SUMMARY

• “So many of us lose precious weeks during the holidays. That week between Christmas and the New Year can be a black hole. Or it can be used as a time to prepare yourself for the year ahead.”
• You can leverage the holiday season by taking some time to name what went well this past year - where you really hit the mark. And name the places you can optimize from a place of compassion. This isn’t a New Years resolution, this is a comprehensive overview of your year so that you can set an intention to nail the following year.
• “Put a little extra energy toward making an intention so that when the first part of the next year comes up, you’re already in high action toward the things that you want to achieve and fulfill.”
• If you’re looking for tips on how to capitalize on the holiday weeks so that you kick January off with direction and vision, this episode is for you.
• Watch the video for the full training.

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 Full Transcript:

[The following is the full transcript of this episode of Joey’s Performance Tune Up With Joey Klein. Please note that this episode, like all episodes, features Joey speaking unscripted and unedited. This video is captured in one take.]

So in this session, we're going to talk about how to, how to get back your lost week. Or I think for many people, it ends up being a lost two or three weeks, actually. And it's that time when we kind of approach the end of the year and we start rolling into holiday season and it's like, you know, that week before Christmas, we just start checking out, right? You're doing the minimal amount of work that you have to do at work, and the only reason you're there is because you don't have enough vacation to take more time off that you would like to have and that type of thing. And there's all the holiday parties and you're just kind of in vacation mode, right? And then you start looking around, and even if you wanted to interact with the world, in many ways, other people aren't available to interact, right, in terms of, like, doing business or growing your company or things like that. 

And so, so many people, it's just like they just shut down and then they eat a lot. They hang out with some family and then they eat some more. And then around New Year's, they take like a day and they go, here's my New Year's resolutions. And they get drunk, they get excited about that, and then they don't feel good the second, on day two or three, and then they kind of start getting back to it. And then around the second or third week of January, they're up to life again. 

And so they burn a month on who knows what. And then they look in the mirror and they're like, Whoa, how'd that happen? And you gained a minimum of 8 to 20 pounds, and you're like, oh, my gosh, I need to get my stuff back together. So this is how the average person rolls through the holidays. And so I'm going to give you a playbook to play the game very differently so you can get ahead of everybody else, right? Because when circumstances change, there's always an opportunity. 

Something that I started doing years ago is I started living through a question. I always ask myself, what's the opportunity here? And so sometimes it's like life is presenting you with some cool opportunities, things that are obvious opportunities. You're like, man, how could I leverage this? And look at this neat thing that's happening. And I got a promotion and I got this person who gave me a job offer, and it's like some opportunities are obvious. And we go, man, look at this opportunity. Do I want to leverage it? But then what I find is there are often even better opportunities or more advantageous opportunities during times of change or struggle or when other people aren't engaged. There's an opportunity there because we could be engaged. And so this question can serve in so many different places to just ask the question, where's my opportunity here? 

And so I invite you to play this holiday season differently. If you're listening to this right now, you're clearly a high performer because you're looking to better yourself. When I think of a high performer, high performers are willing to do two things regardless of what their current circumstances of life look like. They are willing to take action, and they're willing to essentially be in action toward the betterment of their life, right, up leveling the quality of their life. And this really becomes a way of being for them. And so I spot high performers all the time that aren't necessarily really nailing life yet, but they're clear on where they want to go. They want to better the circumstances of their life and they're in action toward it. And I'm like, yes, as a person, their life is going to look different in a year, their life is going to look different in three years. 

And so if we want to be average, let's do what everybody else does. And I've never met a human being, when I go up to them and I'm like, hey, would you like to be average? They've gone, like, of course. Matter of fact, I'd like to live in the rung just below average, because then I get to do as little as possible, right? I have to put out as little work, little effort as possible. That's just not what anybody says. Even the person who's living that way, who's doing as little as possible, who really is just kind of rolling through the day, getting through it, even that person says, oh no, I want to be a high performer, right? Everybody likes the idea of it. So if you're listening to this, I know you are a high performer. And one of the signatures of a high performer is they're doing things differently than everybody else, which is why they get different results, right? You want an extraordinary result, pay attention to what everybody's doing and let's start doing some opposite stuff, right? Let's play the game differently. 

