Hi and welcome to this week's episode of Money with Alpha. We're still in our early days of 2025, so I wanted to touch on a process for helping to kind of clarify what our visualizations, intentions, goals, etc are for the year which I find really, really valuable. So this is something that I have done with a coach and so I won't go into too much of the details, I don't want to overwhelm you, but, but I do want to go through some of the key elements that I have found also in the past for me have worked really, really well. And it's very much aligned with the concept of manifestation, which is not just about thinking and wishing and things happen. It's about clarifying that whole sort of mind, soul, mind connection, everything aligned and then taking the right action as well. And something that's come to me through a mastermind that I've been part of for a few years is having a word of the year. It's not a unique concept and a lot of people do. And I, at first I was like, what difference does a word make? Like it's one word. How, how can that be that impactful? But I've actually found it to be really interesting especially from an intention and an energy perspective. Especially after the first year I did it, I thought, I don't really know what to expect. And so that year occurred and then when I looked back on it I was like, wow, everything kind of lined up with that. And my word for 2024 was momentum. And when I look back on it, it wasn't quite what I had initially expected. When I came up with the word, I had a lot of momentum, but it wasn't always in the areas that I thought it was going to be. Some things were better than I thought and other things were not taking me in the direction that I wanted to at all. But part of that momentum was clarity. And I thought at the end of the year, well, I actually got a lot of clarity. So there's momentum now that can come out of that. So it's it's really, really interesting. So my word for 2025 is abundance. And it's it's an interesting one. I've noticed there's a few people who have the same word. I'm sure we've all got a sort of slightly different reason and interpretation for why we chose that word. And for me I already noticed with, when I sort of heard somebody else say it and their reason for it was Quite different to mine. Mine is about sort of abundance in sort of all areas. So it's not just about. So when we think of abundance, we tend to often think about money and financial abundance. For me, it's more about having sort of more an overarching abundant mindset. So abundant with time, abundant with health, with fitness, with, you know, relationships, and having just sort of more a. More of kind of mindset and attitude rather than a lack. And not that I'm. I'm very much of a lack kind of a person anyway, but in some areas you sort of go, oh, there's never enough time. Or I'm always, you know, I just wish I had more. There's always this repartee that kind of goes with it. I thought, no, I really, I need to. I need to be conscious of the wording that I'm using and the energy that I'm giving to things. Because the more we sort of want something, it's almost the less we get it, the harder it is to get it as well. Which is a really interesting concept because, like, we're pushing. And I prefer the idea of flow. And rather than choosing the word flow, which I could have or ease or calm or whatever it was, I chose to go with abundance. Because it just, I don't know, it just, it just sang to me. So that's, that's so having. If you don't have your word, if you do, then put it up on the wall. Like, I've got my vision board sitting like right over here and I've got abundance sitting front and center. Well, it's actually 20, 25 front, center, but I've got abundance right there. And then some of my key goals as well. Some of them are financial. Some of them like I've even got rest there. I need to do more rest Which I have done over Christmas, which has been really nice. It's just, it's interesting actually. When your body gets used to rest, it doesn't necessarily want to kick back into gear really quickly. So I've had to ease myself back into to gearing up a bit. So yeah, so think about what your word is and if you're. If you're not sure what, you know, you lacking inspiration, you could Even go to ChatGPT and ask for things that represent the way you're feeling in a single word and go, I want blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is what I want more of. This is the one I want less of. This is what I want to continue doing. This is what I want to stop doing. Please come up with a word for me to kind of go forward with and give me like 20 options and then you can pick the one. And that's where AI comes in really handy. It just helps break that sort of writer's block and lack of inspiration kind of thing. So have a go at that. And so that was number one. So I'm going to go through about. I've got my little list here to make sure I don't miss anything about five things. So first one is your word of the year. The second one is visualization. Third we'll talk about schedule four prioritization. And then five is action taking. So we've talked about the word of the year. And secondly, visualization. And