Rules Of Engagement

Hello. Hello, Cadre. Good morning. It is Tuesday, November 25th. Thanksgiving is two days away. It's 2025, and we get the opportunity to think about preparing for renewal and reflection. And this is happening in the middle of the annual retreat. I do. So I'm going to take a little break from rules of engagement, although I think they will probably show up. Good morning. Speak, Wonder. You know, my rules of engagement will show up because they always flutter around in my life like butterflies. But I do a retreat usually in November around Thanksgiving, and I.

Yesterday was the first day, and I did a complete review of the year so far. Because for me, with one month to go, what this does for me is it allows me to take a look at what's been happening the last 11 months. And then today and tomorrow will be, you know, at least tentatively deciding what my goals are going to be for 2026. And then that means in December, some of those goals I can try on for size. Because I. If I have a big goal, I break it down into, okay, how am I going to make that happen?

And then I break that down into what needs to happen daily or weekly or monthly or what do I need to put on the calendar right now? Maybe it's just. I just need to go to the audiologist. I'll tell you all that right now. I've needed to go for years to get rechecked to see if 15 years after my initial diagnosis, there are hearing aids that could help me better, then they don't help me at the time. This is such a side Quest. Okay. About 15 years ago, I realized I didn't hear very well, and I went to an audiologist and got tested.

I was very young at the time. I was. It was probably 20. Maybe it was. No. Gary and I were together. It was probably about 10 years ago. 10, 15 years ago. 15. And I was in my early 40s, and the audiologist was the youngest person in the waiting room. And the audiologist was like, oh, sure, sure, Jan. And then she came back and she was like, you do have hearing loss. It's in the middle range where people speak. It's not in the high range, which is mostly what happens as you age. It's in the middle range where people speak.

That must be very challenging for you. But they didn't have good hearing aids that would help me. So I just had to do accommodations. I had to explain to my staff, I can't hear you from far away, or if there's something in between us. It was a little bit of a Challenge as an elected official, because it's very, very hard for me to hear if there's a lot of ambient noise. And I was at a lot of events where I had to talk to people and I could do it, but I was just exhausted afterwards. But it's been 15 years, and I'm told there are hearing aids that would be better.

So I need to go to the audiologist and get that checked. So I'm just going to lay down that marker here. That's going to happen by the end of 2026. I'm going to tell you all that right now. But, yes, an inventory of the year. Exactly. So what did I do yesterday? And as I go through what I did yesterday, I'll tell you what I'd been doing all year that made yesterday possible. And these are things I've learned over the years to do. You know, start where you are, not from where you wish you were. Rule of engagement number two, if you hear like, oh, my God, she's so organized and she keeps track of so much.

It's like, yeah, because I've been at this a long time. Start with the simplest thing and then just go from there. You don't always have to do it the hardest way. Another ruling game. So the first thing I did was I looked at my word of the year and I reflected on what it meant. My word for 2025 has been allow. And I'm going to hold up my whole hand so you can see that. This ring. Can you see it? It says allow. It says allow. I'm not trying. I'm trying not to give you the finger. It says allow there.

That might be a little better. Maybe not. I order it from a place online. You can ask me if you want to know where. And I get. I get a ring every year for my word of the year from the same place. They're great. It's a little place in Texas off of Etsy, and they do it every year. And so I reflected on my word of the year. Sometimes it's really easy because the word of the year, I use a sort of a compass to guide me through things I'm doing in recovery, things I'm doing in counseling and therapy. I use it as a lens through which I look at my other goals.

And often, often the previous word of the year and my work on it leads to whatever the word for the next year is. And I already have my word for next year. We'll get to that. Thank you for saying it's a pretty ring and illuminate What a great word. It has a lot of meanings. Illuminate and a lot of touch points in life. I've been throwing light on things. Ah. I would imagine illuminating sort of implies that there are places in your life that are unlit that you're going to shine a light on. And usually those places are unlit on purpose.

So I imagine it's been a challenging, but I'm guessing very useful endeavor. I'm guessing it's been a very useful endeavor. So allow really my word of the year last year was zesty. Sometimes when I review the word of the Year, I have a lot because I've been writing about it. I came up with a definition of zesty for me, which means present and pleased. I realized through the course of 2024 that zesty for me is the opposite of anxiety. Anxiety is not being present and not being pleased. It's being in the future or being in the past.

