Ep 23: Winning and Learning in 2022

In this episode, I'm sharing some of my wins and lessons from 2022. I'm gonna give you some questions and frameworks to help you reflect on your year so that you can move forward really intentionally for the next one. You ready? Let's go.

Hello, you are listening to Love Your Life as a Performer Podcast. I'm Kelli Youngman, and I am The Life Coach for Performers. I help actors, singers, and dancers love themselves and their lives way more. So keep listening to learn how you can love your life, both on and off the stage.

Hello and welcome back to episode 23 of the Love Your Life as a Performer Podcast. So, I have a freaking confession to make. Today's episode was scheduled to go out, and I realized that as I was preparing it, that this was the last podcast episode of 2022. And for some reason, it just really felt like that wasn't the episode that I wanted to end the year on.

And so I gave myself permission to record it after my client calls, and I am like cozied up in my bed as I'm recording this, and I have to say it's the first time I'm recording, not sitting at my desk. And it actually feels really freaking comfy, cozy. And for those of you who know and follow my Instagram, I actually love doing work from my bed and just laying and being all cozied up. So this feels like the vibe that I wanted to have for the last episode of the freaking year.

And really I wanted to invite everyone listening to take a moment and reflect on what has been created over the last year. Recently I shared a post just kind of going over my own wins and growth, and slowing down to witness it, was kind of wild. I think that it's so easy to be in the growth of things that sometimes we forget to really stop and acknowledge what has been created. Like what has really changed, what has happened, and who have you become in the process?

So this episode, I'm gonna talk you through and just share some of my wins, some of the things that happened internally as well as externally and I'm gonna share just like some prompts and questions for you to take your own brain to, in order to reflect in a way that maybe goes deeper than just thinking about like what you accomplished. Because again, so much changes and occurs in who you're being and also if as much change as you want it to happen didn't happen, that's also not a problem. But I think it's like, okay, to give yourself space to witness that and to just think about what you wanna do differently for next year. And you know, the last episode I did about How to Evaluate Anything can also be a really amazing tool when you're looking at evaluating your year from a space of love and celebration and compassion.

Okay, so some of the things that like really blew my mind in 2022, was that I put myself in a freaking mastermind with coaches from all over the world. Coaches that are making like multiple six figures up to millions of dollars, and I started taking myself as seriously as I wanted to. Because I stopped treating what I was doing as I don't know, as some fluke or some small thing, and really stepped into like owning the change that I'm creating with my clients. And I've been thinking a lot about the trajectory of my own life and the trajectory of my clients' lives and how things have become possible that they didn't know was available to them.

Things like retiring their freaking husband sooner than they realized, or building a business that they always wanted but never fully committed to or leaning into being there for their family and living bicoastally like, I don't know, just like there's so much shit that has changed as a result of me stepping into my business and my role as a coach with so much more power and responsibility and just really owning the shit out of the space that I create for my clients. That has been like, So freaking huge.

I crossed six figures in my all-time revenue earlier in the year, and I had my first like over six figure year in my business alone. That's not counting any income that I had as a performer too, which is so freaking cool and so fun. I started this podcast.

As a performer, I freaking invested and did the Galen Hooks Method, did the classic intensive and like it really impacted my dancing. I made my 54 Below debut and got to sing and made my debut at the MUNY and got to perform in Chicago. I really focused on my own identity as a singer and that resulted in getting more auditions to cover lead roles and bigger projects. And I worked on Mrs. Maisel and I also, even though I worked on, um, oh my gosh. OMGG, what's the show?  Freaking Westworld. Even though I worked on Westworld back in 2021, our episode aired in 2022. So it was also really fun.

It's so easy to wanna go to the sort of like outward facing results that again, are super fun to witness and acknowledge and see. And so I'm just gonna share a couple other outward facing things. Then I wanna share the inward ones, right?

I got to take a dream vacation with my partner to Spain, and it was like our first vacation in over five years that was just for us. And it wasn't to travel and to see family or to go to weddings or funerals or other family gatherings. Like it really was just for us. We spent a lot of time like working on our relationship. That was honestly, a huge part of 2022 for me was just creating so much safety in the boundaries that I was creating for myself and working and strengthening our communication.

And also just like finding thoughts that truly change how I experience my relationship for the rest of my life. And maybe I will do an episode just on that, because again, it's just like, over eight years, we've really grown and changed so much, and I think that was one of my fears was that as I was continuing to grow and change, was our relationship going to keep growing too?