And so moving into this holiday or moving into the end of the year, here's what I would recommend. Here's the opportunity that is before you and how to leverage it. And so what we have in the last few weeks of the year is we usually have space. We usually have a little bit of an increase of time, meaning we're not putting in an eight hour day or a twelve hour day at work. The kids are off school, so we're not running them around to all of their games and their events and these types of things. And so we have a little bit more time on our hands. And so with this time, I invite you to do two key things. Number one, name now, right, like name in November, name in the beginning of December, where do I want to be next year? I start this process at the beginning of October, actually. I go, man, what do I want the next year to look like,the end of next year. Where do you want to be and when? You name where you want to be the end of next year, then go, hey, what could I do right now to establish as a routine, the key word there as a consistent routine, that if I take that on and I live that routine out from now, if I establish it now and I live it out throughout the year, that it's likely to move me to that outcome I want to achieve for my next year. Whether it's a money mark, a financial mark, a health and fitness mark. Maybe you want to up level your relationship, right? Maybe you want to build a business. I don't know what it is that you aspire to or what's most important for your next year, but name what it is that you're committed to creating, what you're committed to creating. And don't make it a New Year's resolution. Make it a true benchmark that you commit and declare is going to happen as an up leveling of your reality. 

So step one, get clear on where you're going. Get clear on it now. And then step two, ask the question, what is the consistent routine that I could take the next few weeks to adopt so that when January 1 comes in, I'm not kind of rolling slowly into the next year. I'm already inside my new routine, and I've hit the ground running when everybody else is still in bed hungover, right? What is that routine that you could already be inside of so that in the first two weeks where people are kind of slow rolling in the year, you're already in high action, taking advantage of the most important resource  that you have, that we all have, which is time. Because once we lose time and we can never get it back. So we got to leverage it to the utmost. We got to leverage it to its full capacity. 

As we all know, like habit formation, it takes a lot more energy to form a new habit than it takes to maintain it. We've all read those books. We understand that concept, so let's leverage it. And for me, I always use the word routine because the difference between habit and routine: Habit is an unconscious behavior that we engage in with repetition, but we didn't design it. It wasn't an intentional way of being that we adopted for ourself. Whereas a routine is an intentional way of being that we adopt for ourself relative to the outcome and the result that we want to achieve in our life, right? 

And so name the outcome that you want to achieve in the next year, and then let's spend this space of time where we have extra time where we're not doing the things we typically do to really nail habit formation and make it a conscious routine, right? And it might be, hey, I'm going to really nail doing my movement every day and working out in a way that I've not been consistent yet, or I'm going to get dialed in on my nutrition routine. Or you know what? I'm going to really just get inside my financial systems in a different way. And I'm going to get into the routine of putting my money where it needs to be, knowing what's going on, and get clear on the daily actions or weekly actions I'm going to take to really make sure I play the financial game differently next year.

 It can be anything, but you leverage this time for creating a conscious routine and getting inside of it so that by the time the first week of the year shows up, you're just already in that routine as a reflex. And it's not something that you're creating, it's something that you're already doing. And if you were to each year adopt two new conscious routines, you could completely reinvent yourself  and your life in as little as three to five years. Because routines are powerful, especially when we're naming consciously the routine we're going to create relative to the outcomes and the aspirations we have for our life. 

So take advantage of this end of year reality in a way most people never do and take a little bit of time and go, man, what is the conscious routine that I could adopt the next few weeks and put a little extra energy toward making that happen so that when the first part of the next year comes up, I'm already in high action toward the things that I want to achieve and fulfill. And you can still spend all the time with the family and take some time to yourself and do all those other things, but just carve out a little time to nail this mark. And it'll make such a difference in terms of putting you ahead of the game and really positioning you not only to create what you aspire to for yourself, but, man, when you start doing the opposite of what the majority does, it's amazing. The extraordinary reality in life you tend to create without that much extra effort. 

And so hopefully this is helpful. Enjoy and we'll look forward to seeing you soon.