this links into the word as well because it has to be something that you can see in your mind's eye that it has. And visualization is not just about how we see things. It's also the feeling, the emotion, the visceral feeling we have through our bodies as a result of what it is that we are visualizing. So I have a lifestyle visioning exercise that I do with clients and it is very sensory. So we go through all of the senses. And visualization to me is very much about being sensory. As humans, we are multi sensory. We might have a preferred, like a preference in terms of how we learn and absorb better. For me, I'm very auditory. So if I'm concentrating on something, you'll often find I used to get a lot. Oh, Alpha is off with the fairies. Or she, you know, she would do better if she applied herself or paid attention. They were, they were the very common themes on my report card growing up. But then later, and I did, I did okay at school. And the thing is, is it wasn't necessarily been reflected in my grades, but because we're teachers especially are so trained that, you know, look me in the eye so that I know that you're paying attention to me. Thats not how I learned at all. I was off, off. And my husband is very visual. So whenever we would have some serious conversations, he's like, you're not even listening to me. I was like, I'm listening. That's it. I'm listening. I'm not looking. If I'm looking at you, I can't concentrate because I'm concentrating on looking at you, not on hearing you. So it's a really interesting exercise. So visualization. So we need to look at all of our senses, our you know, hear our sound, visual, the touch, the smell, the taste. Like, there's so many different elements of our life that, that we use every single day. If we're lucky enough to have all of our senses, that's, you know, something that we will cherish as well. But it's also linked to how we process information and then how we plan things and how we experience things. So I think visualization is very, very important. And visual. Visualize it through pictures is also good. So for instance, if you've got, like, for instance, on my vision board here, I've got photos. Some of them are photos that I've taken. Some of them are stock photos that I found on Canva. And if you go on to Canva, they've got, you know, a few different vision board templates that you can use. So it's made it so much easier. I remember the first time I did a vision board, it was literally grab a whole lot of magazines, flick through them all, try and find an image that sort of represented what I wanted, cut it out and stick it down, and then end up with this big poster that just ended up gathering dust over the years or over the year, and then it got thrown away or put aside and then the next one, and then it would just gather and gather. So it's a lot easier doing it electronically. I do still print it out and put it up because I like having it there very easily, very easy to see. So it's But making it so connected to you, what you want, how you want your year to go, how you want to feel, what you want to achieve, it just. It brings it so much from the sort of deep inside you up to the forefront. One of the things I've really learned over years is that the more you can speak things, the more you can feel it, be it, acknowledge that that's what you want and declare it. And it doesn't have to be on social media. It doesn't have to be on stage to, you know, dozens or thousands of people. It could just be like, in my. The first experience that I have of this was literally at dinner with friends, and I, like, blurted out something that I wanted. And interestingly enough, one friend. And this was like, literally the first time I ever did this because I was a very contained person up until then. I was like, you don't tell anybody stuff because what if they ridicule you? You know that. Because that was my experience. If I did that, you know, I had family members who would, you know, criticize or ridicule or like, huh, who are you to want that? Who do you think you are? Like, all those sorts of ridiculous repartee. Oh, my gosh, makes my skin crawled just thinking about it. So I never verbalized anything that I wanted because I thought, well, maybe it's stupid and maybe others will judge me for it, and then, you know, they'll tease me about it. But I just. I'd gotten to the point where I was so fed up in the situation that I was in, and I had these friends I trusted. So when I blurted it out, one of them's like, oh, well, I actually just had a friend the other day say that the business she's working for is looking for somebody who does something like that. Do you want to talk to her? I'm like. And then my trajectory of my life changed completely as a result of that. So I am firm believer in you speak it if you can, obviously, like, to the right audience, into. In the right context, at the right time, in the right way and have it. And when I say right, it doesn't mean there's a wrong. It just means it's at you know, there's a. There's a certain serendipity that goes with it as well. And that doesn't mean to say that you'll say something and instantly something will come of it, like in that particular