And so yeah, it's just been so fun to show myself that Yeah, of course. Like we're growing together, our relationship is here to stay, right? And like being okay with like the safety of knowing that I'm always gonna have my own back and I'm always gonna take care of myself and support myself in any relationship that I'm in.

But yeah. It feels like so much has happened in 2022, but it's wild to say that yeah, like that was, this was really the year that my relationship with my family improved. I took so many lessons that I started working on at the end of 2021 and really put it into practice and just spent so much more time with my family this year. Like it really has been so freaking fun. I also became an aunt

I have been working for myself on creating a new relationship with food and my body and exercise so that it's coming from just so much love and not punishment and not eating good and bad foods, and like labeling things and labeling myself and releasing all of that judgment.

I've really leaned into. Not people pleasing and not doing things out of obligation, like really being on board with anything and everything that I wanna do or not do, and honoring that. And so, These are just some of the internal wins that I've gotten to create in the last year. I have created so many boundaries from love instead of like a giant fence that felt like a big fuck you to everyone, right?

And like I created those with love. And honored them even when it sucked ass. Like there were moments that it really did not feel good. And that is sort of like, lots of coaches call it different things, but like going through the river of change and the river of misery and like being willing to like, do something different that just inherently feels uncomfortable. Knowing that what was on the other side was gonna be so freaking worth it for me in how I move through the world and how I show up and how I relate to everyone in my life.

So that was really freaking huge. I stopped waiting for permission. I started launching programs that I wanted to do. I stopped, you know, thinking there was only one way to move through the world and move with my business. And I've really just leaned into trusting myself and my decisions so much more. And that's really what helped birth the podcast and The Paradigm and just all of these other ideas that I have that I wanna share with you and share my ideas and my own genius with the world too.

Okay. And I also wanna just like thank you for listening and appreciating and acknowledging my wins with me, because that's something I'm also working on is like sharing these things and engaging with my own success. And I hope that this is also inspiring you to just find so many wins for yourself where maybe you haven't stopped to acknowledge them yet.

Okay. I have a few more, and then I am gonna share, just like I said, some of the prompts that you can take yourself through to discover these wins for yourself too.

But I truly, I became the version of me who always supports myself. Like I invested so freaking much in coaching and spent so much time getting my brain coached and so much time just like deeply thinking about the changes I wanted to make and then actually making them. And I supported myself physically, energetically, mentally... just literally gave myself anything and everything I needed, including like the things that sometimes we think of as like extra. Like nails and hair and clothes that feel good. And as you can tell, as I'm going through this inward transformation of who I'm becoming, I've also been going on like a very outward transformation of like stepping into my own style and sense of who I wanna be, again like being led from my own inner being and highest self. So like it really is like a full, I don't know, identity makeover, up level that has just been like emerging from all of the work I've been doing and just all kind of like building upon each other and like birthing into this whole new way of being. It's really, again, wild to be in the middle of it, but also to be witnessing and seeing the growth happen so quickly is really freaking cool.

I really let myself learn and relearn lessons without judgment. Just like hearing things at a deeper level, taking the coaching that I received and letting it sink in for months at a time. Like literally I got some coaching back in. OMGG I guess that really was January and I've like sat with it this whole year, right? Like I've gotten coaching that I've just like, heard in a new way because my brain is changing. And I think I've talked about it before, but coaching can sometimes be like, you know, like on a school or gym locker, and it can just be like one notch to the right is what allows you to unlock it. Like that truly feels like what's been happening in my brain. It's been so much expansion and opening up to my own awareness and consciousness, and then one freaking dial notch to the right, just unlocks something that I didn't even realize I could take deeper. Right.

Something that blew my mind on one of my coaching calls was just the simplicity of who you are is enough, and like we all know that phrase, we've all heard it. I have it freaking hanging on my wall in my freaking living room in a frame and still hearing it at a deeper level of knowing and embodiment feels like that one notch to the right, that just locks it into place.

And so that's been really fun for me to see in my own coaching how something that's so simple can go to the next level of depth and embodiment and understanding and knowing. So that's been really fun. I've made a lot more space for my own disappointment and negative emotions without making them wrong and allowed myself to feel them and move with them and hold them.

