060 Choosing My Word for 2024

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Feeling stuck in your personal and professional life? Join me as I reveal my word for 2024 that will push me beyond my comfort zone. But will I be able to handle the discomfort and challenges that come with it? Tune in to find out.

“Stretching means to me reaching further than I think I can towards my goals. Setting goals and achieving them requires us to do different shit than we've done before, right? If you were already doing the things that you needed to do to get to your goal, you'd have your goal met already, right?” - Regan Bashara

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00:00:00 Hi, everybody. Welcome to money through ease. This is your host, Regan Bashara, founder of all ease Accounting. Welcome to 2024. This will be the first episode of just me flying solo. 00:00:11 But don't worry if you enjoyed last week's episode with my guest, Angel Wilborn, you will enjoy the upcoming interviews that I have planned. I wanted to bring on some folks who are experts in their fields to provide some value to you, to give you some resources, because I know that so many folks start a business and have no idea who to turn to, what to do, and obviously that's what I'm here for. I help you with the bookkeeping, I help you with the accounting and the finances and getting your money straight and together, keeping it organized. But even though I do a lot more than that, obviously that's a very broad general overview of the kind of shit that I do. I can't do everything. 00:00:56 I'm not a pr specialist. I'm just not going to be able to help you in some of the areas of your business. Even though I am very adept at what I do and I have a lot of skills and experience and resources to draw on to help you. I thought it might just be prudent to bring on the actual experts to help small business owners and entrepreneurs like yourself be more organized, be more in control of their businesses in 2024 and beyond. And I apologize for any background noise. 00:01:28 As you know, I live on a busy road and there's cars going by, and today it happens to be raining and thundering and lightning in January, which is really weird, but that's what's happening. So once again, apologies. I do not have a podcast studio. I don't have top of the line equipment. We're working off a desk microphone. 00:01:49 That's about it. So today, I want to share with you my word of the year for 2024. Back in 2023, in January, I had like five people listening to this podcast every week. There's a few more of you here now, and I want to thank you for being here. If you're new, make sure you hit subscribe and follow on your favorite podcast platform wherever you're listening right now. 00:02:14 And make sure to leave me a rating and review so that I know what you thought about this episode and just the podcast in general. So last year, January of 2023, I talked with you about what my intentions were for the year, especially as it pertains to my business. I didn't really set goals. I didn't even have like a word of the year. But I just had certain things that I wanted to make sure that I showed up and that I did in the context of my business. 00:02:43 And for 2024, I've chosen a word of the year. If you have done this, chosen a word of the year, whether it's for your business, for personal life, whatever, I want you to let me know what that is. You can come, leave me a comment or shoot me a DM in social media land, or you can reply to any of the emails that you get from me and let me know what you think. What's your word of the year? Did you set any goals or intentions? 00:03:10 I want to hear about them because I want to help you reach those goals. I want to help you be accountable to those intentions that you're setting at the beginning of the gregorian calendar year, January. So my word of the year for 2024 is. Drumroll. Stretch. 00:03:31 And I want to talk to you about how I chose this word, what it means for me personally and for my business, because this word is actually pertaining to both my personal life and my business. Stretch stretching means to me reaching further than I think I can towards my goals. I have done a lot of work over the past year to really lay the foundation for my business goals, for meeting those goals, creating the habits that I need to create in order to meet those goals. Because setting goals and achieving them requires us to do different shit than we've done before, right? If you were already doing the things that you needed to do to get to your goal, you'd have your goal met already, right? 00:04:23 That doesn't make sense to already have those habits in place. So we need to create new habits in order to reach our goals. And that sometimes requires us to stretch a little bit beyond our comfort zone. So I want to think about if you've ever taken like, a yoga class or calling back to the middle school and high school days of PE physical education class and being taught how to stretch, which most of us weren't taught how to stretch correctly and we weren't supervised. And that can also lead to injury. 00:04:56 Not just physical activity, but stretching. You can overdo it with stretching, but anytime we get on the mat or get into a stretch intentionally, it is to help lengthen the muscle fibers and tendons and all of the inner things going on in our bodies beyond what they are normally stretched to beyond what length they're normally at. Just day to day, just at any point during the day, we intentionally stretch our muscles and those fibers and those cells further than their average kind of length or their average position. This creates more stability in our muscles. It actually helps with strength building and strength training. 00:05:45 I am not a physical trainer or anything, and I don't want anybody to think that I am, but I've exercised for a long time. I've stretched for a long time. I've done all the different types of exercises and stuff, and I have a good relationship to exercise and movement, and I know how important it is to stretch both before and after any sort of intentional, strenuous physical activity. And it's the same thing for setting goals. And whether that's mindset goals, whether that's financial goals, we need to be able to kind of reach beyond whatever our status quo is, whatever relaxed position our finances or our business or our habits are, whatever the status quo is. 00:06:31 Stretching means that we're going to go beyond that to the point of really discomfort. And we don't want to take it to the point of injury, but we do want to take it to the point where we didn't really think we could go that far. Right. That is why I chose the word stretch for 2024. So when it comes to my business and my goals, my financial goals, the client goals that I have, offerings that I'm going to be telling you about soon, all of my goals that I've written down and I've talked to people about and I've kind of pondered and contemplated on over the past couple of weeks are going to require me to stretch beyond the status quo. 00:07:13 It's going to require me to get a little bit uncomfortable, and I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to experience that discomfort and to push myself a little bit further than I think I need to be able to go to get where I want to be. Not only do I want to be stretching my mindset and my business and my finances, but I want to be stretching my body more. I used to be a zumba instructor. If you've been here for a while or if you've known me for any longer than a year, you know that I used to be a Zumba instructor. 