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- [00:00]
Abby Schiller
I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.
- [00:08]
Botox Advertisement Voice
Botox Autobotulinum toxin a prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for Those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including als, Lou Gehrig's disease, Myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.
- [00:53]
Abby Schiller
Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-844botox to learn more. Foreign.
- [01:03]
Gwyneth Paltrow
I've been in and out a lot lately for work, press and photo shoots, the usual whirlwind. And I was just thinking about how much I love settling into a real home when I'm on the road. There's something special about staying in a space that feels lived in and welcoming. It makes the experience feel more connected to the place. When I book a stay on Airbnb, I can make simple home cooked meals, have a few friends over and ease into a rhythm that feels more grounded than being in a hotel. And it's such a simple, practical idea for anyone heading out of town. You can host your home on Airbnb while you're away. Your place would be sitting empty anyway, and hosting can bring in a little extra money to put toward future travel. If you're traveling this season, consider hosting your home on Airbnb and let your space work for you. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com host.
- [02:10]
Abby Schiller
When you are pioneering anything or introducing new ideas to the culture, you get criticized.
- [02:16]
Gwyneth Paltrow
You do.
- [02:17]
Abby Schiller
Yeah, did you hear about that? I didn't find the one. I found someone I respected and we made it the one. In the sort of longing kind of view of love, people understand each other as if by magic. Nothing in itself is addictive on the one hand. On the other hand, everything could be addictive if there's an emptiness in that person that needs to be filled. I now know that nobody changes until they change their energy. And when you change your energy, you change your life.
- [02:45]
Gwyneth Paltrow
I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. This is the GOOP Podcast, bringing together thought leaders, culture changers, creatives, founders and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers and seekers here to start conversations. Because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world. Here we go.
- [03:07]
Abby Schiller
Welcome to the Goop Podcast. I'm Kelsey from goop. If you listen to Gwyneth's recent AMA episode, you know she's taking a little holiday break but will be back in the new year with an incredible lineup of guests. Until then, we'll be revisiting some of your favorite conversations from the archive along with a few new guest hosted episodes. We're excited to share. Thanks for listening.
- [03:32]
Hello to all of you brave, beautiful people. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome. I'm Abby Schiller, goal coach, author and speaker, and I am so grateful to be returning here today. Here we are at the end of the year and it was. It was a lot. It was a lot, y'. All. For so many of us, it's been a really hard year. Many of us have been cracked open this year. We're feeling fragile and exposed. For some, it felt as if the ground had been literally taken out from under us. Here are some of the words I might use to describe parts of this year. Overwhelming, exhausting. Too much, too fast, Heavy, traumatizing. And my favorite, it was really a doozy. Please notice that. I'm just saying parts of it. Not every day of this year has been that. Just parts of it, right? You might have thought you had a bad day, but upon closer inspection, you realize it was just a solid 20 minutes that sucked. And that matters because we believe our stories. I'm going to use this time to walk you through a few strategies and frameworks and give you four things that will help. One, I want to help you honestly reflect on this year. Then I want to help you process what happened with compassion. The third thing we want to do is find meaning in the challenges. And then we can prepare differently so that next year feels better.
- [05:05]
As a coach, I'm in the business of helping people like their life. And sometimes that means helping them see clearly, feel deeply, and reclaim agency after uncertain or painful seasons. And for many, me included, this year was just a doozy. I'm going to give you some of the tools that I use with my clients in my Coaching practice to help you build mental strength. Mental strength is the ability to manage your thoughts, feelings and actions in the face of challenge. And I believe it has to be the single most important skill most these days to have because we cannot control what gets thrown at us. But we certainly can control how we think, feel and respond. And what we do with adversity matters. And frankly, I don't know how any of y' all are getting through these uncertain times without these tools. So I want to give them to you. So what do we do when we've had a gut punch of a year? When we've lost track of our ways or even of ourselves?
- [06:08]
When things have been thrown at us in our way? What happens when we get to the end of the year and realize that none of the goals we set out in January were even attempted? How do we feel about attempting goals and failing? Or when we're feeling stuck because of circumstances beyond our control? Caregiving responsibilities, economic realities, health barriers, a layoff, a loss of any scale. And sometimes we're stuck because of our own patterns. What do we do? And before I get into the steps, I want to first say that you also have the option of doing nothing, of just being with it, of continuing to survive the best you know how. That is an option, and it's a perfectly human option. You're allowed to feel the weight of pain and hardship of a hard year. I love the saying, it's okay to not be okay. And in fact, that's a very appropriate response to hardship. To feel it, recognize it, name it.
