LY Podcast: Ep. 63: Not sure about “New Year, New You?”

Melissa Anzman This is the Launch Yourself Podcast Episode 63, where I am wishing you a happy New Year in a little bit of a different way. For more information and show notes, go to LaunchYourself.co/63.

Welcome to the Launch Yourself Podcast. My name is Melissa Anzman. I'm a best selling author and the founder of Launch Yourself, where we help experts grow profitable digital businesses. Each week we will peek behind the curtain of how you can launch yourself and your business to the next level with actionable tips and strategies you can implement in your daily life to grow your profitable digital business. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let's get started.

So this episode is going to be a little bit different than most of them, but also a whole heck of a lot shorter. And I wanted to come here and share a little bit of a confession that I have. So unlike other New Year conversations or goal settings or what have you how to start the year off, right? This conversation is going to be a little different and maybe a little bit more vulnerable for me than you're used to. I hesitated to actually do this episode. The podcast wasn't supposed to be back quite yet, but I figured there may be other people like me out there and I didn't want you to feel alone. I didn't want you to think that you weren't seen or heard or represented out there in the space of online business. So here goes nothing.

My confession that I have to make is this whole New Year new chance to start fresh. Thing is super confusing to me and honestly a little bit upsetting. So let me set the stage first. My birthday is in the first week of January, so when the world ages, so do I. It's my one time each year that I feel like I can do a reset. And when I started to look at things like resolutions or what have you to start? The first of the year is specially diet related ones. I would break it on my birthday because who doesn't want to eat cake on their birthday? This girl definitely does. And the second thing is that every single year in December and January, I have a full blown existential crisis. Now I know that that sounds dramatic, but it is the best way that I can describe what happens every time at the year-end. I freak the f*** out. I question everything I don't want to do, the work I'm doing. I want to follow a shiny new object. I question, why even bother? Does this even matter? What am I doing with my life?

I mean, it gets spirally and almost my mind changes from happy to what am I doing to excited to questioning everything by the minute. And so I am a moody b***h during these two months and on a neverending roller coaster of self doubt of not measuring up of feeling super excited and accomplished and burnt out every year. It doesn't matter what I'm doing. It doesn't matter what my year was like. It arrives like clockwork. Now some of that just maybe year in things and my birthday thing and all of that tied up together. But it happens. And I don't know if you have periods where you get into that rut or this type of spiral, but it happens all the time with me, particularly during December and January, every year.

And finally, the third thing I just don't understand about this New Year thing is I don't understand or get why day one is doldrum business as usual, like December 31. Okay, we're wrapping up the year and the next time we wake up, it's go team go like the skeptic in me. Maybe it's the lazy person in me, but I rebel against it. I don't understand it. It's one sleep. For those of you with kids, I just don't get it. Which brings me to why all of the things that you're seeing, hearing, feeling, and so on right now at this time of the year is just too much. It just may not be for you. Now, for me, the annual wrap up or income reports are amazing. I love them like I absolutely love them. I'm the behindthescenes person here. So it's kind of my drug of choice in general, but they also spiral me.

I just mentioned I'm already in this crisis now, seeing all these year end results, it does put me down another path, and I want to be super clear about that, because while I absolutely love when people are being transparent and honest and sharing insights about their business, I also pretty easily fall into the comparison trap and question everything about what they're sharing. Are these numbers real? And if so, my biggest question is, how did you actually achieve those numbers? What are their expenses or profit margin? How much of that money is going into their pockets? And so on. Which leads me right back to my own crisis and spiral of why bother? And should I do something else and spiral and spiral? It's a cycle.

So I want to just say for you, if you feel the same way, you're not alone. You can love seeing the details and the back end and then also feel a little bit bad because it spirals you as well. So for me, what I do is my quote, unquote. New Year doesn't start until at least the second week of January, if not later, depending on my travel, time off schedule or mental situation. Now I don't want to create new goals, dreams, projections, and so on. When I'm not mentally there yet. I just don't want to set myself up to let myself down. And sometimes that means that I pick my own start date and I usually do. Maybe it's January 8, and sometimes it's been February 1. My point here is don't let the calendar or an arbitrary date mess with your mindset and what you want to do with your business and life.

I recently heard a quote that stuck with me. It's like one of those quotes that I just sort of hear in my own head randomly throughout the day, which is you can change your diet in the middle of a bag of chips. And I love that because it's true for all aspects of our life and business. And so if you like me, aren't feeling necessarily jazzed about the New Year, do you? Which, by the way, I have such an issue with that phrase, but I digress take the pressure off. Do the things that you usually do that get you through a day, a month. What have you that's not named January. Keep doing what works for you. And if you still want to kick the New Year off, right? Do it in a way that works for you in a time frame that matches where you are and want to be.

So for me, what I'm doing this year, I did my annual Reflections at the end of 2021, but I'm just not ready yet to set the goals or projections. I already decided I'm not going to be doing an annual plan. I shared more about that in a previous episode of the podcast of Why and What I Do instead. But from a goal perspective, what I'm doing this year is I've created a running list of ideas and goals. There's nothing smart about them yet. They're not measurable or time-bound or any of those things. But these are the ideas of what I think is going to get me to the place I want to be, to my ultimate outcome at the end of the year or that arbitrary date of arrival, so to speak. Right now, they're just a list of ideas. Some are taken from what I have wanted to do for a while. Some of the ideas are from what I'm seeing other people saying they're doing this year that I found really exciting, and some are just some goals.

But right now it's a list, and it's going to stay a list until I feel ready to go back and revisit it sometime this month and set my actual plan. So this is a reminder to you that you just need to do you just make sure you're not turning what's an arbitrary check-in point into something that sets you up for failure, because honestly, none of us need that right now. We don't need the extra pressure. We don't need the comparison bug getting us down, and we don't need to fail ourselves with an arbitrary goal or date.

Don't feel like January 1 is the only time that you have to start a new to create a new direction to set good goals to get your business propelled forward. You can do that anytime you need to, anytime you want to even while you're eating a bag of chips. Hope this was helpful for you and happy New Year my friends to join the Free Launch Yourself workshop where you'll learn why your digital products aren't selling nearly as much as you plan for and how to diversify and scale your income by launching the right way.