instance, because it doesn't happen like that every time. But the more you say it out loud, also, the clearer you get too, because then you'd be like, oh, huh? Is that what I really want? Did I. Oh, wow. I didn't even know I wanted that. And then you start to really ruminate on it as well. So visualization, extremely important. Number three, schedule. I know that sounds a bit weird, but if it gets scheduled, it gets done. And this goes for not even just doing this goes for being time as well. And this is something that I really have to get better at is scheduling in nothing time. And the reason I was chuckling there for a moment is because I also had scheduling in spontaneity, which I know sounds a real oxymoron, but if otherwise, things will always. There'll always be something to do. There'll always be something to say. Like, I constantly telling, you know, my. My family, oh, hang on a sec. Because I'll get asked to do something, and I'm always in the middle of something. I'm never just sitting there doing nothing and going. Waiting for someone to go, oh, would you. Can you find this or can you help me with this? No. So I, I have to actually then schedule in time where I've got, you know, I have a space of a day. I'm going to do whatever I feel like with it. If I wake up in the morning and decide I just want to sit in bed and read, that's what I'm going to do. It might not be a whole day because I, over Christmas I could have that luxury. But generally speaking, I might just get a few hours of being able to do that. Or it might be I feel like going down to the water or I feel like going for a bike ride or I feel like doing something else or nothing else. And it's. Yeah. So having white space scheduling in your habits, extremely important. When we talk about habits and how many days they take to embed, that's all well and good, and that is part of the process, but you've also got to make the time for those habits. So if your habit, like, I want to meditate for at least five minutes a day, it doesn't sound like much, but I have to schedule that five minutes in, otherwise it won't happen. So if I want to create the habit, I've got to create the space and the time for it to happen. And it's not just the time. I also need some quiet space. So I need to be able to do it at a time of day where I am the least likely to get interrupted often. An interesting concept to try and find that, but that's what I'm attempting to do. So it's, it's so you have to, you have to schedule it in. So scheduling is number three. Then number four is prioritizing. So you have to. This. If you think of your to do list, it is going to be way longer than you actually have the time to do. Even if you scheduled it all in it's just not possible. So you need to have a look at what are your big rocks. And hopefully when you've done your goal setting, you've come up with the ones that have sort of the really big chunky things that you want to achieve. Hopefully there's no more than three, with maybe two as backup. I actually do have five, but I have them in order. So I have my 1, 2, 3, which are the ones I'm focusing on. And then I have four and five, which are kind of like, oh, they're there in the wings. If, if something happens to help them move along, great. But I'm prioritizing those top Three. And so prioritize not just your top five goals, but also the tasks that you need to do underneath those. So it's about very much what is. What is really going to shift the dial for you this year at the end of the year. If you imagine yourself raising up in time, transporting yourself to the end of December 2025, plunking yourself down there, looking back over the year, when you're doing some reflection, as we often do at that time of year, what will have made this year feel fulfilling for you? Do you want to write the first draft of your book? Do you want to launch a course? Do you want to speak on 10 stages? What is it that you actually want to do? That Do you want to lose 5 kilos or whatever it happens to be that's in your top five? Prioritize, preferably to the top three. And what else then do you need to do? So that's starting with your end game, and then you can move backwards and go, okay, or say you say, it's like, I want to save $10,000. Okay, great. What do I need to do to do that? Well, first of all, I can't wait till June to start saving because that's not going to help. Well, it's not going to help, but it's possible. But then I'm going to have to say double than what I do if I start now. So you back it up. You're like, okay, well, I'm going to have to say for about 800 bucks a month. So can I do that? Oh, I don't know. Let me have a look at my budget. So let's look at. Let's look at what I'm spending, what I've got left over at the end every month. Not quite. All right, so now I'm gonna have to look at my spending. Can I cut anything back there? Income? Can I make any more there? And then see if you can get to the point where you're like, okay, yeah, I think I could swing this. And then you're like I might actually be able to do 12,000. I could exceed my goal. How exciting would that be? So this is where it's really important to prioritize what it is that you want to do and get clear on