- [07:08]
I think it's also important to reflect with honesty. And this is our first step. Every change begins with awareness. So let's take some inventory. Let's explore the stories we're telling about this year. Was really nothing about this year okay? Or was it just certain parts that were hard? We need to separate the facts of the year from our thoughts about it. Those are actually two different things. A fact is water in a glass. Our thought is, this glass is half full or half empty. Our thoughts interpret the facts. They are the stories that we tell and the sense that we make of our circumstances, they determine our experience of it. Our thoughts might be this was the worst year ever, but the facts show lots of good things happened too. It's also possible that both things are true. Worst year ever and lots of good things happened. Both can be true. You get to choose which story you want to believe. Does it even serve us to believe this year was all terrible? How? Usually we believe our stories without any question and the There are other versions of that story that are possible. Glass half full or half empty? Both are true. So which story supports the life and the year that you want?
- [08:25]
Let's reflect by taking inventory of this past year. And if you're driving or walking or doing laundry, don't worry about writing things down. I've actually created an End of the Year reflection. It's a free download on my site that will walk you through all of the thought prompts in this episode and we'll put it in the show notes for you. But how do you reflect? I'm asking you to reflect with honesty. I want you first to list the good and the hard of the past 12 months. Each year has both, even in the darkest times, I promise. But it helps to write things down. So go through your calendars, search your year of photos, take note of the moments that were hard and the ones that were good. Make a list. You're basically creating data against your recency bias. A recency bias is how much more vivid recent memories are than older ones. And since most of us can't remember what happened two weeks ago or even last weekend, our perception of a year is skewed to what has happened recently. So this list helps balance that bias. As you make this list, you'll notice that there are different kinds of hard. Some hard is harder than others. There's a spectrum according to how you think about it. Just as there are different kinds of good, the good news is that you've survived it all. I'm going to name a few types of hard to help you make that list and to feel seen. Humans experience hard things across a variety of categories. Those might include health, chronic illness, major health scares, relationships, betrayal, loss of loved ones, conflict, a kid going off to college, a change in a connection, finances that could include debt, job loss, emotional and mental health, loneliness, stress, anxiety, depression, constant disappointment and personal growth that could be facing failure, Starting over, making difficult decisions. These challenges range from significant life altering events to smaller daily struggles. All of these changes might carry loss and grief. In making your list, I like to stick to the ones that I might remember in a few years. I'll share what's on my hard list. Not so much for you to compare and hopefully not judge, but my intent is to show as an example, I again tend to keep the hard list to the top level Things the kinds of things that I'm definitely not going to forget. For those of you that heard the January podcast that I did here on loss, you might remember that I'm from Pacific Palisades, California and in the first week of January, my entire community and the homes and businesses of over 100 of my friends and 6,600 other people burned down. And with that, our routine expectations, my husband's place of work, my son's school and soccer practice fields, and everything we knew of our town died. And I say died deliberately.
- [11:25]
So that definitely goes on my hard list.
- [11:29]
My house did not burn down, but it was damaged and we've spent the past year grappling with the insurance companies hard list. My beloved godmother Lois, who lived until 105 y' all died in May. That goes on my hard list. A friend's terminal diagnosis so hard. A conversation I had with my mother while we were evacuated. One of the hardest things ever. Hardlist.
