Hello and welcome Janet Beckers here and nearly the end of the year.

I hope that you have had a fantastic Christmas time with your loved ones and if you’re like me and like most people as well as having a chance to relax now, now are you really thinking about the new year. There’s lots of talk about what are you going to be doing next year what are your plans? What are your goals? Now. I’ve got lots of other resources that I’ve been sharing with you this month on how to plan for next year.

But hey I wanted to share with you the very very first step that I do every single year before I finalize my plan for the for the new year.

And it’s a really important step to take. Unfortunately it’s also a really fun one. So what I’m going to share with you today is a ritual, really, that I have been using with my family now for 12 years. And it’s something that ends your year with a sense of celebration. With a sense of energy and optimism that you bring in to the new year. So I’m going to share with you why it is important to do this activity now. If you haven’t done it, next year you may even do a little bit earlier. But really important to get this done before January. Why it’s important to do this, and then we’re going to walk you through step by step exactly how to do this and how to actually make it a bit of a ritual with you and your loved ones.

It’s a really exciting activity. So let’s get started and I shall share with you what it is. Now, every single year, I do what is called A Celebration board now why are you in a moment what actually one looks like. Why do you want to do this? Well, when you are leading into doing your planning for the next year normally around about this time of the year, You could be feeling really overwhelmed and quite exhausted. You know there’s a lot of expectations a lot of demands on your time and your energy at this time of the year in your business and also just personal. You know what it’s like you know getting the Christmas presents. And organising whose you know whose place you’re going to go to at what time.

All of those sorts of things that take a lot of your headspace up. And it’s also a time of the year where, if you haven’t already done your planning for next year which you really should have, but if you haven’t and you’re going to be really focusing again on reviewing your plan for the next year you can be looking back at your previous year, like the one that you’ve just finished, and thinking a sense of “I haven’t got anything done,” You know “I set myself these huge goals or they didn’t even seem huge at the time and what have we haven’t achieved them or if I have achieved them”.

You may be thinking “how am I going to do better next year or how am I going to build on this or how am I going to have the energy to be able to continue to do this?” These are really normal things. I tell you what when you were coming in to doing your plan for the next 12 months or reviewing your plan that you have already done, which is just a really normal thing for you to start doing at this time of the year. If you bringing that energy of, you know, a frustration of disappointment. or If you’re bringing in that energy of “oh you know I’ve got to get all this done before the end of the year”. That panic, that sense of tasks and to do if you bring that energy in to your planning for the next year.

You know be thinking two things. One is it’s going to be small. You’re going to be really bringing a “task energy”, “to do energy” into your plan and. That’s going to really limit what kind of plan you going to do. And it will very often mean it’s going to be the same old same old. And the other thing that’s going to do if you bring that energy in is you very often will not be able to think creatively about what is possible. And so you can be bringing in a very small minded sort of energy that comes into it. So we don’t want to do that because we want to make your next year the best year yet. Even if the year that you’re just finishing HAS BEEN YOUR BEST YEAR YET. Or it’s been the worst year yet. We want to make next year, your best year yet. So to do that we have to make sure that we’re bringing in the right energy. So the exercise I’m going to share with you is actually a really enjoyable thing to do and the whole purpose of it is to really acknowledge the different things that you have achieved this year. Now if you’re thinking well I haven’t done much to stick with me okay. So it’s going to acknowledge and celebrate the things that you have achieved that year and to be bringing in a sense of gratitude, a sense of well-being, and a sense of clearing out the panic. Clearing out the overwhelm and the heaviness of the to-dos. Because we want to bring in that beautiful optimistic confident energy into the plan that you can be creating. So this is a really important step to do.

And fortunately, it’s a lot of fun. So let me introduce you to the celebration board Now this started, the first one that I did, was in 2007.

So let me just show you who see this big roll up paper. You can see the end of it here like it goes. Woah! Can You see that? Layers and layers and layers. So 2007 was our first one. And so as I’m recording this this is the end of 2018.

So this will be number 12 that we have done. Now when I say we, this is something that I do with my husband and my two children. So I’ll give you a look on what one looks like. So you can see. And also on the podcast page. I will put some photos. I’ll blur out the details simply because this is not just me. This is also everybody else in the family. But what we do is we get a great big sheet of paper. Lots of colored text. Put the year in the middle. This one’s 2016. And each person’s name is on there. Now. It’s. A little bit hard for me to be able to show you here. As. You can see. Really quite big. So let’s run over with you. What we’ve done, so you can get an idea.

