5 Steps to Reflect, Reset, and Get Ready for 2025

What is up? Welcome to the very last episode of Busy getting better for 2024 and I am fired up about kicking off the New Year. Today. I'm going to share with you five of the key things that I do to reset my year and things that are going to help you set yourself up for the most successful 2025 possible. I have to admit, I'm actually one of those people that loves a new year reset. I totally believe that you can change your habits, change your life, change everything whenever you want. You definitely do not need the the official kickoff of a new year, but it really is a great excuse to reflect on how things are going and pivots and changes that you want to make. And so I am a lover of New Year's goal setting and resolutions and yeah, just switching up the vibe for a new year and getting really intentional on the things that you want to work on and moving forward. Before I get into those though, I just want to take the opportunity to say thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the podcast. We are officially six months into Busy Getting Better, six months into hosting this podcast and I have already learned and grown so much and have just been so appreciative for you listening and reaching out and sharing your wins and sharing how this podcast has positively impacted you in 2024. And I am just so excited to pour even more into the podcast in 2025 and just continue to make this an even better place for you to come for inspiration on all of your big goals, to get your finances in order to reset your mindset and to go out there and build that life that you can't stop daydreaming about. So thank you so much for being here. And now let's get into the five steps to reflect, reset and get ready for 2025. This is busy Getting Better, the podcast for women who are committed to prioritizing their own personal growth. I'm your host, Madison J. A mindset and money coach, a first generation wealth builder and a woman on a mission to help you master your finances and live your best life. Money is not all we are covering though, because in order to live your best life, you have to become your best self. So we are diving deep into all things personal development and bringing you the mindset shifts, money, tips and inspiration. You need to go out there, be bold and build the life you can't stop daydreaming about. It's time to get busy, babe. Busy Getting better. All right, first up on the list we have got Decluttering. I think decluttering is a great place to start because you're able to identify places and spaces in your house and in your environment that just have stuff that doesn't need to be there. Right. We're thinking about cleaning up our energy and creating space and creating an opportunity for abundance to flow in into 2025. We should probably start with getting rid of all the shit that isn't actually helping us get there. I think about how much a cluttered environment just impacts the energy, it impacts the vibe, it impacts everything when there's just stuff laying around that doesn't need to be there. So I think starting with decluttering is a really great place to just start to clean up and open up space for more wonderful things to flow into your life in 2025. Some places to begin when we are thinking about decluttering. First up, this one's going to be a love hate relationship. But I'm telling you, it's going to make a major impact. I want you to think about decluttering your closet. How many outfits are in there that you actually never wear? How many clothes do you have that you bought? That thought might be good, but you actually. It's just not your vibe. How many clothes do you have in there that just don't feel good when you put them on your body and you're not excited to wear them out? You don't feel like they make you feel like your best version of you. Go through your closet and be ruthless. Get rid of everything that just does not light you up. I like to joke that. What was her name? Marie Kondo. Go Marie Kondo on your closet, right? Does this bring you joy? Does this make you feel like your best self? Are you excited to put these clothes on? What this also does when you clean out your closet and you create space in there, is it opens up an opportunity for you to now go fill your closet with things that actually light you up. Things that actually make you feel like the most badass version of yourself when you are moving throughout your day. There's that saying, look good, feel good, play good. I think the clothes that we wear are such a good way for us to channel confidence and excitement and move through the day with just more energy. And since you're trying to become an even better version of yourself next year, a really great way to do that is how you are presenting yourself to the world and all of the outfits that you wear. So have some fun going through your closet and just really thank the clothes that are in there for what they have done for you maybe you've worked really hard and you have lost some weight and now you can say goodbye to some of these other clothes that don't fit you anymore because you've worked really hard on a goal. Or maybe your style has changed, maybe it's evolved. Maybe you have decided to put more effort into your wardrobe. And so now you can say goodbye to some of those clothes that don't make you feel like your best self, that are not at the level of how you want to carry yourself into 2025. And so I think the closet reset is a really great place to start. There are so many other areas of your life that you can focus on decluttering as well. Think all of the drawers in your house that just collect stuff throughout the years. I think, listen, I'm a big fan of having a junk drawer. We have one in our kitchen and it is really nice to have a place where it's just like, I don't really know what we're going to do with this right now. Just, let's just throw it in the junk drawer and worry about it later. I think the time has come. Go back through that junk drawer and figure out what to do with it. What gets to stay in there, what needs to find a new home, what needs to go into the trash or the recycle