- [11:56]
As I list these things, notice your reaction. Is it hard to listen to? Do you want to make things better? Are you instinctively comparing or judging? Do you want to give me a hug? What's happening inside of you and what are you making that mean? Just notice as a society, we are pretty uncomfortable with people admitting these kinds of things. Okay, so now here's my good list. I got to travel all over the world for work and pleasure. I made some very magical memories with my family. I was given some incredible stages to speak on and platforms, including this one back in January and then again in February to share my work, which allowed me to reach incredible people all over the world, which helped grow my business. I've been writing a book which also might go on my hard list, but I've loved writing much of it. I became a death doula this year, which wasn't even on my list in January and never would have happened without the hard parts. But it feels very meaningful and it feels a little bit like my calling is expanding. That's a good thing. I read many incredible books. I sang karaoke. I hosted dinners and parties. I took beautiful walks. I ate delicious meals, including a homemade lasagna that a friend made for our family and delivered to us when we were evacuated, which I will never forget. I made time for myself to be alone, which was sacred. And we are finishing the year in good health. Now, these lists, when you make them or by listening to mine, might feel uneven. That's okay. They don't even need to be even. We can't equally measure pain and gain here. This is not an apples to apples comparison and it's not a competition. This is really just a way for you to take inventory. If it shifts your perspective about the year, great. If it helps you from thinking this was the worst year ever to this was a gut punch and there were many blessings too. Or it was hard and I discovered I'm more capable than I ever knew. Awesome. You're becoming more mentally flexible and strong. Now that you have these lists, notice and highlight what pieces of them were within your control and what pieces were outside of it. Note everything about this past year that was outside of your control. This could include on your list things from weather or in my case, disaster. Other people's choices, economic conditions, health issues, family circumstances. Whatever it was, it was outside of your control. Then with a different color highlighter, note everything on your list that was within your control. Your habits, your actions, your lack of actions, your reactions, your choices, how you spent your time, what you said yes and no to, how you treated yourself. I'm asking you to highlight this because you cannot change what was outside your control. It's done. You survived. Where your control now lives is in how you think and talk about what happened. That and in the second list, that's where your power lies. That's where you have an opportunity for next year to get better. This is the part that is within your control. And the reason that that is helpful is because as we get into the preparation for a better year, you can take some learnings and some reframes. Growth from this year into next. Have you heard about the term post traumatic growth? It's a psychological term that is achieved after struggling with trauma or hard things and integrating it, which leads to growth and shifted strengths and perspectives. Post traumatic growth. All we're trying to do here is reflect on the year with honesty. How we choose to think about the hard and the good determines how we choose to act about it. What do we want to do about it? Hard years are normal. No life is without suffering. No life is spared. Hard seasons. It isn't a sign of weakness or doing something wrong. It is actually a sign of being human that you are experiencing hard things. So I want you to ask, how do you want to perceive this? What story do you want to tell here? Glass half full or half empty? There can be multiple truths to any given circumstance. You can focus on the hardship or you can focus on your response to the hardship. It is likely that you only have control over one of these things. There's so much power in managing your narrative and that's what that question is asking of you. Nothing is all good or all bad. No year, no person, no event. You can recognize the challenge and still look for the good. What is your expectation of A normal amount of hard for any given year. And have those numbers increased since this pandemic? I'm just really curious about that. Maybe given the past few years, we can adjust that expectation and prepare for hard things. Things might not get easier, but we can get stronger. And we're starting to see signs of that. I love so much that we're seeing signs in all sorts of ways. One way is that people are experiencing social media fatigue, and that means that concert and community event sales are way up. We're seeing a lot more hobbies like needlepoint, mahjong and ceramics. They're all booming. And I'm seeing that the more AI grows, the more we are leaning into humanity. Also notice the labels that we use. Do you even want to call it a hard year? When people say this is hard, guess what? We believe that it's hard. When you stop thinking of something as hard, you are able to find solutions more easily. I'm not asking anybody to gaslight themselves, but I'm asking you to find other truths. I'm going to give you an example. There's a great true story of George Bernard Dancing, a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley who arrived late one day for a graduate level statistic class. There were two problems written on the chalkboard and he thought that they were just the class homework. So he jotted them down, took them home and solved them, only to be told later that they were examples of unsolved statistics problems which he mistook his homework and then made history in proving a solution for these famously unsolvable equations. He didn't think they were hard. No one had told him, he solved them. So instead of saying this year was hard, which of course you could say, and it might be true, here are some other potential truths. Take one you like and see how it feels different to you. This year was intense and I got through.
- [18:38]
This year was full of challenges and I kept showing up. This year tested my capabilities.
- [18:46]
Just become aware of the thoughts and stories that you tell. Having a hard year doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. I used to think that life was a mix of 50, 50, 50% good and 50% hard. But now I've added a little nuance to this theory and I believe that life is divided into thirds. A third good, a third neutral and a third hard. And no matter how self aware, resourced, connected, educated, whatever we are, we cannot escape a human experience of having hard things happen. The good news is that you've survived in the face of hard years and you will continue to. I love the meme that I read recently that says the horrors persist, but so do I.
- [19:33]
I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.
- [19:41]
Botox Advertisement Voice
Botox Autobotulinum toxin a prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for Those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weaknesses can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including als, Lou Gehrig's disease, Myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.
- [20:26]
Abby Schiller
Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-844botox to learn more.