Now. Now. I really love to be able to involve my whole family doing this because the reality is, that you know. It may be your family. Or it may be friends. It may be your dog and your dog usually makes it every single year. But it’s really lovely to be able to do something like this with the people who are impacted by what happens with you on a day to day basis. And you’re impacted by what’s happening with them. It’s a really lovely thing for you all to get together and acknowledge and record everything that you have done. Now what we do. And so the first one we did it was in 2007. Now my youngest was eight at that time and my eldest was almost 12. So they were, you know, they were young. Now as you would probably know with kids that age, sometimes you really got to convince them to do something that means that going to sit down for more than five minutes. So the first few years that we did this required me doing a lot cajoling. Now that we are in 2018. I’ve got a 20 year old and a daughter who is going 22. By the time that you see this, she will be 22. She had her birthday just before Christmas. So that’s pretty different. So we’ve been doing this every single year. So now we have our children instigating it going. “When are we going to celebration board? We’ve got to do it. What date are we going to do it?” And they’re really looking forward to actually creating this celebration together as a family.

In fact this year as a you know a sign that you know that we will have to be changing how we’re doing it is, my son who who’s just turned 20 has just taken off with a three month visa for traveling in India. With a backpack and no plan beyond the first four days and he’s gone. But, he did say “what we can’t do this before I leave because I’m going to get so much exciting things I want to put on the celebration board before the end of the year.”

So we’ve got to do it via Skype and we get to work out how we’re going to get his contribution onto our big family sheet. but That’s. So it doesn’t even have to be that you’re going to have the people who you want to do this with need to be together. But I’m sharing it with you here around Christmas time because I know that there’s a very good chance that you may be with your loved ones at the moment. So don’t let distance be a barrier. It can be a really nice thing to be able to do virtually. So how does it work?

The whole idea is that we get together using a creative way so we do colored text, lots of drawing. Some people who are taught this to like to use photos or magazines or things like that. We just keep it simple and we set ourselves a well I had to set a timeframe when the kids were little (laughs) just to promise them that it was nearly over. But now that they’re bigger you know we you know we’ll set aside a date and we’ll set the time to do it.

Now the idea is that you spend the time going over every single thing that you have done that year. And I’ll go through the steps on how do you do this. All the different things that you have done this past year that maybe in your business. That may be in your hobbies. That may be activities different activities, you know excursions. Or different special events that you’ve had during the year. Special times that you just have with multiple ones. Things that were a personal growth to you. You know. Challenges that you may have had. But we’re not going to focus on bad things we going to focus on you know how were they good. What did you get from those. And so doing this especially as a family is a fun thing because a lot of times it’s things that we did together that we want to be able to do like a combination so there’s often lots of arrows going on out. And you know we, the dog even gets to celebrate, you know, that he got to to the beach a few times a week or you know little things like that. So that’s the whole idea is that we’re going to be putting that beautiful celebration in to what you are doing now what we do with ours when we’ve completed it is, we actually put up. That year’s one we put it in our living area and sometimes it in the hallway to one of the bedrooms or at the moment is up there where we do all of our painting. Because that where we’ve got a house where is always artworks happening. And that just means that, you know, every now and then you might walk past and you’ll have a look at it: “That’s right. That was really cool that that happened.”

So we actually live with it for the year which is really nice which is why the latest one that I’ve got here is two years ago. So. Let’s go over. Some of the things that were there from last year. From 2016, two years ago, that I can just see from this one and then I’ll guide you through. You can do this for yourself. So for example if I have a look at mine. This might work for you. So we’ve got each of us sort of sits around it. so It’s all at different angles because we’re all sitting around this table. So for me. I’ll turn it around. There might be a bit of noise.

So I’ve got things like for business wise you know that I launched my video marketing program so I around ran workshops. And my daughter who was studying event management at the time actually came along and was the event manager. So we got to travel what we did those workshops so that was that was a big event. We also did things that particularly here I was the patrol captain for our surf club. For our patrol. And we actually won the Best patrol of the year which was pretty awesome. And then I had a bit of fun because they they lifted up to me, they put the embroidery on the winning jacket. So I changed it and put most awesome patrol as the official embroidery on my jacket. So I’ve got there a picture that I’ve done there. I’ve also just written there about some fantastic camping and kayaking with my husband.