and just start to clean out some of that energy. So you could think junk drawers, your office, your desk drawers. Like, how many papers do we just collect that get thrown in there? Clean all of that up and find a home for it. Another really good place to focus on decluttering. Think about all of the technology in your life. Think about your email. I talk about this one all the time. But there is a website you can go to called Unroll Me where you can go in and unsubscribe all of your emails from the random email list that you have signed up for or the random email list that you have just ended up on and you have absolutely no idea how. Go check that out and clean up all the subscriptions so you're not getting bombarding with all of this marketing for companies and products that you didn't even want to be on their list in the first place or don't want to see all of their emails for next year. I think that's a really big hack. And then also your phone, oh my gosh, this one is still on my to do list for this year. But cleaning out pictures, cleaning out apps that you don't use, cleaning out anything in there that is just not you're not utilizing. It's taking up space, it's taking up storage. It does not need to be on your home screen. You don't need to look at it all the time. I think that photos is one that takes a lot of time to go through, but if you can start to come up with some sort of organizational system, this is something I've been trying to implement. Creating different albums of things so that you can put your photos in those albums and easily get to it, and then going through and cleaning up all of the million duplicates. I don't know about you, but when I take photos, I take a hundred photos of the same thing just to make sure we really get the shot. And then sometimes I forget to go back and delete all those. We have a lot of photos we don't need in there. So cleaning up all of that and just opening up more storage space on your phone I think is a really big benefit. Now is a really great time to go in and set aside some time to focus on that before we head into the new year. That way you can just start the new year with organized drawers and an organized closet and getting rid of everything that does not support you in this next chapter of your life. So decluttering is number one. Number two on the list is going to be sitting down and setting aside some time to do some reflection via journaling. If you know me by now, you know that I'm a big journaler. I think being able to sit down and put pen to paper and reflect on things is a really important time for you. And it's a really great exercise just to get some reflection done. So find a journal, sit down, maybe light a candle, maybe set some music, whatever you want to do to get into the mood. But I want you to start reflecting on 2024 and start to ask yourself some questions about what you absolutely loved about this year. What are some really great memories you made, skills that you built, lessons that you learned, trips you went on, risks you took? What is everything that you are so obsessed with that you did got to experience? This is a really great way to just make sure that you are focusing and capturing all of the wonderful things that happened this year. When we're talking about setting goals for the new year, it's really important to not skip over everything that you already did this year. And it gives you a really good baseline to understand what were the things that lit you up? What were you really proud of that you accomplished this year? Because when you are able to identify those things that really lit you up and things that you want. It helps you identify things that you want to focus on moving forward. So sit down and really reflect on what were all of those core moments for you in 2024. It's also really fun to create your own highlight reel. Right. Life can feel tough sometimes, and sometimes we just forget how much awesome shit happened in a year. So go through and reflect on all of the wonderful things and try and write down as many things as you can when you're thinking about it. No matter how big, no matter how small, put it on the list so you have a 2024 highlight reel for yourself. Then you can go through and do some deeper reflection. Honestly, my biggest hack for this is you can go onto Pinterest. I do this all the time. Go onto Pinterest and search like year end journal review prompts. There are so many out there and find some that are really going to resonate you for you to sit down and get in the nitty gritty. I'm gonna go through a few ones that you can go through. But if you're looking for my hack and where I get a lot of journal questions, I pick and choose some from Pinterest. I love Pinterest. I'm a Pinterest girly. For days. After you write down all of the wonderful things you did, I want you to start reflecting on what are some of the things that you wish went differently? What are some of the goals that you didn't accomplish? What were some of the lessons learned that you would love to do differently in the new year? Everything that doesn't go your way or you don't accomplish isn't necessarily a bad thing. But it's just an opportunity for us to learn and grow and focus on the things that we do want to shift and we do want to change in the new year. So after you're done with your incredibly long list of all of the wonderful things that happen this year, I want you just to write down maybe two to three things that you could have done differently this year. Write down things that you want to focus on in the new year. This could be health goals, it could be financial goals, it could be just traveling more, it could be whatever. We're going to get into some more specific goal setting stuff in these different core areas of your life for number three. But right now, just start to reflect. Oh man, I'm at the end of the year. I wish I could have done X, Y or Z. I wish I would have focused on this thing or this goal. A little bit more and just take some time to really reflect on how you want to show up differently in 2025 and really start to think about what you are going to do from a goal perspective in the