- [20:37]
When you have no control over the hard maybe it's someone's behavior or a challenge that's been put upon you or a certain circumstance. Sometimes the only choice you have is to reframe your thoughts about it. I'm going to tell you a story. I am somebody who is highly sensitive to noise and when I lived above the Holland Tunnel in New York city in my 20s, the incessant honking, the truck and bus idling, the squeaks of the brakes 247 it really started to wear on my nerves. But I didn't want to move. It was a rent controlled 2000 square foot loft in Soho and I was totally broke. I had a ton of roommates and at one point I became so frustrated I even yelled down at the cars, which of course made things worse for everybody. So I realized that I couldn't do anything about the noise except change my thoughts about it. So I decided to believe that each honk was an act of concern and love, that each sound of the squeaky brakes was getting that person closer to someone that they loved and that every noisy idling bus was driven by someone supporting their family and contributing to society. Those could all be fully true. This reframe shifted my frustration to empathy and made living there so much more enjoyable. And that's the power of reframing so reflect on how you want to tell the story of this year. Because our stories determine in very large part our experience, the narrative that we choose is crucial to how we think about ourselves, our circumstances, and our agency. So to make your own reframe again, don't freak out. There's a worksheet on the website and in the show notes you can look at your set of circumstances this year and ask what else could be true? Can there be multiple truths? Remember that the glass can be both half full and half empty. This is where nuance comes in. We live in a very divided black and white us versus them world and let me tell you, I am on a mission to bring back nuance. There are gray areas between the black and the white where truth lives. Nothing is all good or all bad. So I have a very simple two word tool to shift binary thinking. And that tool is yes. And we can use this very simple two word tool to find nuance around things and to add layers and soften the narrative. It isn't always this or that. Sometimes it's this and that. So, for example, yes, my beloved godmother died in May and I'm so grateful I chose to spend dinners with her monthly for the past 10 years.
- [23:37]
Yes, I grieve her loss and I still feel connected to her and loved by her.
- [23:46]
There is a difference in yes and thoughts and toxic positivity. And it's an important difference. Toxic positivity is when you force happiness and dismiss negative feelings, even when it would be natural and appropriate to feel hard feelings. What we're doing here is the opposite of that. We are acknowledging the hard parts and acknowledging the nuance in those hard parts with other truths that also exist. We are calling out multiple truths. The lasagna that my friend delivered to us when my family hadn't had a home cooked meal in a week and spent time refreshing an app to see if our house had burned down over and over and over again. Doesn't remove the trauma of that week, but it does does bring so much light and love into it. We have the ability to hold both truths. Yes and is about how you can rethink a story you've been telling and feel a little better about it. Using the yes and tool gives us back some of the agency that the hard thing may have robbed us of. It reminds us that we have agency in how we perceive the thing that happened and how we tell the story about it.
- [24:59]
As a final tip for reflection, you'll want to honestly answer this question about the year what has worked and what hasn't? Where have we dropped the ball? Or betrayed our values? Or mismanaged our time? And where were we interrupted? Where did we get lost? And where did we stay the course?
- [25:19]
So let's summarize this first section before we move on. You're going to reflect on the year with honesty by listing out the good and the hard, highlighting where you had control and where you didn't, and becoming aware of the story you're telling about it. I listed a few questions to help you be guided, including how do you want to perceive this thing that happened? What story do you want to tell here? What else is true? Can there be multiple truths? What has worked and what hasn't? And finding nuance in what you're saying by using the yes and tools and remembering that you can control your feelings, thoughts and actions as much as possible. Please stay out of self blame and judgment, because if being mean to yourself made you a better person, you'd be perfect by now. Not only does self blame and shame not work, it makes things way worse. And that's why we need to move to our next step, which is to process the year with compassion.
- [26:14]
What does it look like to process a hard year? You don't have to like the year that was hard, but you can make peace by accepting what happened. We hear the term processing all the time. It means that we're thinking about something, taking it in, getting understanding about it, and working through it to achieve a different end. One of the most important parts of processing things is to really process the emotions of the thing that our thoughts are causing. Feelings come from our thoughts. I'm going to repeat that. Feelings come from our thoughts. If you think I wasted this whole year, you'll feel disappointed. If you think I faced a lot of unexpected challenges and I did what I could do with them, you'll feel acceptance. Our thoughts cause our feelings. And this could be a whole podcast in and of itself. I'm happy to do it. But we have a deep urge as humans to get rid of uncomfortable emotions or hard circumstances. Because they're uncomfortable, they feel bad. So what do we do instead of processing? We numb, we avoid. We check out. We distract with social media or shopping or Netflix. We busy ourselves and we never stop to feel the pain. And by doing that, we cause a whole other slew of hard to our year. Look, I understand that we don't like feeling discomfort, but when we are able to process what's hard, we build resilience. And with resilience, the next time Something happens that's hard. It's a little less hard, and we're a little more capable, we're a little more experienced, we get stronger. So how exactly do we process feelings? Y'? All, I did not learn this until my late 40s, but I'm going to teach you because it's life changing and I want you to teach anyone else who needs this. We're starting a thing. Okay. So you process a hard feeling by doing a quick scan of your body. Feelings are vibrations that live in our body. So we're going to scan our body. We're going to connect our head and our heart. Start at the crown of your body and just slowly go down from top to bottom.
