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As we approach the end of one year and the beginning of another, it's a good time to stop and look at where we are and where we want to go. You may be feeling frustrated and stuck in your personal or professional growth journey, constantly setting goals but never quite reaching them. You may already be taking actions such as working harder, seeking quick fixes, or simply hoping for the best, but instead of seeing progress, you feel overwhelmed, disheartened, and unsure about the future. It's time to step back and reassess your approach, gaining a clearer vision and direction for your future goals. By reflecting on your current strategies and planning for a more intentional and strategic path forward, you can break free from the cycle of frustration and start making meaningful progress towards your desired outcomes.

 

In this episode, Jason and Steve discuss:

  • The Importance of Reflection and Planning
  • The Annual Reflection Tradition
  • Reflection and Planning Guide
  • Art and Science of Tools
  • Learning About Oneself

 

Key Takeaways:

  • Uncover the power of reflection to propel your personal and professional growth forward
  •  Discover the value of debriefing and how it can supercharge your planning and decision-making
  • Embrace challenges and take risks to unlock new opportunities and growth in your life
  • Harness the strength of written goals to drive your vision for the future and achieve success
  • Explore the importance of setting a clear vision for the future and how it can shape your path to success

 

 

“What a wonderful time to reflect, what a wonderful time to look forward, to examine the present and the past; it might give you a new perspective.”

-Steve Scanlon

Connect with Steve and Jason:

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Listen to the podcast here:

Jason and Steve- Reflection and Planning                 


            

Hey, welcome, everybody, to this episode of the The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE. This is your host, Steve Scanlon. And I have a very, very special guest today, your other host. Take it over.

You always have very, very special guests. I'm just the other co-host. I'm not a special guest. Just me. It's Jason Abel. Hi, everybody.        
            

No, he is special. You know, it's interesting that the intro music that we have is Jen coming on and saying., and here's your hosts, Steve Scanlon and Jason Abel or Jason Abel and Steve Scanlon.

I know, it’s pretty good.

But we're rarely together. I think, you know, I'm sure that there are quite a few people out there. When they hear me, they're like, I want a Jason.

That's just funny. My brain went to all kinds of different things. I don't know. Maybe we should do a poll? Maybe people are like oh, I wish it was Steve.

I don't think you'd want to see that poll. I'm just kidding. Here we are. But anyway…

Just depends on who we ask.

That's right. I'm going to ask all my friends, hey, what do you like more? Jason, you are a special guest. And more than a special guest today, it's the time of the year that you and I like to come together because we kind of like to reflect together. And in fact, today's topic is something of that, right? Like, how do we kind of live and breathe and navigate in this season that we're in? What's the most effective thing we can do? What is some creative stuff that we can do in this particular time of the year? Maybe for some people, it's the time of their life, and so today we're going to talk about planning and also reflecting, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say, also sort of being, right? It's just kind of a little bit of a combination of past, present and future, not just, hey, what are we going to do in 2024, or something like that, which is great. That's a part of it. But as we were planning for this, I guess I thought about you because, dude, I'm the tail wagging the dog here. Yeah, I'll kick us off, but I think you've been doing something for so many years, and I'd love for you to tell our audience and people listening something that you've been doing for quite a long time. Because one, I think it's really unique, and I think it's actually really inspiring. So, share with us some of how in your life you've approached planning and vision and reflection, if you don't mind.

Sure, I'll tell the story, but as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking about jumping out of an airplane. The reason I'm thinking about that is because the two times that you and I did that, the only two times I'm sure we'll ever do, at least for me, I don't think I'll ever do that again, but the Navy Seals, the guys that we did that with, they had this saying, in fact, we had the saying on some backpacks that we did one year: pack, jump, debrief. And the discussion that we're getting into right now is just kind of an expansion on that idea. The whole idea, when jumping out of an airplane, you take great care in how you pack that parachute. Right? It's got to be packed exactly right.

It had better be.

Yeah, doing that exactly right. But then you got to execute. You're going to use that parachute. You can jump out of an airplane and execute. But then the debrief part is super important. How did it go? How was the plane speed? Did the parachute deploy the way it was supposed to? How did we land? And just debriefing that, so the next time that you're going to pack the parachute and jump out of an airplane, it's even better or more enhanced or you're growing in some way. And so anyways, that whole idea is the same thing that we do all the time with our clients, but even with ourselves at this time of year, right towards the end of the year, it is a great time to go. Let's pack the parachute. Let's reflect on where we've been, we've executed this year, and then debrief a little bit. So that whole idea.