As I shared, and this podcast feels like part of that is like just really allowing myself to receive and engage with my own success. That's huge, and I think that as we're all growing on our journey of being performing artists and stepping into bigger visions and bigger impact, that is something that can be uncomfortable. Really owning that this is who you are now and owning the bigness of who you're becoming, and truly the bigness of who you've always been. Because as you do this work, as you expand, as you step into that next level self-concept, really it's just becoming more and more of who you've always been and removing the shit that prevents you from being that. And so, yeah, like again, it's just kind of wild to think back over the last year and to witness how much has changed and shifted in just a year. It's only been a year and it feels like a million lifetimes, and it also feels like, OMGG that happened in the blink of an eye.

And so as you're thinking and reflecting on your year, you don't have to use my results against you. If anything, right? I want you to use them to find areas of your life that you've grown in that you haven't yet acknowledged. And also let it inspire you to see that so much can be created when you're just being really freaking intentional.

And I have to say that something I kind of struggled with this year was sometimes feeling like I was changing almost too many things at once and I feel like I've been just like peeling back so many layers of so many things, and something I'm leaning into for myself too is thinking about like, what does it look like to just allow myself to grow at the rate that I'm growing? To give myself permission to let these things unfold naturally.

And like I have to say too, that even though it's felt like sometimes I'm going after too many things at once, when I hold space for the fact that I'm capable of growing in this way, then it feels so much less overwhelming. And then I'm just giving myself permission to follow my own intuition and nudges, right? Like when I joined a coach's program for weight loss, really to work on my own mindset and my relationship to food and my body and exercise to really break out of diet culture, that came at a time where I wanted to prioritize that, where I wanted to get started. So, I don't know. I guess why I'm sharing this is because even though it feels like sometimes you have to only pick one, when you're trusting that the growth is happening exactly when it's meant to unfold, you can really trust yourself and honor what you're feeling called to work on and to lean into and what you want to prioritize, and those things are gonna shift.

It doesn't have to be. I have to start this and I have to finish it before I start something else. Maybe it does look like starting a little bit here and there and then letting the growth happen and unfold as it's supposed to. But truly like, the reason why I was able to accomplish so much in a freaking year was because I gave myself ample space and ample containers to do it.

I had my business mastermind where I really focused on my coaching skills and my business, and I worked with one-on-one coaches where I was prioritizing my own limitations, my own thought errors, my own ways of expanding how I was showing up and letting go of paradigms of right and wrong and good and bad and all of the things, right?

Like I really gave myself, I don't even know if I had to calculate the hours, that'd be really interesting, but like every week I gave myself multiple hours where I was being coached by peers, by my coaches that I hire, and spending even more intentional time with my own brain too. That is why I've been able to create these results.

And so if you've been waiting to create and I don't think it's good, bad, right or wrong, I don't want you to use my results against you. And if you're like, fuck. I could be like creating way more powerfully in my life. I wanna invite you to go to kelliyoungmanwellness.com/launch and book a call. Because truly giving yourself the container to grow is like a little baby incubator where you're giving yourself the sunlight and the water and the nutrient dense soil to just freaking flourish.

and I look back and I'm like, holy crap. That is totally what I did. I gave myself container after container after container to just show up for me and focus on not only thinking about change, but really giving myself support while I was implementing the change. Because that's the thing, right, is like it's not only in the ideas or the plans that we make. It's really in executing them and giving ourselves the support to keep going even when it's not working, even when it feels like we're failing, even when it feels like we're going too slowly so that we have the perspective to zoom out and see what's actually freaking happening. To witness your own brilliance and to freaking bask in it.

So this is where I wanna just share some of the prompts that I looked at, to help you find where you have grown this year. Because again, our brains will love to go to the spaces where it's like, oh my gosh, not enough happened. You know, I didn't work enough. I didn't do this enough. I tell you this with so much love because my brain does it too. My brain still wants to go to, you didn't do enough. You didn't work hard enough. Um, you didn't perform enough. All of the things. But honestly, the fun part about that is the growth has been like softening that and seeing that I'm a fully formed human and that I get to decide what's enough. I get to decide that I love the growth that did happen.

So right now we're gonna direct your brain to the growth that happened for you. Okay. And I wanna just invite you to journal or think about this for yourself. What are the ways that you, you know, excelled and accomplished things outwardly? And then what were the accomplishments that happened internally? What has shifted about who you were at the beginning of 2022 and who you are now? Right? Like what habits have you shifted? What thoughts have you created? What new beliefs have you adopted and started living by? What are some, you know, new boundaries that you've created?