- [28:23]
Know that each feeling has a different vibration. And vibrations can live in different parts of the body. So for me, fear, for example, lives in the neck and the chest. Embarrassment and shame lives in my gut. You want to locate the vibration in your body, the feeling, Locate it. Where is it living? And once you find where it is, I want you just to notice it and stay there. Don't look away. You might want to really observe it. Notice. Is there a sensation to it? Tightness, a temperature, a texture, a movement? Is it changing? Then just be with it. Like a friend in pain. Just be with it. Don't have to make conversation with it, though. You can sometimes. I'll ask, what are you here to tell me if I notice, for instance, sadness. I'll say, what do you want me to know? And. And then you're going to listen. It might help for you to name that vibration. Anxiety, Sadness, Pride, Overwhelm. Inspired. Loved. You can try to connect it to the thought that is causing that feeling. Because again, all thoughts cause feelings. Maybe sadness wants me to know that this is a lot of change. And knowing that can be helpful, but that's kind of it. That's how you process a feeling. You'll notice that this takes all of two minutes. But we spend lifetimes avoiding that work. Sometimes we just have to go about our day with sadness or longing or frustration hanging out in our pockets. And that's okay. I believe we should just normalize that. What other choice do we have really? But processing your feelings is crucial work. And by doing this work, you're having your own back. You're being emotionally literate. You're connecting your head and your heart. And you might not magically feel better, but you might. You might have more self awareness. And in time you'll develop tools to recognize those feelings faster and process them more efficiently. And by doing that you'll love yourself a little deeper. It's such good stuff. My advice when it comes to emotions is to lean heavily on curiosity, especially if you're a person who leans heavily on shame. Curiosity is the gateway drug to all good things. If it's tempting to shame yourself or throw yourself under the bus once you've been honest about a shortcoming or a failure, please resist that urge. Lean into curiosity. We don't learn or grow when we are mean to ourselves. Instead, if you can wonder about your response to something, if you can wonder about your avoidance, or get curious about all the ways you might solve a problem, your brain will get to work on that. So I told you how to process it. Now let's talk about the compassion part. Compassion can look like a lot of different things. It might look like speaking with kindness to yourself. It might look like building rest into a busy time. It might look like holding yourself to an expectation with support. It might look like letting go of resistance. It might look like an agreement or an understanding or a boundary about a particularly hard season. It might look like just taking a breath before responding. Compassion might look like forgiving yourself or someone else.
- [31:49]
See if you can find the nuanced balance between self compassion and self accountability. So the difference would look like self compassion is treating yourself with kindness and care, and self accountability is taking responsibility for your actions, decisions, and their consequences.
- [32:07]
I'm going to give you a couple sentences that you might want to hold on to that can help you find that balance. I tried the best I could with what I knew at the time. So good. What about I'm disappointed about this year and that's okay. I love adding and that's okay at the end of a sentence. It just shifts the entire energy of it. This was hard and that's okay. I'm disappointed and that's okay. I'm feeling upset and that's okay. Here's another one. This was harder than I expected and I kept going anyway.
- [32:41]
This was harder than I expected. And there's the and again, I kept going anyway. Here's a reframe. I am learning, not failing.
- [32:53]
We are a culture that doesn't do well at not doing well. We're a culture that is addicted to competence. When we have a hard year or face setbacks, we feel as if we're failing and falling behind. We are not. We can find instead compassion for our effort and our shortcomings. I am learning, not failing. What does that feel to think? How does it feel for you?
- [33:20]
So to wrap up this section we want to process this year with compassion. That looks like actually noticing and feeling the feelings we're in, asking what we might be able to learn from them all with reverence and compassion for what we've endured. As my dad used to say, be kind. Be kind with yourself.