I got to pause and just say, hey, with regard to jumping out of that airplane twice, number one, the second time was way worse. First time, you were just too sick.

You knew. I agree.        
            

Number two was like, brutal. But I do got to give you props because you have a fear of heights. And so, look, I've been on high things a lot in my life, although when we got to 13,000ft, because that's what those guys timiters read, and they opened up that door, all I remember is wanting- I wanted to negotiate. Wait a minute, let's have a discussion about this. And it was so loud. They were looking at me like, yeah, I can see your lips move, but we're not talking about anything. And then the guy just jumped out of the plane with me, and I was like, okay, this is a problem.

Yeah.        

And I have this memory of you because I looked towards the back of the plane. I was the first one out. I looked back, you know, there's only one rule to follow in that at least when you're strapped to these Navy Seals. We did tandem jumps, folks. Like, I didn't just jump out because I don’t know what we're doing there. There's one rule. When you're strapped to a Navy Seal or strapped to a guide or whatever, you have one thing to do and for whatever reason, it's tilt your head back. They don't want you looking down. I don't know if they could go into some funky free falling, spinning, uncontrollable, whatever. And I just looked at the back of the plane and you were number five to go out. You weren't going out for like another six minutes. I just remember your head was already back.

Untitled design (40)

Look, man, if I don't do anything good in life, one thing I can do is follow direction.   
     

I was like, okay, this cat's ready. He's going to be ready. If you look one thing, just look back. Maybe it's because they don't want you to look. Looking down was okay. So anyway, reflect black. I loved the backpack analogy. Tell us what you've been doing. And I just think what you do is super cool.

Well, I appreciate that. I think what you're referring to is my May 14 little annual sojourn that I make. And I've told this story a bunch of times. I'll shorten it up right now so we can kind of get to the meat of it. But before I graduated in 1993 from college from Loyola University of Maryland at the time it was Loyola College, I had heard about this study, which, by the way, has been debunked, and it's not even a real thing, which is a whole other podcast episode. But I had heard this story about Harvard seniors that they did a study on, and the study, again, I'll really shorten this up, is those that wrote down their goals, went further in life, and had a more enriched life and self-actualized life as far as relationships and health and family and success in business and all that, than the Harvard graduates that did not have a written out plan or goals. And I was like, okay, well, again, following directions, right? Head back. I was like, well, okay, I'll go do that. So, May 14 was the day before graduation in 1993, and I wrote down a bunch of goals that I wanted to achieve, and I didn't really know what I was doing, but I just wrote a bunch of stuff down, and what has happened since then has been very interesting. Every May 14, I go back to Loyola on the same campus, oftentimes sit on the same bench, and I will take out the paper from 1993 and every year subsequent to that and read what I wrote down. And since that first year, I do write a little bit of a reflection on the year before.
                                                                                                       
"How did the year go? What sticks out in my memory? What am I most proud of? What was the greatest challenge that I had that year? What am I frustrated with? I just kind of write, and I'll write three, four, five pages of just kind of writing. Sometimes I'll think about questions I don't want to answer, sometimes not. And then I'll write out what I would like the next year to look like. And that's not something I come up with on that day, it's something that I've been preparing for. And then I also kind of do a pulse check. Hey, what do my finances look like compared to what I would like them to look like? Or what I said I wanted them to look like? What do my relationships look like compared to what I said to myself that I wanted them to look like? And the same thing for health and wellness."

Steve, our business, just different things, and that's been an annual thing. Man, if I have missed a year, which I've never completely missed a year, but I've had anybody who's listening might put some math together and understand that May 14 sometimes falls on Mother's Day, and it's not wise for me, with the women in my life, to just run off on Mother's Day. So, when May 14 falls on Mother's Day, I make sure that I'm physically present with the mothers in my life, but on May 13 or May 15, I'm there. I haven't missed a year from 1993 to we're recording this in 2023, so, it's been a few years, and I will tell you that that one activity has more to do with how I have navigated my life than probably any other activity that I'm involved with. And so, yeah, it's just a thing. I know we've got a couple of tools and things that we want to get to, but that's my story. And I'm even now as a 52 year old telling you that story, man, I just hope that as the years continue to go by, that that's an activity. I mean, it's one of the things that I most look forward to in the year. I have a lot of things, thankfully and gratefully, that I look forward to in a year, but I really look forward to that day because of just the idea of reflecting and looking back, thinking about where I am and then where I would like to go in those different aspects of my life and look, different things have changed, right? I've noticed some trends where early on in my life and my career, there were certain business marks and financial marks and health marks and different- mt definition of success was very different then than it is now, and I've even noticed that over the years. But, gosh, it's been a really great activity, and I'm glad you asked about it.        

