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Episode Transcription

 Welcome back to the Road of Life podcast with Meredith and Craig. We're on location

for this episode.

That's right. Yeah. In a hotel. Traveling. But at the end of the year, every year, we do a recap of the year.

We reflect on the year that is coming to a close.

Every year, we do a recap of the year that we've had. So this episode is dedicated to 2024.

We're going to talk about our celebrations, our biggest lessons that we learned from 2024, what we're taking into 2025. And it's just a really cool exercise that we found a lot of.

Value in and something that we encourage and invite everyone to, also do as just a look back and, just to see how much you've actually done in this last year. Cause a lot of times we can get lost in the You know, I haven't really done much. I'm not where I want to be. And the kind of the bah humbug, but get a

bit stuck in the gap.

Yeah. Whereas if you really look back and, take stock of where you've come from and what you've actually done, it's a huge momentum shift and it can take you into that. That momentum can take you, on a great trajectory into 2025. So that's the main goal of, this episode is just to share a little bit of our story looking back on 2024, how it went for us, what we learned and what we're taking in 2025, but also as a little bit of a roadmap on the road of life that others can use to build some momentum going into 2025.

Cause we get a lot of value from this reflection, from identifying the lessons and from. Building and focusing on the winds and this is actually the first year we just happen to be in a hotel right now, but it's kind of a nice Separation from life like take yourself out of real life and you know being in this hotel for a couple of days gives us some distance and I think makes it a little easier to reflect on on life.

So it was kind of a nice little coincidence this year that I think we might plan for

So, lesson number one from McKay is rent a hotel and do your lessons learned every year.

Yep. So far so good. So, 2024 was a hard year from my perspective. Like, I've cried on the internet multiple times this year, which is a new thing for me this year.

And there was a lot of hard moments that didn't involve public tears. And the reason I believe that we get these really hard moments in life is to teach us something and to help us become the person we need to be to be able to do the things we need to do to have the things we want in life. So all these hard things through the year are there to teach you something.

They were there to teach me something. We just finished reading actually the book The Mountain Is You which the whole premise of that is essentially Life gives you obstacles. That's the nature of it. It's your job to figure out what you need to learn to summit those mountains and surmount those obstacles.

So the point of the hard stuff in life is is for you to take the lesson out of it so that you can become the person you need to be , to have all the things you want to have in your life. That's why we take the time to look back and make sure we're pulling out the lessons from all those hard moments because the other thing about it is if you don't learn the lesson, the universe sees fit to teach it to you again.

And Can confirm. Ditto. I've been taught lessons multiple times in the past. So, we're working really hard going forward to try to pull the lessons out and apply them the first time we learn them. So that the universe doesn't have to teach them to us again. Because the other thing about it is usually the universe starts with a whisper.

Like, hey, there's a lesson here that you might want to pay attention to. Oh, hey, lesson over here. Oh, there's a lesson. Eventually, the universe will scream.

I forget the quote now, but it's something like the universal tickle, you with a feather or it'll hit you with a hammer. And the quicker you learn the lesson will dictate whether it's a feather or the hammer.

So if you want to, get through and learn the lesson, you can get by with just the feather. But most people, me included, sometimes it's the sledgehammer that actually gets the, needle moving for you. So little bit of a nugget there. If you don't want the hammer.

Then make a move once you feel the feather

and that's why it helps to take some intentional dedicated quality time to actually reflect and make sure that you're trying to pull those lessons out so that you're not getting whacked with the hammer or screamed at by the universe later. So we did some of that work today.

Did some deep reflection on 2024 and pulled out some lessons. Wanna share some?

Yeah, that's why we're here.

Let's share some lessons.

2024 number one lesson. For me is the importance of community. I always knew like it was, yeah, yeah. Your network is your net worth and it's important to be around, but it never was more, I think, front and center for me than this year, that how important and valuable having the right people in your corner, cheering you on, supporting you, but also that you can then, you know, feel good and support people and cheer them on.

And it's a, reciprocal relationship that it just really hit home for me in 2024 that how, important that that truly is, I would say.

Yeah, I agree. I feel like especially in the entrepreneurship space, but in life in general, it can feel lonely at times and actually loneliness, you know, since we started measuring loneliness as a society, it's the highest it's ever been, and it's only trending upward. So, despite all the social connection opportunities there are on the interwebs, we are feeling more isolated and alone than ever , as a species, as a society.

So, finding The people with whom you can feel connected. The people where you can feel like you can be yourself and feel accepted. And who are there to support you. And I think you made a funny comment the other day because we did that 12 Days of Blissmas. The parody of the 12 Days of Christmas.

Shout out

to a parody that we made on Instagram, check it out.