- [33:42]
In our last step of processing our hard year, I am asking you to find meaning in challenge.
- [33:49]
When we're challenged, we discover what we're capable of knowing. That doesn't make things easier, but it can make things more meaningful. And why is that important?
- [33:58]
Finding meaning is super helpful because it helps you get unstuck without meaning making. You're in an unproductive processing loop. Your brain keeps trying to figure out what happened, what went wrong, but it goes nowhere. So finding meaning helps you to break that loop. Your brain can literally file the experience away and stop being stuck. Finding meaning also reduces actual psychiatric symptoms like like ptsd, depression and anxiety. Once you can make meaning and integrate it into your worldview, symptoms like rumination and spiraling, hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, and even nightmares reduce. That is incredible. So finding meaning in challenge increases life satisfaction and well being. The way you think about adversity determines your experience of it. So finding meaning restores agency and sense of purpose. This is big stuff. It also builds resilience for future challenges. So without meaning, your brain treats the event as an unresolved threat. With meaning, your brain can integrate it, your brain can learn from it, and you can move forward. That is not just psychological, it's biological. Your stress response calms down, your sleep improves. Your relationships get better. You stop arguing with reality because you've decided how to think about reality on your terms. This in itself helps you have a better year. So how do you make meaning from hardship? Let me walk you through a few ways. First, you have to regulate your nervous system. And you can do this in many different ways. Through breath, movement, ritual, like a bath or a candle. It would be best to be out of the fight, flight, freeze, fawn stage. You really can't start to make meaning when you're inside of a crisis. But making meaning comes from reflection. Once you're safe. So there's that. Once you're safe, you can do some thoughtwork. You can ask yourself these four questions about the hard thing without expecting answers to all four. Do this imperfectly, please. And again, don't stress out. These are all on the worksheet, on my site and in the show notes. First question, what else could this mean? Question two. What did I learn? Question three. How am I Different or stronger now? And the last question, what good came from this? Even if I'd never choose it? I'll give you an example. So perhaps you may have had this thought and experience. My business failing means I'm a failure. But let's reappraise. You could think my business failing taught me what I'm actually capable of handling. It redirected me toward work that matters more to me. It's literally changing the sentence in your brain about what the event means. Then you can make meaning by talking or writing and reflecting about it. The reason we say make meaning is because meaning doesn't just present itself. It's not hanging in front of your eyes waiting to be recognized. You have to actively think it up and decide about it. A common example is when people start foundations in honor of other people who have died, or they participate in walks. Or people who go into a line of work because of a traumatic experience, they've survived. They're making meaning from that experience to help others and in turn help themselves. It's active. You don't need to do any of those things to make meaning. You could simply do it by shifting a thought from this thing happened to me and was terrible to this thing happened. And while I wouldn't wish it on anyone, I would never have discovered this thing or met this person or evolved this way had that not happened. It's just a shift in your thinking.
- [38:04]
In addition to thoughtwork, it helps to have people to connect with on these experiences, which in themselves can be meaningful. You can connect meaningfully around hard things. A friend, a support group, a 12 step program, a coach, therapist, community, whatever. We heal in connection and community way more efficiently than alone. You can create a meaning by creating a ritual. Maybe it's a ritual around how you enter a space intentionally or leave a space, or by saying a prayer, or by how you gather with people, or by how you honor an anniversary. And finally, just be patient. Meaning might take some time. Give it. That meaning often emerges gradually and not all at once. So it's part thought work, part nervous system regulation, part social connection, and part just time passing while you actively reflect. It might have been a hard year. And you can find meaning in it, right? Yes. And one point here I just want to. I want to share. When hard things do occur, I often get asked if I believe that everything happens for a reason.
- [39:18]
Big question, right? My personal answer is no, I don't believe everything happens for a reason. I do believe that some things are totally random and brutal. I do think that things that happen. We can find meaning in. We can find reason in. I don't think we need to do that with everything. That would be exhausting. Remember nuance. But it's comforting for me to feel the agency around my ability or even getting curious around how I can make something more meaningful if I need to. So you can go from thinking that the world is unfair, but if you want to shift and find more nuance, you might acknowledge that the world isn't entirely fair and there are still good people and good things. Or this specific situation has causes I can understand, even if it was painful, just introducing some nuance. So to recap this part, see if you can find meaning in the challenges. You can do that by first making sure that you're out of the crisis and regulated, by shifting thoughts with writing or reflecting, by creating ritual, community, and by giving it time. Making meaning matters to your mental health, to your ability to navigate uncertainty. It helps you reclaim some agency and goes a far, far way in living a life and a year that you like.