And what could I do to get more zest in my life? And I have a whole list that's printed up. But allow is a softer word. Two years ago, my word of the year was warm and I didn't know why. It was my word of the year and it was a little amorphous, nebulous. Right. It didn't have a lot of very concrete things for me. Your mileage may vary if that has ever been your word of the year. Allow has been a little bit like that. Except what's been happening all year in my meditation, in my recovery work, my counseling work is I can see very, very clearly the good, the struggle I have allowing good things into my life.

They're all lined up outside the door, and I struggle to just open the door, let them in and make themselves at home. It feels very risky to me. And so I spent a lot of time this year working on what the barriers are to just allowing the good in my life. Just let it happen. That doesn't mean I don't take action. Part of allowing the good in my life means putting myself out there. Another rule of engagement, put yourself out there. I've had to put myself out there. And the pace of invitations I've been getting from the universe to really put myself out there has been increasing all year long.

And this last month has probably been the highest pace of putting myself out there and getting. Allowing good stuff back as a result, over and over and over again. So I. I spent some time reflecting on that and what I learned. And then I, you know, I have a template that I've created for myself. Over time, like what I look at, you know, my. All the various writings and then what did I learn from it? And then what am I going to carry forward? I haven't done that part yet. That is less review for me and more sort of where do we go from here?

I'm writing myself a note what I'm going to take forward. Because I just realized I didn't do that. So I do word of the year. Then I looked at my successes. The first time I ever did a word of the year, my first ever time was success because I realized I really struggled to allow. There's that word again, success. And what were my barriers? And ooh, that was a very rich year. But one of the practices I took forward from there is every year in my retreat, I write a list of my successes for the year.

And last year I realized that was hard. I was going through all my stuff and I did fine, but it was just, it took a long time and it was a lot of work. And so this past year, in 2025, as part of allow and allowing success, I have a journal. At night, I write down my successes for the day. And then about halfway through the year, I realized it would be useful for me to also at that same time write down what I contribute on any given day. What contribution am I making to the world, to my life, to the lives of the people around me?

Any contribution. Because it's a really stuck place for me, being able to tell that in small ways rather than large ways. And so I had that list. I just got to go, whoa, success, success, success. And two things happened. One, I could see the big moments of success, like, hey, we launched a podcast chat by lightning, you know. But what I could also see was the successes I had in my day to day persistence on things that eventually led to a bigger success. And the persistence, excuse me, I'm so sorry.

And the persistence that I put into some things that haven't yet led to a big success, but it's a success in and of itself that I keep showing up. That's a success in and of itself that I keep showing up. So I could see patterns over the year in my daily successes and how that had an impact on my mood. And that was the other thing. So I did that initial list, then I went to all my goals list. Now this is going to sound like a lot this year I had a 25 and 25. So 25 things to do in 2025. Fun things to do, work things to do, personal things to do, like 75 separate ones.

And I switch them out sometimes during the year. If one of them is just a non starter, I'll switch it out with something that is a starter or like, I tried it and it didn't work. That's fine. I just swap it out for whatever worked or something else. But I went through all that and I just said, did it work? Did it not work? There's some pieces of that I haven't done yet. Like some things I have numbers for because I have daily habit trackers that I check at the end of the day. Did I do these things?

Sometimes in the middle of the day, did I do these things? Some things have been on there for years because tracking them makes me do them. And when I stopped tracking them, I stopped doing them. So I just track them. But through that, I realized many of those things were on my success list, but some of them weren't. So I would add that to my success list as well. And I just talked about what worked. I have notes in my. I use Evernote and I have. Each list has its own thing. And at the bottom there are things that I swapped out or things that I'll do later.

So I just took notes in my notebook mostly. If it doesn't go through my hand, it doesn't happen. I take anything handwritten and put them in Evernote, usually for my goals. Then I did the most interesting thing. I went through my journals. I went through my journals. I write every morning and I write every night. And when I say every, I mean, I don't know, nine days out of 10, like, I take a travel journal. So I reviewed the travel journal and you're welcome for coming during my annual retreat and do I celebrate my wins?

I will get to that. I will get to that. All right. I'll make a note. Yes, I do usually as they go. But I'm gonna probably do a little ritual or ceremony sometime this week to really maybe at the end of the year is when I'll do the celebration ceremony. Come to think of it, this is such a long process, I can't even get through it all in 15 minutes to describe, to be thorough about it. What that means is that I had those habit trackers to track things to refer to for data for my end of year review.