Yep.

It's better than 12 Way better gifs.

Yep, way better gifs. But one of them, I forget which one it was, but it was basically expressing gratitude for people, we had some people in our community that were sharing those videos, so, you know, putting ourselves out there on the internet and then having other people share our weird videos on the internet.

So, finding the community of people. Where you can feel connected who will support you who you can also then turn around and support and feel like You're all cheering each other on and you all want to see each other win

And I think something about community that's really important that came up today on one of our calls is The difference between fitting in and belonging.

Yeah, and I think it's really really important that you find that community where You can belong like where you feel like you're being your authentic self and that's the real difference between fitting in and belonging. You can, you can fit in just about anywhere. You can, you know, assess.

And this was me when I was a kid growing up and moving, changing schools every year, I would observe and I would see what everyone was like and what the temperature in the room was, what the vibe was with everybody. And I would just fit in. I would just act as though. I thought they needed me to act so that I would be accepted because I'm the new kid and it's hard to be the new kid when, especially when you're a teenager.

So I would go into these situations and I would just be who I thought they needed me to be so that I could fit in so that I would have friends so that I wouldn't be a social outcast, if you will. But I was never being the true me. I was never myself. I never felt like I belonged anywhere.

And then I realized that there's a huge difference between fitting in and belonging and it never, occurred to me before, but belonging is when you can be your true authentic self and you can be that person in any situation, in a group. And that's when you belong. And that's when you start to actually have the love for yourself.

And you actually show up for yourself and then all of the things that happen that are coming to you, like the praise, the love, the respect, everything that comes from that group is actually now landing on you. And you're actually taking it in because it's actually you, it's not this made up version that you've pretended to be.

So you can actually accept and feel the love. And this was ,

actually such a big part of our call today that we're going to do a whole episode on this in a few weeks. So stay tuned for all the details on that.

But community is finding the right community. It's not just any community.

It's finding the right community, the community that can make you feel like you belong, that you can now bring your feel authentic. You can bring your real authentic self to the situation.

Yeah. So big lesson this year on community.

Yeah.

For sure. And kind of Borrowing from that and continuing on that same vein, I always knew that, I always knew it, but I learned it hard this year, that vulnerability is required for that connection.

You know, it takes vulnerability to be your actual real self. But the other key piece of that that I learned this year is that it's vulnerability and integrity that are required for connection with someone. It's being who you say you are, Which builds trust and allows others to do the same. But, being the real you.

Being in alignment with who you say you are and then acting in accordance with who you say you are. Being the real version of you. Is how other people connect with you because, you know coming into this as recovering perfectionists, we never wanted anyone to see us fail and see us upset and see us at a version less than we thought was the best version of us.

But other people don't connect to perfection because none of us are perfect at all. So we need flaws. We need people to see who we truly are, flaws and all For other people to be able to connect with us and I need to see you for who you are in your flaws to find that connection point with you. And so it's the vulnerability and the integrity together that allows for and enables that connection with somebody else.

So that was a big lesson I took this year.

Yeah, we say it all the time, vulnerability is the superpower to a relationship. So you need to have that. And to your point, if you're not being your true authentic self, integrity, like showing up as the person that you say you are, it's going to breed mistrust and your relationship is never going to survive if there's no trust.

Like you have to have that integrity of I am who I say I am and show up every day as that person. Otherwise, no one's going to be able to build a relationship with you. I mean,

I didn't like I, I mentioned earlier about crying on the internet a couple times this year. And in those vulnerable moments was the most connection I felt through the internet.

Now obviously I can feel connection in other places but it was amazing for me to see the level that resonated with other people that prompted reach outs and connections with people by just having that level of vulnerability and just being who I was in that moment. The level of connection received from those really vulnerable moments blew me away couldn't believe it So that was a big lesson from this year.

Yeah

Another one for me is exactly what we're doing here is that celebrations and Acknowledging your wins build momentum and I think this was something that I've heard over time. It's like, yeah, like, you know, celebrate the little wins because they lead to the big wins, but it never really hit home like it did this year for me you know, focusing on the positive brings more positive and really celebrating those.

Even the small wins, if, you don't have it today and you're getting up and just getting on the, treadmill or just doing whatever little thing it is, just starting and just focusing on that as being your win today, it builds momentum to the next thing. And to me, it was never something that really hit home until this year for me.

I agree. I really learned this year specifically that starting to make a change, starting to do something, whether it's health journey and your business and your relationship and anything that you're sort of undertaking as a goal or starting something new, you're doing that in a state of inspiration, in a state of motivation, probably because your current state has become more uncomfortable than the perceived work to change it.