I also put, you know, here was an interesting one. My mum was really sick that year. Now I could very easily have put down here that that was a negative you know because I spent a lot of time with my mum. She was very sick and I went there but you know what I put down that I got to care for my mum. I Was able to be there. That was something that was a real positive from that. You know I’ve also been able to put things here like you know swimming. Going swimming with my friends. A weekend away. Actually I was being written down about 50 kilometres away and I really liked it. Some weddings we went to. When I was in the United States. That I was masterminding the high mastermind but I also made sure that every single time I went over there from asked why I stayed longer and explored. So that was a pretty good year. Yeah that was a pretty firm one.

We’ve also got things like, you know, my kids put things here about this one here my husband my my son was finishing high school. So for him he put down about all the difference even though yes he was studying for his HSC. He’s still we got there about all the different festivals and bands he went to ’cause he’s just obsessed with music.

And we also put about you know he took over being patrol captain for me. Oh he got a beautiful girlfriend. Gosh she was beautiful. still Is beautiful. My husband put down lots of things to do with his art and his gardening and his work. We put down about where we bought our first Aboriginal art as an investment. My daughter and I. All these different things that we did together and you know. And going and seeing Macklemore together. I was probably the oldest person in the audience but I was probably the loudest as well. So that’s it just gives you an idea of the kind of things that. Is.

Going to throw that down. So for me that was a great year. We had a lot of fun but also at that same time, as you saw, you know I was doing a lot of caring for my mum who was sick. So that was actually taking a lot of my time I could have very easily is focused on the negative. So you can see there’s all different positive things. So even just me reading that, I’m feeling a real sense of achievement but I do know that before I went to start that I was going: “oh yeah I did a bit of travelling this year that was really cool but you know”. There was always that sense of frustration of you know there always is. Everywhere we set ourselves big goals “I didn’t get everything I wanted to get done”. But after that I feel really really good about myself. So that is the purpose of doing this. So let me run you through exactly how do you create your own celebration board and create a ritual around that.

So these are the steps. Number one: decide who you want to do this with. You can do this on your own at some times especially when the kids were younger. I would do it on my own to start with because I really want to do my planning and I wanted to get this energy and then I would do it again with the family. So sometimes there were two sheets that I had and that’s okay.  You can do it more than once. So deciding you know what we are going to do it on your own and then you’re going to do it again later as a family. As a ritual that you do with your family. It’s a really lovely bonding thing to do. So decide who you want to do this with and decide then how are you going to do it. Are you going to do it as a virtual thing or are you going to do it together?

The next thing you will do is set the date of when you are going to do it. Set a date and a time and everybody sticks with that.

And just that they’re only going to do it with.

I was running through this with my Rising Star clients this week. I Was doing this exercise with them and one of them was saying what she’s actually going to be doing it when she’s got the whole family together. Including her kids’ partners because they’re a big part of the family as well. So that’s you know that’s going to be a big part for her is the extended family which will decide to do that as well.

So set your date. Now, the next thing is every single person needs to prepare because it is amazing how you forget what you’ve done. Now social media is fantastic for this so I always go back through my last, all the photos that I’ve had in my last 12 months on either Facebook or Instagram. Now for you you may not do much of on social media. You may go through the photos that you’ve got on your phone. That may be your trigger for that. You might go through your calendar and look at the different things that you do especially with business. You may not have documented those so much through photos but go through your calendar. Maybe even go through your e-mails looking for big things. Whatever it is it’s going to help you to try to remember the things that were significant for you that year and that also includes the things that were that you could perceive as a real negative. You know you might have some sickness in your family or yourself. You may even have deaths in your family. You may have had a time or where are you just feeling depressed and could not feel motivated to do things. They still count, okay? They are really significant because then what we’re going to do is when we get together, which is the next step. First of all, you’re going to get you know you need the materials. We get like a big piece of paper. We can go down to the newsagents and get a nice big sheet of paper. We just find that bigger is better because it just allows you to be freer. We get either coloured textures or colored pencils and really that’s all you need. I don’t have to complicate it. So you’ve got to get those. Now what I say about including things that might be really negative because what we’re going to do here now is we’re going to get we’re going to get our own little corner and we’re going to be creative with our colour. And we’re going to put down those significant events. And these are really nice things that you’ll be discussing that with each other as you’re going. It allows you to process so even those negative things is to look at to acknowledge that they happened and then to look at what was something that you can see as a sense of achievement around that. It may be, in the case when I was talking about, you know you may have been feeling really depressed. You know what I kept on going. Or it may have been you know there was something happened with your business. That you didn’t you didn’t get the results you wanted but you can be putting in there. You know what, I did the work. I learnt a lot through there. Celebrate the wins and celebrate learnings as much as the wins. Okay.  