Well, first of all, I have to pause and laugh about the whole 14th idea because, come on, we got to laugh in life. Telling your wife, Amy, honey, I'm going to go off on Mother's Day with your kids around so that I can plan to be a great husband?

Not wise at all.

Come on, we got to see the cartoon in that. I'm grateful that you can your senses. Yeah, and again, without burying the lead, we wanted to do a show where effectively, you know, you're probably not going to go to Loyola Marymount or maybe even back to your college, but every year for the last few years, our firm, Rewire, has procured and curated a tool, a very simple reflection and planning and vision tool. And we say simple because I think you could agree with that, Jason. Like, it can get super complex. I mean, for God's sakes, there's books written about this, and courses taught on this, and like you said, debunked Harvard studies, which maybe did or didn't happen. Whether it did or it didn't, it created something good in you. So, I'm sorry to say, who cares if it did and didn't? I mean, some people might care.

Yeah. There is literally, we could do a whole other podcast on that. When I realized that the study wasn't even real, I did have a little bit of like, oh, yeah, it's pretty deep, actually. But at the end of the day, I was super disappointed. And again, we can talk about this at a later date, but at the same time, I did come to the realization, like, yeah, right, it actually served a really important purpose for me.        
            

You and I are in the business. We actually look at studies, and now that we're into this neuroscientific approach to coaching, we read abstracts, we look at studies. So, I was just laughing at those studies that Harvard, then you learn, they're made up. It's like research says this toothpaste is the best for you.        
            
I know.

Well, no bias there. I'm sure there was no bias in that research project done. Or as it turns out, coffee is good for you, sponsored by Starbucks. Right? Like, come on.

Right, right. How about also the objectivity, the tool that we put together? You're right. I think we first did this, gosh, a handful of years ago, and we have honed it every year. I think, you know, part of our job, Steve, are to read the books that you referred to, to do the research, to listen to podcasts and audiobooks and different things. And I really feel like we have curated our reflection and planning guide that we give as a gift to all of our clients. This year, we're going to put it on LinkedIn. We're just going to publish it to LinkedIn, and we're going to make it available in the show notes for this podcast so you guys can all have it for free. It's really good. I told you about the May 14 deal. At the end of every year, I take our Rewire reflection and planning tool out the week between Christmas and new year.

Yeah. We go through it.        

I think you do it, too. Right? It's really good. And a couple specific things that I think is really good about it is it's just that it's a guide. It's not the ABCs and the one, two, threes. Like, you don't need to follow it exactly. You could, but it's just some simple questions to ask. It's got some really good, inspiring quotes in there, and you can take an hour, you could take an afternoon, whatever, and just go through it, and I think if you're feeling a little lost, a little unstable, a little not sure, or if you're feeling dialed in good, it's still just a great activity to go, okay, where have I been? Where am I right now, and where would I like to go? You can do it online or you can print it out and handwrite it out, but it gives you just a little bit of a reset, a little bit of a refresh. And I'm excited.

Untitled design (39) 

Yeah, and what we don't really get to, we get to right now because we're doing our podcast, but we don't really even in the tool or frankly, even otherwise, sometimes when I'm talking to my clients, I don't spend a ton of time going, but I will say it right now, do you know how much research went into that tool? Like, what I'm saying is, and again, we get to say it because we're on here now, but this isn't just random stuff we made up.

It's the best of the best.

Well, you and I were, I tell people know we're an executive coaching company. You and I have been doing this for decades. You and I are certified through the Neuro Leadership Institute and the Institute of Coaching and the ICF, and like I've been telling know, coaching as a field of study is becoming inextricably linked to positive psychology. So, we've taken some of these disciplines, and there's actually a pretty interesting conciliatory or interdisciplinary approach to how we put that tool together. Well, the reason I'm proud of that, and I say that, is because I think it was a cool little trick, and it took us a while to develop this, if you recall, because we could do all that stuff, and next thing you know, it's like this super complex thing, which, by the way, no one will use.