00:07:49 Like, I was very dedicated to a movement routine up until about July of 2023, when I stopped being an instructor. And I made that decision for a myriad of different reasons, but it was not because I was like, well, I don't need to move my body anymore. I don't need to exercise anymore. That definitely wasn't the reason, but it ended up being the case that I did move my body less after I stopped teaching because I didn't really have that accountability of going to a class where other people were expecting me to show up, like I had to be there in order for the class to go on. So I didn't have that anymore after July, well, really after June. 00:08:27 And so my relationship with moving my body is a lot different than it was a year ago. And that's okay. I don't feel shameful about that or anything. But I do intend to stretch my body more this year and to reacquaint myself with a movement routine that supports me and my life and my body. Because I'm in the camp that I don't need to be skinny, I don't need to be on a forever diet. 00:08:56 I don't fuck diets like all of them. I'm not into restricting my food. I'm not into counting calories. I'm not into working out and moving my body as a punishment or to earn back my food and my calories. I don't buy into any of that horseshit. 00:09:14 I'm interested in moving my body and having a movement routine and stretching because I see that as a longevity sort of deal for my quality of life. Like as we grow older, our bodies change and I want to be able to move and have the ability to do all the things that I want to do for longer than would be the case probably, if I weren't moving and stretching and working out and all that. I want to stretch my muscles, I want to facilitate moving myself more, but with ease. Everything we do around here is ease, right? All ease accounting. 00:09:53 That's my business name, the podcast money through ease. I want to stretch and move with ease as well throughout my life. And that means staying consistent, creating those habits in the day to day. And it could just look like foam rolling in the morning. It could look like a ten minute stretch. 00:10:11 It could look like just laying on the ground. Honestly, there's some days where I just roll out the mat and then I just lay there. That's all I can do, and that's perfectly fine. But consistency for me means just showing up and having whatever experience you're going to have or that your body will allow you to have. Because bodies are fickle and not everybody's body has the capability to do like strenuous movement and activity every day. 00:10:39 I don't believe that at all. So I'm going with my body. I'm working with practitioners who are going to help me with my movement routine. And that does involve stretching. I've always been somewhat of a flexible person. 00:10:50 Like, I'm not a freaking contortionist or anything, but I'm a pretty flexible person. I don't have hypermobility or anything. I don't really have any chronic pain per se, but I'm in my 30s. I'm turning 33 this year, and I can definitely tell that the more I prolong or put off or don't stay consistent with movement, it hurts just a little bit more as time goes on, like getting out of bed or standing up. And I don't want that to be my reality. 00:11:24 I want to have a consistent, good quality of life and physical feeling in my body for as long as possible. So that is what I intend to do this year, is to stretch my body, move my body more. And all of this will, of course, require me stretching my mindset. So I want to start working on believing things that seem impossible now, because I think that if you don't believe something, then that's not going to be your reality. That's not going to be your experience. 00:11:57 Right? Like, our thoughts create our reality. We create the kind of experience that we have in this life based on the way that we think, on the kind of thought patterns that come up over and over again. So I think that there are certain things that are not possible for me right now. Maybe they'll be possible in the future, but I don't have a way to see that yet. 00:12:21 And this is going to require me changing and stretching the way that I think so that I can create the kind of experience that makes those things possible for me, that makes those goals possible in my business and in my personal life. And if all of this sounds kind of vague, that's fine, because I really have a vague sense of what this means for me right now. I don't really have it nailed down yet. And that's okay. I'm just sharing with you. 00:12:48 When I sat down to think about what my word of the year might be, this word kept coming up. I sat down and kind of journaled about it a little bit, kind of dug deeper into, like, why was this word coming up? What could it mean? Is there anything in here that's kind of limiting me or holding me back? And it makes sense to choose the word stretch as my word of the year, because if I do have limiting beliefs that are holding me back, literally from the goals that I've set and want to achieve, that will require stretching. 00:13:20 Like, if your muscles are holding you back from doing something, stretching is the way to lengthen them so that you're not being held back anymore. So it just kind of makes sense. And after I dug around in there, journaled about it, did a little deep dive, meditated on it. I was like, yeah, this makes sense. And it's something that I think if I focus on will help me lean into those moments where it is a little bit uncomfortable. 00:13:48 Like I said, creating new habits is uncomfortable. And I've learned, especially in the past 3510 years, that a little bit of discomfort is okay, and that actually leaning into it and welcoming it and being willing to sit with discomfort and learn from it helps me grow as a person and helps me kind of disassociate from those limiting beliefs from that discomfort. Because all of our thoughts aren't true. Our feelings are just sensations in our body, and neither of those things have the power to determine what happens in our lives, like where we go, what we create, so we can have control over our thoughts, we can have control over our feelings to a certain extent, of course. But sitting with the discomfort in the way that when you go to stretch a muscle and you continually stretch a muscle, it gets more and more comfortable, or it gets less and less uncomfortable over time, as you keep coming back to it, as you keep inviting that discomfort in and leaning into it, literally and figuratively, then you can push beyond what might be impossible right now. 00:15:04 So that's where my word of the year comes from. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining me for another episode of money through ease. Like I said, I've got some awesome folks coming on the podcast over the next couple of months to bring some true resources and beautiful business value to you, all of my small business owner baddies out there. Thanks for listening. 00:15:26 Make sure you hit, subscribe or follow this podcast on whatever platform you're listening to. Leave me a five star rating or a one star rating if you want. Tell me what you hate about it. Totally fine. So thanks for listening. 00:15:38 I think I've said that three times already. Hope everybody has an amazing rest of your week. I'll talk to you later.