new year. Really, it's starting to prime you for okay, how am I going to dial it in and dial it up for all of the goals that I want to accomplish in the new year? I want you to think about some of the biggest lessons that you learned this year. Lessons about yourself, lessons about life, lessons about business, lessons about money, whatever it is. Think about some of the biggest lessons that you learned this year and then think about how those lessons impacted you in the way that you show up in this world. How did they transform the way you view things, the way you view yourself in how you approach your goals in life moving forward? Sometimes it's really easy to forget the lessons that we've learned and how they actually impact us. And so I think this is really great time to just really reflect on those core lessons because you can utilize the way that those impacted you to make sure that you are forward thinking and showing up for yourself and applying those lessons to the new goals that you're going to create for 2025. So those are three areas that I always like to reflect on. What are all the really great things that happened? What are some things that I wish went differently? And then what are the biggest lessons that I learned this year? Like I said, you can go super deep and find significantly more journal prompts to reflect on. And the more you want to do that, kudos to you. But I think these are three just core areas to reflect on when you're looking at this past year so that you can make sure you're setting yourself up to absolutely crush your goals in 2025, which is what we are moving on to next. So number three is going to be goal setting. Like I mentioned, I love goals. I love to set goals. I am really big on being able to just be intentional about how you're spending your time. One of the ways that I think is really impactful for goal setting, if you're looking into 2025, is breaking up your life into some core areas. So I'm going to have you break it up into four areas if you want to break it up deeper, further. If there's another area of your life that you are specifically focused on in 2025, add another column, add another box, add another page, however you want to write this out. But for the purpose of this exercise, I'm going to Focus on the core four of your life. And what I want you to either do is just create space to write under each of these categories what some of your goals are going to be for 2025. And so those core four areas are going to be health. This could be all things physical and mental health. Thinking about the food that you want to be eating, the workout routines that you want to have, the sleep schedule that you want to carry. Think anything that falls under the umbrella of your health is going to go into this category. Next up is going to be financial because obviously we are going to have some fun. Finance goals for the new year. Think about income goals either for your job or for your business. Think about spending. Do you want to have a more intentional aligned spending plan for the new year? Do you want to feel good about where your money is going? Start thinking about some of the things that you really want to be intentional about spending your money on. This is the basis of creating an aligned spending plan is actually calling out the areas that you feel excited about spending your money on and cutting out all of the areas that you are. Fuck, I can't believe I spent money on that. I can't believe I keep spending money in this area. It's not actually lighting me up. It's not actually getting further to my goals in life. And so thinking about what are those core areas that you do want to spend Money on in 2025? Another thing from a finance perspective is going to be tracking your net worth. I talk about this all the time, but focusing on income is great. I'm not saying you should not try and make more money in your life. Most of us definitely are in a chapter where more money is only going to help the cause. But what I really want to encourage you to focus on in 2025 is not necessarily income, but it's your net worth. So figuring out what it is and starting to track your net worth, because it's not about how much money you make, it's about how much money you keep and how much money you learn to grow and learn to make it work for you so that eventually you don't have to keep working for money every single year. You are eventually going to hit a point where your investments are going to support you and support your lifestyle. And that is the overall goal with our finances. So break down all of your finance and really start to think about what it would look like for you if you crushed all of these goals. Is there savings goals that you want to focus on? Are you working towards a wedding or A new house, or anything along those lines. Start to really map out what your core finance goals are for 2025 so that you understand how to start working towards that. Next up is going to be the growth category. This category is all personal professional growth. So thinking about how you want to grow in 2025, thinking about new skills that you want to learn, new goals that you want to work towards, how you want to invest in yourself personally and professionally. If you own a business, what are your growth goals for your business? What are some different revenue goals that you want to hit within your business? Or maybe it's a new product that you want to drop, or a book that you want to work on, or a podcast that you want to launch. From a personal perspective, it could be just focusing on any sort of personal growth is going to fall into this category. So really write down all of the ways that you are so excited to grow as a person in 2025. That's going to be the growth category. And last up, this category is, hands down my favorite. It is the fun category. So think about all of the ways you want to have fun in the new year. Are there memories that you want to create? Are there experiences that you want to have? Are there trips that you want to go on, adventures you want to be a part of? Whatever it is, what is going to make 2025 the most fun year you've ever had? Really