- [40:48]
Okay, so now we're at the part where we can actually look ahead to next year. And this is the part about preparing for a better year. What do we do with all of this awareness and these tools? We use them. First, I want to encourage you to define your expectation of what better might mean. Is that 100% better? That's not going to be realistic. What about 1% better? Very realistic. 10%? What percentage of better would you like?
- [41:20]
What would that even look like? How would you feel? What feelings would you feel more often? What would you be doing or not doing? How can you measure better by the end of next year? Planning for a better year requires you to hold hope. And that's a good thing. Hope has gotten a bit of a bum rap these days as it's. Some people are accusing it as being a futuristic fantasy. And I'm certainly not into that thinking. Study after study, talk after talk, research all proves that hope is a good thing. It has literally saved people's lives. And I think that especially now, it's super easy to become apathetic. I would rather carry hope and be wrong about the world than carry apathy and be right about it. It's more courageous and kind of badass to carry hope, to practice hope. It's also so much nicer to be around. It is closer and easier to find joy when you live with hope versus despair. And it's also way better for your social life. So why not just assume that good things are ahead? Because if the worst case scenario is possible. The best case scenario is just as possible. You might as well choose the light One of my core practices and what I'm going to ask for you to practice is my motto, which is to look for the Good. Look for the Good One way to have a better year and a better day, starting right now, is to practice looking for the good. Our brains naturally hold the negative in higher regard. By design, you will always notice the 2% you got wrong on that test than the 98% you got right. And so to offset that quirky brain design, I encourage you to go through your day actively looking for the good. This is also known as noticing micro joys. For me, it's a kind of gratitude practice. I suppose. When you actively look for the good, you see the good everywhere. You see it in the flowers and the butterflies, in the tiny acts of kind people letting you merge into traffic or holding doors open for you. You see it in the people doing hard things, showing up for job interviews or for school, or in growing old. Looking for the good can be as simple as noticing the perfect texture of your lip gloss or having a hairband in the bottom of your bag just when you need it. Looking for the good is a choice that adds meaning and cements beautiful little micro memories into your day. I encourage you to try it and in fact tag me in your good things. If you're on Instagram, we're going to start a movement to have a better year. You can also actively schedule the Good Plan the Good weekly by giving yourself things to look forward to every single week. I asked a client recently what he was looking forward to so hard that he might have circled it in his calendar with Hearts and Stars. Give yourself things to circle with Hearts and Stars. Go bowling, sing karaoke. Take a dance class. Add in novelty with a new restaurant or a new hike, or checking out a nearby town on a solo date. Volunteering in an animal shelter. It could be something bigger, like hosting friends for book club. Hearts and Stars in your calendar might take some effort and that's worth it because we build the years we like. They don't just happen, plan and work for a better year. Quite literally. Hearts and Stars people. Hearts and Stars. I want to share a real wake up call that came from my training to become a death doula. Studying death can certainly shift your perspective of living. One of the things that I learned was that most people, when faced with a diagnosis, bargain for more time through medicine or technology. They want to extend the amount of time that they have, but oftentimes when they get that time, they aren't sure what to do with it. Worse, sometimes they cannot extend the quality of their lives and so really, they spend more time dying instead of living. But right now you might be healthier and more capable than you'll ever be in the future. Think about this right now. You might have the time. Use it well. Please. Live it. Do not waste it in overthinking and procrastinating and numbing and distracting. Live it with aliveness, hearts and stars. Not every day, but more than what you might be doing now. Don't wait until you have a diagnosis to fully live your life. But on that note, another way to prepare for a better year, ironically, is to anticipate and normalize the obstacles. I think we really get caught in the headlights when we assume each year will be better without acknowledging that all years contain hard things. Remember one third same thing goes for goal setting. People blindly and vaguely set these goals without assuming that achieving these goals will be hard. And then when they get hard, they give up. Well, it got hard. Yes. Yes it did. And you can do things that are hard. Practice doing hard things. You're already doing them now. Just do them with more awareness and support. Normalize the hard things, expect them, and then when they show up, think of them as the obstacles that you can either solve or accept. Better years definitely include goals and plans. I talked about this in the podcast that I did for Goop on February 4 this year called Creating a life you like, and you might want to go give it a listen after this. You need to decide what you want, and you need to make a plan for it. But goals don't just have to be about hustle and achievement, especially if you're in a hard moment. You