So where you are at now has become so uncomfortable that like, okay, I'll finally make a change. And so you're in that sort of state of I'm inspired, I'm motivated, I'm gonna get started. And so, that motivation doesn't stick. Motivation is not consistent, it's not constant, it's not always there.

So, how do you keep going, keep progressing, keep working toward whatever it is, the thing that you're working toward, once the motivation is gone? That's the ticket. Because We can all act when we're motivated to act, but how do we continue to act when we're no longer motivated? And I learned this year that it's momentum.

It's celebrating the wins to build your momentum. It's your perception of your progress from where you started. Like we talked about to kick off the episode, instead of, you know, Being in the gap in the game, it's being in the game, seeing where you were and celebrating the milestones and the progress that you've made from that point forward instead of being stuck in the gap and seeing what you haven't yet achieved, where you haven't yet met your goals.

So the celebrating the wins, even the small ones, especially the small ones, they're the most important ones. Celebrating all those small wins is what builds the momentum. For you to keep going when the motivation is gone. And it's the momentum that helps you bust through the obstacles when they inevitably come up, because life is nothing but obstacles, usually.

So you need momentum to bust through those and get where you want to go. So that's a big lesson this year. And so we'll talk about wins in a second, but I want to talk about one more lesson I learned from this year. Which is, people don't have the same values and the same priority as me, so stop expecting them to. Replacing expectation with gratitude, I think is really helpful, but also in that, communicating your boundaries. I can stop having expectations of people that they can't meet, and that will help give me peace, but it doesn't mean I have to accept , I can have boundaries of what I will and will not accept, it doesn't change the fact that.

I'm not gonna set boundaries or set expectations that you can't meet. So I've learned this year that not everyone has the same priorities and the same values as I do, and expecting them to has been setting me and our relationship up for failure. It doesn't mean I can't still have my boundaries.

I do still need to have my boundaries. I just need to stop expecting them to be the person I want them to be because it doesn't work.

It's like arguing with reality. You're never going to win. They are where they are. They are who they are. And arguing against that is just never going to end well for you. You're always going to be arguing against reality and you're always going to lose. You're always just going to be unhappy with that result. So if you just remove the expectation and just to your point have gratitude for the having this person in your life and teaching you the lessons and maybe they're teaching you what you don't want to be or maybe they're teaching you, to how to set a boundary or whatever it is.

But at the end of the day, it's removing that expectation of others because you can't control it. You have no control over that. And tying your happiness to someone else's behavior and growth is. A recipe for disaster. So yeah, huge lesson. And it comes up for me, my celebrations of, just, you know, letting people be, cause I have had expectations of people in my life and what I think they should do.

That's my version of reality, but it's not theirs. So at the end of the day, is that actually what should be happening? No. Because it's not what's happening. What's happening is they are who they are. And I just have to live with that. So we

have an episode on that from a few weeks back that we'll link in the show notes for a little more detail.

But that's a big lesson for both of us for this year. So

another big lesson for me this year is nobody cares.

You are dying, and when you die, nobody cares. At the end of the day, the thing that you're hung up on or not doing because out of fear of judgment, rejection, whatever it is at the end of the day, honestly, nobody cares. And it was never more evident to me than this year when Bobby, your dad passed away And he lived an amazing life.

He lived like he was dying. He lived literally fast. Yeah. He lived literally every day full out and it was great hearing all the stories and to see all the people show up for the wake and all the things, but it struck me that like two days after he passed, we were throwing out stuff out of his apartment and life was moving on.

And. It really just struck me that it was like, at the end of the day, the thing that's holding you back, the thing that you're worried about, nobody cares. If you want to build the business, go build the frigging business. If you want to go and get in the best shape of your life because you want to speak on stage , or do a marathon, or if you want to like Have the relationship you've always wanted.

Just whatever it is, do it. If you want to jump out of a plane, do it. If you want to learn how to ride a motorcycle, do it. Because literally life is so short and nobody cares. At the end of the day, nobody, nobody, nobody cares. It will all be forgotten within weeks, months, whatever, at the most. Like literally the queen died and life moved on.

And she's one of the most, Important, I guess, quote unquote important people in the world in many people's eyes not ours, but not At the same time though she's highly regarded and life moved on very quickly after she was gone If it moves along that quickly after she goes how quickly is it moving on for the rest of us?

Do the thing nobody cares Let's move into celebrations. What's your first celebration?

My first celebration is doing some harder things than I thought I could do this year. I trained for that big run.

I ran further, faster than I thought I could in those training runs. I posted content I never thought I would post. I had hard conversations that I never thought I would be able to have. So I'm celebrating doing some really hard shit that I didn't think I'd be able to.