start to get intentional about what that looks like for you so that you can start to work all of this into your daily, weekly, quarterly, monthly goals so that you can make sure you're actually carving out time. Because I believe we are supposed to be working hard towards our goals, but the whole purpose of life is to have fun and to grow. And so that's why these are my core four areas. So just to recap, you've got health, finances, growth, and fun. Those are the four areas that I focus on and I think are going to make a really big impact. Go through and just bullet, point out, write sentences however you want to do it, but start to reflect on what you want your year to look like in 2025. In all of these different categories. Once we have got our goals, you've got a super clear idea of what you want 2025 to look like. You're feeling really intentional about it all. We're getting into my favorite one, and this is all about visualization and creating a vision board. Visualization is such a hack when it comes to creating your dream life, because our brains do not know the difference between Things that we imagine in our brain and visualize in our mind and things that we experience in real life. And we know that our brain fears the unknown. Our brain fears things that we have never done before. But if you are here to live a big life and go after goals that you have never accomplished before, you have to find ways to work through that fear. And one of the biggest hacks to work through that fear is to normalize your goals in your brain. And I think one of the best ways to do this is to focus on visualizing and creating a vision board. So what you can do is take all of these goals that you have now. You've done the research, you've sat down, you've been intentional, you understand where you want your year to head. Now is a time to really start to soak that into your mind and normalize that with your brain. Let your brain know where the heck you are going and what your new normal looks. And so you can sit down and do guided visualizations. You could sit down and just listen to some, like, binaural beats or some theta brainwave off of Spotify. Sit down and just start to visualize what a day in the life is going to look like for you. What is a month going to look like? What how are you going to feel in this new reality and these new goals that you're accomplishing. What is going to come up for you? You want to focus on as many emotions as possible, right? So what are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are you feeling? What are you smelling? What are you tasting? And make sure that you are getting as crystal clear as possible as what this looks like, as if you have already accomplished these goals. The more that you do this, the more that you normalize this reality to your brain, the easier it is going to be for you to act in alignment with that version of yourself that already has all of the goals that you have already accomplished. And visualizing you can make part of your daily routines. You can visualize weekly. The more that you do it, the easier it's going to be to rewire your brain and align with this reality and with that. Creating a vision board is, hands down, one of my favorite hacks. I love a vision board. I've been making vision boards for years, and each year I have gotten a little bit better at creating a vision board that feels realistic, it feels stretchy, and the things come to life. So I'm going to give you some of my favorite hacks for creating a vision board. I will say my vision board journey Started out with the classic magazines where I would go to grocery stores and go to their free magazine racks and take some out. I would go to the stores and buy some magazines that aligned with some visuals that I wanted to do. But I definitely geared away from utilizing magazines for really one reason, and that is it is way easier to create something specific on the Internet. So I use Canva now, but both strategies are going to be great. So if you want to do the vision board model where you're cutting out magazines, be intentional and go out and find magazines that are going to have things that align with the goals of the things that you're trying to create. Obviously, if you are focused on health and finance goals and your magazine has the 10 best fast food restaurants in the world, like that probably isn't going to be helpful. So find a health focused one, find a finance focused one, find magazines that are going to have what you're looking for so that you can sit down and cut out some of those images to create your vision board. Why I have switched to Canva to create mine and why I think it's really easy to do is because we can utilize our own photos, which is a hack. If you are able to put a photo of yourself on your vision board, this is going to make your brain even more approachable to the idea that all this stuff is going to happen. So if you want to have a new car and you go and test drive the car, you have a photo of your hand on that steering wheel that is going to feel so much more real for your brain because now you have the memory of driving it and you have the photo to remember what it felt like for you to sit in that car. If you are going to travel and you want to fly first class, you have a photo of you in first class from a previous flight that's going to feel so much more attainable because your brain is already feeling like it's possible because it's you in the photo. So any way that you can incorporate you being in your own vision board, it is going to make it so much more effective and stronger for your brain to be like, hell yeah, of course that's happening. Look it, I'm already on it. It's already happened, so I'll share with you. One of the things that I put myself in on my vision board this year was a photo with me with my podcast mic. So I wanted to drop and launch. Busy getting better in 2024. And so I had a photo of myself with it on there. And so it was so much easier to be like, yeah, of course this is going to happen because I'm on it. That's me with my mic. Like, I'm already one step there. So just a small example of how you can start to put