can set goals around feelings. Maybe you want to feel happier, or more gratitude. Or learn how to become less cynical and experience more wonder. Or turn down the judgment by turning up the curiosity. Maybe you want to feel more peace. All of this is possible. As a goal coach, I'd encourage you to figure out how you'll measure that result. So, for example, what does happier look like? Maybe it will be in the number of experiences that bring you joy or laughter. Maybe you might choose to read a book on happiness or take inventory of what brings you joy and do more of it. Maybe you'll let go of things to make it easier to experience happiness. Who knows? But you need a way to measure that result. Don't keep it vague. A goal of get happier is vague. A goal of learn about how to get happier by reading about it, trying a ceramics class, scheduling weekly joy, practicing mindfulness, eliminating mean self talk, and watching two funny movies a month. That's measurable. The goals you set this year can also set you up for a better year. See if you can make goals fun. In fact, this is funny. I'll share it. One year My entire goal for the year was random acts of fun. It was the best year. I kept a kite in the trunk of my car. I just randomly flew kites on windy days. I learned pickleball. I spent solo weekends exploring new towns. I learned how to dance Zumba. I hosted a karaoke party. I attended concerts and talks. I gave myself full permission to prioritize random and radical joy. You can do that too. So take your learnings from this past year and reflect. What do you want to keep? What do you want to add from last year into this next and whatever that is? I'd encourage you to align your time to your goals. Goals don't happen if you don't work on them. If you aren't putting that work into your calendar, then you have wishes, not goals. If a camera crew followed you around for a week, would they know what you wanted and were working on in your life? Would they easily be able to identify your goals? How you spend your time should, as much as possible, reflect on who you want to become. If you want to write a book and you never spend any time writing, there's a problem. Your actions should reflect your values and your goals. That is what it looks like to live in alignment. This means you're going to need to prioritize how you spend your time. Now I know not everyone has full control over their schedule. I recognize that if you're caregiving, working multiple jobs, or have limited flexibility, even finding a few minutes of intentional time is a win. The role of prioritization is a biggie in preparing for a better year. You cannot cram more things into your life, but maybe you can be more selective in how you spend your time, even if it's just for a few minutes. And finally, as my last tip for preparing for a better year, I want to encourage you to learn how to roll with it and when needed, how to let it go. We spend a lot of energy resisting. We would benefit from rolling. Mental flexibility is the ability to roll with is the foundation of our wellness. These are the skills that help us navigate whatever gets thrown at us. So again, define what a better year looks like. Align your time to your goals. Look for the good, normalize the obstacles, practice, hope and learn how to roll with it. In closing, I want to recognize the incredible strength and courage of you for simply living in this world. And I'm not kidding, this is a crazy time.
- [51:10]
Here's to you for navigating the calamity and divisiveness that is all around, for showing up, for trying, for still being here, and for not growing bitter. Sometimes I get off coaching calls and I just marvel at how universal it is that we are all tested in our lives and that we can choose courage and become capable in the face of hard things. I think about how I get to witness so much resilience and growth. I get to be a co pilot to people who are changing their lives, who come to me to help build or sell their companies, start companies, start new chapters after their kids go to college or when they have kids, or anytime, start families or feel more connected to their partners. Learn how to grieve parents or people that they've loved, Learn how to stop destructive habits, learn how to live with chronic pain or terminal illness. And I want to recognize that in all of you, whatever your story is, being human is hard sometimes and we are capable of doing these hard things. What you're doing right now listening to this podcast, thinking about your hard year and preparing for the next. This is that work. This is the work of becoming. This is the awakening. And it's so important. So remember, reflect on your year with honesty, process it with compassion where you can find meaning in the hard parts, and then prepare for a better year with the tips that I've shared. If what I've talked about today resonates with you and you want more support as you head into this new year, I'd love for you to visit my website@abbyschiiller.com that's a B B I E S C H I l l e r.com There you'll find a free download for the end of the year reflection and a new year preparation that I created just for this podcast. I also have a free training called Change One Thing and there's so many resources for creating a life you'll actually like. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your courage to want to grow and change. You are not alone in this. I'm here to support. I wish you courage, love, meaning and lots of good mojo on your journey. Have a beautiful week.
- [53:36]
Gwyneth Paltrow
Thanks for tuning in. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate and review all of our episodes which are available for free on Apple Podcasts Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.