Yeah, it was a year of, challenges, which is great.

That's where we always want to be growing and, especially the hard conversations I know for you, that was very difficult. Having some difficult conversations with some people close to you in your life and going through your father passing and running that 30 kilometer run that was hilly as heck and it was a very big year of growth and discomfort.

Mm hmm You're stronger than you believe we all are we're all stronger than we we think we are And it's interesting when the moment happens and you rise to it it's like huh? I can do it because you know 99. 999 percent of the time you do rise up to meet the moment, but we forget that when we're in the middle of something and we're struggling and it's like, Oh, this is really hard.

I don't know if I can do it. But you can know the evidence is there. And one of the things that's really helpful, I think, is just writing down those times when you go through those, challenges, writing them down and having like a brag book, if you will. of all the times where you did meet the moment, so that when you're , in the suck, in the time where it feels challenging, just uncomfortable and you're not sure whether you can do it, you can go back to that, all those bullet points of awesomeness and say, yeah, no, I have met the moment every single time.

So why do I think I can't do it this time?

Yeah.

A big celebration for me this year is Getting to spend the last few years with Bobby. We moved to PEI there a few years ago and I think that was needed for the time to be close to him and to have a few years of experiences with him.

And this last year with being close to the kids and stuff. So I guess family time of just is a celebration this year is we've had more than. Normal this year I would say and it's been nice and I think very needed and necessary Especially since you know, we your dad passing this year.

Yeah, that's actually another win I found this year was

Being in my grief and feeling my feelings but also Finding the lessons from his life and finding the gratitude in all of it It wasn't easy, but I'm celebrating being able to do that.

Another big thing that I'm celebrating this year is we helped a lot of people. Yeah. It was amazing. We helped a lot of people with their relationships and it's why we do what we do.

And it's been amazing to see in our mastermind calls and in the program, all the people having all the success and the wins piling up and there's no better feeling to me than that. So probably that should have been the first celebration. but family's pretty good too.

But that, was really a massive, massive celebration for me looking back at all of other people's wins that we've helped along their journey.

Yeah.

That was really fun.

We also have published 62 consecutive weekly podcast episodes.

Consistency.

Yeah.

Celebrating consistency.

That was pretty cool. And we guested on, I don't know, 35 or 40 other people's podcasts this year, which was also very cool.

So that

means we were on like close to a hundred podcasts.

That's right. Wild.

Yeah. That's cool. Yeah.

Two magazine articles this year too.

That's a big celebration. Yep.

And then another one piggybacking off of one of my lessons is all the friends, all the networking, all the community that we've built this year, all the friends, the relationships, all of the really cool people that we've, now have in our lives. It's a huge celebration. Big time. It's been a game changer.

It's a game changer. Yep. A lot of great people came into our life this year and I'm forever grateful and thankful for each and every one of them. And that's a massive celebration.

Yeah. We also did what we needed to do to keep going this year. Like it wasn't an easy year, but we did what we needed to do.

We trusted each other. We lifted each other up. We cheered each other on. We figured it out. We did what we had to do to keep going.

Yeah, that's absolutely right. Big year of celebrations.

So those are the big lessons learned and celebrations from 2024. And we're excited for 2025. It's going to be a big year. It's gonna be a massive year. We've got big things on the horizon. We're launching a mastermind. We're launching a mastermind, which we're going to talk about in our next, episode where we're going to go over kind of 2025 and what that looks like for us and

how we set goals and what that looks like.

Yeah. So we're excited for 2025 and we're excited to have you part of that, that community and a part of our life. And yeah, so we're going to sign off on this one and we'll see you in the next episode when we talk about 2025

before we go. What's the one thing you're going to take from this episode?

Maybe it's related to one of our lessons. Maybe it's related to one of our goal one of our celebrations. Maybe it's related just to the process. Just carving out a little bit of time in your life over the next week or so over the holidays to look back on your 2024. What are some important lessons you want to take with you into 2025?

What are some celebrations? What do you need to give yourself credit for that you haven't given yourself credit for yet to keep your momentum ball rolling? So What's one thing you're going to take from this episode and implement and do, like, make a change about? And on top of that, who else needs to hear this episode?

Who else needs to have a reflect on 2024? Probably everybody, but someone in particular that you could send it to so that they can reflect on their 2024, pull out the lessons, pull out the wins, and bring all the best stuff out of 2024 into 2025.

And if you're looking for something entertaining, Check out at Meredith and Greg on Instagram.

We've got a 12 days of Blissmas rolling right now. 12 gifts. They're way better than maids and milking and they will change your relationships for the better. So go check that out. Love you. Talk to you later.