going to drop one of those but equally you might change it out as well. So starting it now gives you this next 20, 30 days to just really get into a clean, fresh momentum into 2021 or every single year. This is a process you can do during the course of the year as well, but it works.

Harms: Our encouragement is to start it now because even if you’ve got to the stage of setting out your action tasks you take the next step, your first step you could action immediately in December and then that will start to identify where you want to spend your time and where you don’t want to spend your time. 

I do like that Ro has emphasised doing it as early as possible means you go into the next year ready to rock ‘n’ roll, ready to grasp the year, ready to approach each target and be excited about achieving those targets because you’re going to have your big target which you’re going to achieve at the end of the year, but that’s going to take maybe 100 steps, 150 different steps to get to that specific target so we have to enjoy the process. 

Doing this early is my big takeaway from the reset act item because I am somebody that does like to stack projects and then very quickly realise half of these I shouldn’t have started. So with that in mind my big takeaway is the fact that we can use this process one in terms of building our plan for next year, but number two is filtering the plan for next year so we’re really narrowing down to the most important meaningful tasks for us as part of this life flow, not necessarily a balance. 

Also the acronym is so simple that somebody listening can just write the words reset act and work through this. You can even listen to the podcast in the background start the process and press pause and come back to it in the next stage.

Dr Ro: Get inspired, take the opportunity this month to be an inspiration to people around you and take inspiration from other people as well. I think this Christmas is about giving and really settling into a sense of family. 

There’s been a bit of desperation in people broken up, fracturing and we’re all removed through the Internet and we’re trying to connect through cameras et cetera. 

But just bring yourself back into the centre , imagine the whole year now coming back inside you and put around you over this next month the things that are really, really important to you. 

Have a good reset and act now.

Harms: Thanks to all listeners for listening. Remember, if you want access to some of the video series we spoke about you just go ahead and become a supporter at Seekardo.com.

We look forward to seeing you on the next episode that’s myself and Ro signing out.