How have you been honoring yourself and showing up for yourself, and why do you love the changes that you made? Right? Like, I know I just gave you like a million different questions at once, but I want you to just take your brain to the space of like, what was amazing about 2022? What was brilliant and magical? And like, how did I blow my own freaking mind in my courageousness. Courageousness, is that a word?  in my, in my willingness to be brave and courageous and vulnerable. And how did I trust myself? In what ways was I showing up? Bigger than ever before, right? Like I want you to be willing to look for the answers because whether or not they come to you immediately, I know that there's ways that you really freaking nailed it in 2022.

And really you get to decide what nailed it means, right? There's not one definition, but you get to look at OMGG, what was so freaking amazing about 2022? And how did I blow my own mind? How did I lean into changing things and navigating change and softening and expanding, and how is that setting me up for success in 2023 and freaking beyond?

Okay.  Because again, when you zoom out and you give yourself the vantage point of this is just one tiny blip of what's being created, I still get to step into who I'm becoming day after day after day after day. Right. Just give yourself permission to love where you are, knowing that where you're going is inevitable and knowing that you are the one creating it, right? So you're gonna reflect on 2022 and then I really want you to just spend some time thinking about who am I ready to become in 2023? If I get to have anything I freaking want - what is that?

Oh, and if you missed it, I taught a free class all about how to have the life, career, and money that you want, and if you wanna catch the replay, go to kelliyoungmanwellness.com/replay and you can get the 90 minute class where we really dove into how do you create exactly what you want? What does it look like to let yourself go to the space of dreaming big - without stopping yourself or thinking like, oh, that's not for me, or, oh, that kind of shit doesn't happen to me, or the industry isn't in my favor. Whatever those thoughts are, just know, you don't have to use those thoughts and what's happened before to inform what comes next in 2023.

Okay? So then you're gonna spend time just really thinking about who am I ready to become? What is the next growth that I'm gonna have to go through in order to create that change? And again, I talk about this a lot in that class, so just know you can go to kelliyoungmanwellness.com/replay to watch that, and I walk you through this entire process. But just think about. What am I ready to create? What will it require of me? Who do I have to become next? And what layers of myself am I ready to shed? And what am I ready to bring along with me? Right? Like this gets to be so much fun.

And honestly, you know the markings of a year to me feel a little arbitrary at times because we use the calendar as a metric, but really like our lives don't stop or change or pause just because it's a new calendar year.

If you wanna lean into the calendar year feeling really fun and like a fresh start, by all means. And just remember that every single freaking day gets to be a new start. You don't have to wait for the calendar year to start implementing something new, and you definitely don't have to wait till like another year goes by to start creating change, right? The change can be happening from right here, right now when you just freaking decide. Okay?

And yeah, you just get to lean into who do I wanna become next and what will be required. And honestly, like I'm always gonna keep inviting you to come freaking do a launch call with me and to explore what coaching can bring into your life because there's so much available to you. You get to be, do, or have whatever you want in this human life, and if you haven't yet believed that, even more reason to come to a call. I can show you exactly where your brain is getting caught and where your brain is stopping you from allowing yourself to dream and have, and actually create and take action towards the thing that you want.

It's really freaking simple, and it's not always easy to implement the changes and to do that on your own in a way that makes you wanna come back and commit and keep recommitting to the freaking process and the journey of change. That's what makes coaches so freaking valuable and why I love freaking hiring them. But truly. Just know that 2023 gets to be your year. You get to be excited and freaking fired up by what's coming next. And if you're looking for a container to create an incubator for growth, just know that you have access to that anytime you want. Go to kelliyoungmanwellness.com/launch to get on my calendar and we can look at specifically what would serve you in the New Year for who you wanna be and what you wanna create.

Okay. With that, I just wanna say I love you all so freaking much. Thank you for coming on this journey with me in my very first year of having a podcast and cheers to many more to come. Okay. Happy New Year, and I'll meet you back here for another episode.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and if you did, make sure to share it with a friend who is also an actor, singer, or dancer. You can also help spread the word by leaving us a review wherever you listen to podcasts in order to help people find this resource.

Lastly, you can find me on Instagram @kelliyoungmanwellness, and if you're interested in coaching, make sure to head to kelliyoungmanwellness.com/launch to join my list now. See you soon.