So what you going to do now is just take that time is to just do what you want to do if you want your drawings or you just want to write words or a combination. Whatever works for you and each person can do it differently. You know how I want to. My husband’s I had to guess what they were for that year because he’s always just drawings. But they’re really they he knows what they are straight off. They’re triggers to remind you. So this is take that time to actually talk amongst each other and go to go to each other. “Ah remember when this happened or when know was that”. And be honest with yourself because it doesn’t have to be anybody else sees this. We put it up somewhere where we as a family to see it. But you don’t have to you know I can just be you. So that’s the next thing is to take that time to really process.

Now the next step is to look at what you’ve done and really acknowledge. Just soak up that energy of, “you know what? Things happened this year. This was my life.” And you know what? Really focus on the things the learnings that you had and what you were grateful for. And know I can remember one year that’s in that pile there where my business really, it stagnated. And that was for quite a few reasons. One was I had kind of outgrown the business but I wasn’t allowed, I wasn’t admitting it to myself. And so I wasn’t enjoying it as much because I was ready for the next step that I was holding on. But also it happened to happen at the same time that my mother had gone through time she was really unwell. Really unwell. She’s had a tough couple of years. You know she’s getting older and she had a lot of problems with her heart. And so for me I think you know what? Every single week, I travel two hours to be with her every single week to take her to the doctors. That is something to celebrate. And it is okay that other things fell apart. Not fell apart, but didn’t grow. Because that was what my priority was that year.

So allow yourself to really look at it and to be able to acknowledge things that you’ve learnt. And really acknowledge the things that went really really well. And just acknowledge yourself okay because that’s the energy that we want to bring in. Now when you’re taking this energy and you’re going to be planning for next year and I have whole process that I use for planning for the following year is the first thing you want to ring at any time now you look at what you’ve done and go you know what. What things that happened last year what things do I want to. I’m really happy about that. I want to build on so you can make sure when you’re planning your next year that you’re going to make sure that you that you do that. For me looking at that particular year. I know for me a lot of that was I was travelling a lot which I loved but I wasn’t doing it with my husband. So for me I put down you know what I would do more weekends away I want to do more kayaking. I want to do things just with my husband which is what we did.

So those are, you know, they were learnings. What do you want to more of? And what are the things that you had as big lessons that you don’t want to repeat that lesson? But what can you take from that to build into the next year? But if you had seen all of those things as failures or whatever, you can’t bring that energy forward. But if you’re celebrating the learnings that you had, you can bring that into the next year. Okay.

So this is a fantastic ritual for you to be able to introduce to your own family as I was saying the first time I started doing this. I have an eight and a 10 year old. Now I have a 20 and a 22 year old and we are still doing it. And there’s no way that the kids want to stop doing it. It’s probably going to be something we have to be doing for decades. And I tell you what, it is fantastic because what we also do is every year now, we open up all the previous years and we go over and reminisce and celebrate again.

So it’s a really beautiful ritual to have a really really important, actually very strategic thing for you to do before you set any big planning and visualizing for the next year. And if you’ve already done your plan for the next year, revisit it after doing this exercise and see if there’s anything that you want to change.

Okay I’m really looking forward to hearing from you. So I would love very much if you can share with me if you’ve done this. If you’ve done it in the past, because I know I share this every year. If you’ve done it in the past I’d love to hear from you. You know, have you made it a ritual? How is it impacting your life. If you do do one. I would so love it if you would share a photo with me. So come over onto Instagram or Facebook and share a photo of your celebration board. I would love to be able to see that just come and share that with me as well. And let’s use a hashtag. #celebrationboard. That would be a fantastic thing to do. I come over on Instagram come over on Facebook and share that and then you can search on that tag and see if you can find what everybody else has been doing that would be super cool. And just leave comments down below on the podcast page. I’m not quite sure if you can upload images there but if you can. I’m not quite sure if you can be extra awesome as well. All right. So I would love to hear from you and again. Hope you’re having a really beautiful time with your family or your loved ones. Or just also if you want it to just be alone, if you’re getting some time for some space to yourself. I’m hope that you’re actually doing what you want to be doing at this time of the year. I’m really really looking forward to helping you has much fun next year.

I have some pretty exciting things planned to really help you. I’m super excited about them.

Okay, bye!