I had my journals to look back on and refer to for my end of year review. But that also meant. But I did have to add some things to my success list. Like I've read poetry every day this year. Every day. And I usually. And I'm Not. I mean, I've been keeping a habit tracker through Gretchen Rubin's app. Like, every day, every single solitary day, I have read two to five poems or pages of poetry every day at night before I go to bed. It has been great. I mean, I love poetry. I've always loved poetry.

I've often had a poetry practice, but I'd gotten away from it, and Gretchen had a read 25 and 25 challenge. And so I said, well, I already read 25 pages a day, but two to five pages of poetry or two to five poems that I want to add. And so that's been really successful. So I added things like that to my success list. But reading my journals got me a few more successes. I could see places where I had. Well, the thing that I could really see as a success is I started out the year kind of discouraged and ended up the year in a much more encouraged place.

Even though my material circumstances haven't changed that much. That was very notable to me. My material circumstances have changed some, but not a ton. There are some struggles that, you know, I've been working on. Not, you know, always personal growth, but my relationship with money. I've been working on very hard and very assiduously for a couple years now. Earning money. Not just money, earning money. And that's about to take a big turn, is my sense. I can just see that I've done the work and now I get to allow the results of that work.

I'm just going to say it out loud to all of you. Mary Oliver was the poet who let me know that it was okay to love whatever poetry I loved. And that's how I got into my poetry habit. This was years and years ago. And if you listen to. Krista Tippett did an interview with Mary Oliver for her show On Being. And if you listen not to the radio program of it, but if you listen to the full interview, uncut, unedited, at the very end, Krista says, I have a note here for you from the mayor of Minneapolis, who says that you and your poetry allowed her to know it was okay.

Sorry, I get choked up to love what you love. Some equivalent of that. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I got to basically tell Mary Oliver how much her poetry had meant to me and thank her before she died. And you can hear it. And she. What did she say? She said, well, that's something. Well, that's something. Then, you know, in her own Mary Oliver way. Whew. Didn't expect that story to come up I haven't thought about that in a long time. Yeah, I love Mary Oliver's poetry and I loved her and she gave what she had to the world no matter what she was going through.

It was amazing. That's my review process. And then I just sort of let it steep. Right. I did some tasks around the house. I just sort of let it sink in. What is happening today is John Acuff, who I've talked about a lot, has dream, plan, do review and yesterday was review and today is going to be dream and plan, dreaming. What is it that I want to see for my 2026 in the Big picture and in the little picture. And once I have that down, then it's plan. Okay, what does that look like habit wise? What does that look like day to day?

What goals am I going to set around that? And I haven't done most of that yet. I didn't spend the morning the way I thought I was going to. I spent the morning reporting Frau on one of my accounts. And so I worked out to work out all those anxiety chemicals and then I took a shower and here I am with you. So I'll be doing that. I have a little work today to do today as well. It didn't usually I take two full days off, but it just couldn't work out that way. So then tomorrow I have a half day in the morning and then the rest of the day I'll be getting ready for Thanksgiving.

I'm cooking for me and my husband, but so I will do that. There are other things that happen in my planning, but you know, we can talk about that another time. You know, the review happened and the planning will happen. I'll just note that. I will do that. I will pick which things I want to try out in December to see if they're a good fit for a regular habit. And then I will probably take another retreat time, a half day a day between December 25 and December 31, when things are very quiet for everyone, for most people, for a lot of people.

Because even if you don't celebrate Christmas, the world kind of shuts down between Christmas and New Year's. So I will take another day and I will finalize my stuff for the new year. I will probably do. I like to do a tarot year ahead spread at the end of every year. So I'll probably do that and maybe a couple other things to just real. Oh, and there are a lot of one of my page a day. I have these journals that are five year journals, three year journals some of them ask questions and one of them I have been answering questions in there for I think three years and it'll be done at the end of the year and I get to pick a new one.

I have them on my shelf. I get to pick which one I'm going to start on January 1st. That's the sort of thing I'm going to do at the end of the year. Year at the end of the year. So see a lot of rules of engagement came up but this is a planning retreat and you do not if you're not like me, if that doesn't work for you, your mileage may vary but it really, really helps me be intentional about my life. I have struggled enough with being in freeze response and being an addict and paying attention to things that were less important because I was too scared to pay attention to the things that were important.

Those are so likely for me left to my own devices that I do my best to be very, very intense.