yourself on your own vision board. The other reason is because it's a lot easier to find specific images. I think if you can utilize Google, if you can utilize Pinterest to find aesthetic photos that align with your individual goals. I find that when you are in a magazine, you're just searching for things that could align. Whereas as you've already gone through your goal setting, you have your core four of your areas now you can go find images and pictures that actually resonate with what your specific goals are. You can add in really specific numbers. If you have a really specific finance goal or whatever it is, like, you can actually put your own information on there versus trying to find a photo that you're like, yeah, that could work for that. Because the secret hack to your vision board is you want it to evoke emotion. You want it to put it somewhere where you can see it, where when you look at it, you get excited and you're like, yes, that is my future. That is what I'm working towards. It's already mine. I'm on my way to it. And so you want to have an emotional connection with your vision board. It cannot just be a bunch of random photos. It cannot just be like, oh, I'm gonna throw a million bucks because I wanna make money. You wanna make it as specific as possible in relation to the goals that you are working towards. And so on top of photos, you can include quotes, you can include words, you can include things and symbols that are gonna be a metaphor, goals that you're working towards. It doesn't always have to be very specific, but it has to be something where when you look at it, you know exactly what it's saying to you, and it's evoking some sort of emotion and it motivates you and it inspires you to continue to move forward. You want to be able to look at it and feel something. You don't want to just look at it and see a bunch of photos on there. So as specific as you can make it is the objective and as much of a vibe as you can make it. Like, when I look at my vision board, I'm like, oh, I'm fired up for the year. Hell yeah. These are the goals I'm working towards, right? You want to be excited when you see it. So I Would say those are probably the biggest hacks when it comes to creating it. Making sure that you're evoking emotion, making sure it's very specific to the goals that you have already set out for the year. Put yourself on it so that you can really start to resonate. And oh, I forgot the last one that I would put on there. This is a hack. I can't remember where I heard it from, but somebody taught me this and it was put something on your vision board that has already happened or is really close to happening. If something is going to happen in the new year, put it on your vision board. Once one thing is already done on your vision board, it's like, oh, that's already done. Of course the rest is going to come true. So again, I can't remember where I learned that, but I think that's so smart because the more that your brain starts to be like, yeah, this is possible, this is possible, then the more motivated and inspired and possible all of your goals are going to be. So that would be the last hack is add something in there that is either already happened or is really close to happening, or something that is like a yes, I know this is going to get accomplished. I just don't necessarily know when. All right, and number five, this is going to be picking a word, an intention, a vibe, something that is just going to encapsulate all of the energy for 2025. I love picking a word of the year. I love setting an intention for the year and just making it known, like, what the whole purpose and what the whole Energy is behind 2025. Now, what I will say is that you can pick your word of the year, your intention, and add it to your vision board. So that is something that I am definitely a fan of. So after you look at your vision board and you're like, hey, this is it. Figure out what that word is. Put that word on your vision board. Put that word on a whiteboard. Put that word on a sticky note on your background of your phone, whatever it is, so that you can remember what the whole point of your year is, what the energy is, what the vibe is. Pick a word excites you that lights a fire in you that has you being like, hell, yeah, this is my year. That is the whole point of this. It can be a word, it can be intention, it can be a vibe, it can be a phrase, it can be whatever you want. But what is the vibe for 2025? That would be number five. I feel like a lot of that rhymed Right there. And that was very unintentional. But yeah, number five, the vibe of 2020. Okay. And last up, I actually have a bonus for you. This is something I started doing last year, so I haven't read it yet, but I'm really excited to read it and I'm really excited to redo this exercise heading into the new year. And this is writing a letter to yourself to read next New Year's. So you'll read this on New Year's eve heading into 2026 from the point of view of you at the end of the year as a writing about a reflection of your entire year. So I, like I said, I did this for the first time this year. I'm going to sit down on New Year's Eve this year and read the letter that I wrote to myself at the beginning of this year. And I'm really excited to see how much of the things I was working on came to fruition, and I'm really excited to do it again for next year. So write a letter to yourself from the point of view of yourself one year from now and talk about your year. What did you accomplish? What did you see? What goals did you hit? How did you grow? What did you learn? What new milestones did you accomplish? And I think this is just another really great way to intention set your year and the energy that you're going to carry into the new year. So that is it. Those are my five steps to reflect, reset, and get ready for 2025 with your little bonus to write a letter to yourself. I hope that you can take these steps and just have some time to yourself to really pat yourself on the back for the incredible 2024 that you had and get ready to ramp up for an even better 2025. And I will see you on the next episode next year. Bye, babe.