what the steps are to take, which is then why number five is take action. It's great if you've listed it all out. Like, I have my. My. I have my vision board here. I have my schedule. I've got another planner under here, and I have my Diary. And then I've got my goals, but then I've also got to have what are the actual actions which we've talked about. But then you've actually got to do them. You know, just write them down. You actually have to then physically take the action to do them. Like, I've booked in quite a few other like conferences and networking events already for the next few months. Because I'm like, no, these are things I need to make sure it's, they support me achieving my big rocks. So they're not in my calendar. So I have taken. So then, and then we went back again. I was like, all right, so I've taken the action. It's now in my calendar and it's going to support my big rocks. And it's also then part of the visualization that I have linked and then it'll match up with the the word of the year that I've got. So it all. You can kind of go from the top to the bottom, bottom to the top. We often tend to think top to bottom and then that's it, we stop there. And I was like, yeah, but I like to test and not test and measure, but I like to measure it, make sure that it me achieve what it is that I actually set out to achieve. So it's a little bit of an iteration kind of process because sometimes we change. There might be something that happens during the year that totally derails us that we couldn't have predicted could be a good or a bad thing. You could be given an amazing opportunity to go and join a book writing group in Spain and you'd be like, oh my gosh, this yeah, I have to do this. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Got to do that. All right, so now I need to make some adjustments to all the things that I had originally planned this year. So this is, this is. It's not just a one size fits all and it's not a set and forget. So I'll just go through all those things that I went through. So first is having your word for the year, like your guide, guidepost guiding filter filtration system. And then through that filtration system, it starts with the word. You start to visualize what it is that you want. You schedule it in, you prioritize and you take action and getting all of this together. And it's not to say that we're going to be perfect at it. And I've been doing this now for a number of years. So it comes a lot easier now as I've been doing it. And I refine it year on year as well. And then I also take on board some of the other groups and like masterminds. I'm in. And then the coach that I started working with at the end of last year has helped me really refine this process and clarify things a lot more. To the point where I'm like crystal clear. To the point where it's almost. Is this, is it too easy? Is this it, like, is this. But then there's a lot of work that's got to go into actually making it happen. But the actual process of setting it all up is like This is a lot easier than it used to be. I like this. I love refining processes. Have your system in place and refine it and then just, then live, just enjoy life as well. Because you don't want to constantly have this. It'll still be there ticking away in the back of your mind because you're going to have all of the systems and you're going to have your actions and everything and your goals and your lists and, and schedules and all of that going in the background. So your operating system will have all this in there. This is like your upgraded system for 2025. It'll be running and churning in the background and it'll kind of sleep, it'll rest, let's put it that way. Especially when you're sleeping. But it'll still be ticking away. But they don't have to like spend too much energy focusing on it. It's a little bit where habits come in. We don't have to put the same level of brain power and effort into them because they then will just run. They will be part of our, you know, operating system and off we go, off we go. And then we can be on the human part of our world, of the relationships and connecting and experiencing and absorbing and being present and you know watching that we're, you know, making sure that we're keeping, keeping ourselves, ourselves, if that makes sense. So, so we don't get too influenced by other people and we have our boundaries in place and all of that. So it all works together to help us be the best version of ourselves that we can be. To help others as much as we can, making sure that we're also nourishing ourselves as humans and wonderful other humans to our children, to the planet, et cetera. So that's really what I wanted to cover today. I know it's a lot might be a lot to take in, so feel free to play this again. Take some notes if you want to as well, and reach out if you want to have a chat about it, because I love this stuff and it's so incredibly valuable. And it helps us up level our contribution to the world and our lives at the same time. So with that, I will leave you to ponder and ruminate on that because I'm sure there'll be some, some little seeds that are planted and growing out of it. And enjoy the rest of your week.