Right. Part of the trick is to have that complex idea boiled down to make it simple, and I do feel like that's what we've done. And by the way, we've gotten feedback from our clients and from the people at large that have taken it going, thank you. I needed that. It was simple and it made a difference.

And I really do credit Steve for this and Steph to a certain degree, and people on our staff. But what's interesting about those questions is, on the one hand, they had this backdrop of what we know and what we're trying to bring to the table from a content perspective, knowing some of the stuff that we do, the simplification of, we could make it super simple, too, and just go, hey, what do you think about last year? Actually, some of the wording and stuff, what it allows for is it allows even me, Jason, because I've seen that tool now for five years, I get to read those questions, and because I think the questions are pretty good, I'm able to take them where I need to go, which is actually pretty cool, given that we created the questions.

Yeah. In other words, everybody can have their own individual experience with it.

But that was only possible because it was a combination of art and science in this thing that we brought to the table. Like, I'm going to be honest, we have a really cool tool in our lizard quiz. We built a pretty little cool assessment. It's pretty hard for me to take that quiz. I've been being honest because I know the questions. I know what it's looking for. 

                                                                                                   
"This particular tool is not hard because it's not like you said, it's not a paint by numbers. It really allows me to go, no, I can ask myself that question, and so I love what you said. You might be dialed right now, listener. You might be going, man, I'm in a really great season of life. Really? Then what a beautiful time to do this tool, right? "  
  

Yeah, that's exactly right.

You might be in a season, we know of quite a few people who are in a really difficult season, at least vocationally, and unfortunately, we live on planet Earth, so, sadly, there's a lot of people in some seasons, even relationally, that aren't great. What a wonderful time to reflect.        

Yeah.

What a wonderful time to take a look forward, take a look at the present, the past. And so, look, we're going to make this tool available. It's on our show notes right now. That's one of the things that I'm most proud of at Rewire is we're not selling stuff, per se. Like, if we find something that really helps people here, take it, have it. We're going to put it on LinkedIn. We're going to put it out there. Take it, it's yours. May it serve you, right? May you go out and find your rock, your tree, your place, your coffee shop, whatever, and really have this thing help you. Right?

Yeah, no, it's good. Doing this episode has reminded me, I'm excited about doing it. As you're listening to this, this episode is dropping exactly the week between Christmas and New Year's, and it's dropping just three or four days before the calendar turns to 2024. So, what a great time to take advantage of it. I hope plenty of you do. If you're listening to this and you're thinking to yourself, and I should do that, just do it. You could literally, if you wanted to do it in as little as ten minutes, or you could take a half a day and do it, just kind of choose your own adventure with it and rock and roll with it. And I'm super hopeful that it's helpful.

Yeah, I love that. Jason, I was going to say, we've never once received any hate mail over the fact that someone went and did this.

Yeah. In fact, the opposite. It's funny, we get thank you notes often from our clients. I just can’t wait to receive one. Like, I can't believe you guys did that. That was horrible. Really affected me negatively. It's usually just the opposite, right?

Exactly. That's awesome.

Well, Steve, I'll take this opportunity to wish you a happy New Year. You and I, we take off between the last week of the month, or, I'm sorry, the last week of the year. And so, brother, happy New Year. I hope your reflection and planning tool time is fruitful and great. And to you, the listeners, happy new Year.

Yeah. And so, like we say every time when we end these shows, even listening to this, you may pay attention to, you might be listening and think, ahhh planning. Maybe you could listen to that. Maybe you could listen to your own narrative about what you say, about reflection and planning. Maybe you're super excited about. Either way, there could be something that you really learn about you. And I know that if you go through that tool, right? And dude, we get that from Lyndon, right? There's two questions to be asked. One, what did you learn? And the second question is, what did you learn about you?

Yeah.

And that second question is arguably richer in value to you about what you learned about you, and we have a tool that can hopefully help you really learn about you. So, it's a special time. and thank you, Jason. Thanks for being part of it. We wish you well. If ever there's a thing that we can do here at Rewire for you with regard to the tool or anything else, please let us know. Have a great, great end of the year and we'll talk to you all soon. See you next time here on the inside interviews. Peace.        

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