Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #272| Feeling Behind And Overwhelmed On Your 2026 Goals? Here's The Mid-Year Check-In That Gets You Back On Track Without Hustling
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: When you listen today, you'll learn how to get back on track with your 2026 goals without hustling.
- 0:11Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:18Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:23Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences.
- 0:28Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
- 0:37Michelle Gauthier: Hello, friend.
- 0:39Michelle Gauthier: Do you know where your goals are?
- 0:41Michelle Gauthier: It's July, and here we are mid-year.
- 0:43Michelle Gauthier: How are you doing on the goals that you set for yourself this year?
- 0:46Michelle Gauthier: Or have you been too busy to think about or even remember what your goals are?
- 0:51Michelle Gauthier: Even though you're hustling your little booty off every day.
- 0:54Michelle Gauthier: Today I'll share with you part one of my approach for hitting a big goal, even if you're behind or forgot you had the goal in the first place.
- 1:03Michelle Gauthier: When you listen to this episode, you will learn how to do a mid-year check-in without feeling negative after what happened when I got really honest about a goal that I was behind on, and what I recommend that you do instead of the just work harder fix that we often hear.
- 1:19Michelle Gauthier: Let's dive in.
- 1:20Michelle Gauthier: Every year in my group coaching program, we set a word of the year and specific goals.
- 1:26Michelle Gauthier: And then in July, we do a mid-year review.
- 1:28Michelle Gauthier: So back in January, everybody picked a word of the year.
- 1:30Michelle Gauthier: Mine was bold.
- 1:32Michelle Gauthier: Everybody sets between six and 12 goals for themselves.
- 1:36Michelle Gauthier: Every month we meet, we do reviews, we see where we are.
- 1:39Michelle Gauthier: But at July, we do a mid-year review and we look back on all the goals that we set at the beginning of the year.
- 1:45Michelle Gauthier: The process for doing this is to essentially go back to the monthly reviews that everybody does in the group.
- 1:51Michelle Gauthier: But if you don't have monthly reviews because you're not doing that, you can just look back at your calendar, you can look back at photos, et cetera, and look back at everything that is working this year and where you have met your goals, and then take a second look and see where you're behind or where you haven't started on a goal that you meant to start this year.
- 2:09Michelle Gauthier: We go through this whole process.
- 2:11Michelle Gauthier: I do it before the class.
- 2:12Michelle Gauthier: I always do the same thing as the people in the class so that I'm practicing what I preach.
- 2:17Michelle Gauthier: And I notice I was like feeling pretty good about myself because I'm really staying on track with six of my goals.
- 2:23Michelle Gauthier: And then I realize that there's one that I am totally behind on.
- 2:27Michelle Gauthier: And this goal was for me to create 30% of the income for my business this year from things other than one-on-one coaching.
- 2:35Michelle Gauthier: One-on-one coaching is the main thing that I do, but I really want to expand that.
- 2:40Michelle Gauthier: And when I checked in, I was at about 8% instead of 30%.
- 2:45Michelle Gauthier: Now, 8% is fine.
- 2:47Michelle Gauthier: It's a step in the right direction.
- 2:49Michelle Gauthier: There have been years where that number has been zero and I have made all of my money from one-on-one coaching.
- 2:54Michelle Gauthier: But here's what really kind of stopped me in my tracks is that it was surprising.
- 2:57Michelle Gauthier: I was like, oh shoot, I'm only at 8%.
- 3:00Michelle Gauthier: I don't know why I'd be further along than that, but more than the number, I realized that I wasn't taking action on it because I really didn't know what to do.
- 3:09Michelle Gauthier: I wasn't being bold, which is my word of the year on this particular goal, and I was playing it safe because to serve clients outside of one-on-one coaching, I need to speak to a wider audience, make some new offers, all those kinds of things.
- 3:21Michelle Gauthier: So here's what I knew I wouldn't do.
- 3:23Michelle Gauthier: I wouldn't decide to work more hours or add three more offers to my plate or hustle my way to 30%.
- 3:29Michelle Gauthier: Work harder for the default advice.
- 3:31Michelle Gauthier: And the way that I would have solved this problem in the past, I would have just been like, oh man, I have to devote more hours to this, put in more hustle.
- 3:38Michelle Gauthier: There are plenty of coaches who would give this advice, but that is not the kind of life I'm trying to create for myself, and not the way that I teach my clients to create their best life either.
- 3:48Michelle Gauthier: More effort on the same strategy will get you some incremental progress, but I wasn't looking for incremental.
- 3:53Michelle Gauthier: I was looking for something bigger, a different approach to take.
- 3:56Michelle Gauthier: But I didn't know what that approach should be.
- 3:58Michelle Gauthier: So one night, my gratitude practice before bed, where I list out everything I'm thankful for, like a little thankfulness prayer.
- 4:04Michelle Gauthier: I added one more line and I said, I'm ready for a quantum leap in my business.
- 4:08Michelle Gauthier: Just show me what to do next.
- 4:10Michelle Gauthier: I'm ready.
- 4:11Michelle Gauthier: Show me what to do next.
- 4:12Michelle Gauthier: This is essentially casting a future vision, saying, I am ready for the next adventure.
- 4:19Michelle Gauthier: I don't know what it is exactly, but I am open to it.
- 4:22Michelle Gauthier: This is manifesting.
- 4:24Michelle Gauthier: And funny, I said the word quantum leap, but I didn't know what it actually meant.
- 4:27Michelle Gauthier: I had to look it up.
- 4:28Michelle Gauthier: A quantum leap in physics is when an electron jumps instantly from one energy level to another with no gradual path in between, no easing in, it's just suddenly there.
- 4:39Michelle Gauthier: And that's what I was asking for, but I didn't know what that meant or how to do it.
- 4:43Michelle Gauthier: So I just started paying attention and looking for signs.
- 4:46Michelle Gauthier: If this is you and you're thinking, I have this goal, I have no idea how to accomplish it.
- 4:51Michelle Gauthier: For example, maybe you're thinking, I don't love my career anymore.
- 4:54Michelle Gauthier: I want to do something else, but I have no idea what that else is.
- 4:58Michelle Gauthier: Put it out to the universe, whether for you that is God or the universe or source or whatever it is, put it out there and say, I don't know the answer, but I'm looking for signs.
- 5:07Michelle Gauthier: That's the first step to take.
- 5:09Michelle Gauthier: And then start looking for signs.
- 5:11Michelle Gauthier: Maybe you'll meet someone who has a really cool job that you'd never heard of that you're super interested in, but just put that intention out there so that you can start manifesting information to come your way.
- 5:21Michelle Gauthier: After I said that, the next day, a book called Bending Reality showed up in my feed, and I bought it immediately and listened to most of it while I was weeding my flower beds over the next couple days, and I kept my eyes open for signs.
- 5:33Michelle Gauthier: Way back in January, I had purchased a ticket to a business event in Lexington, Kentucky called Hell Yes Live.
- 5:40Michelle Gauthier: Isn't that a great name?
- 5:40Michelle Gauthier: With a business coach I admire named Becca Pike.
- 5:43Michelle Gauthier: A few months after I had registered, a friend asked me to speak at a retreat that conflicted with that event.
- 5:48Michelle Gauthier: And the retreat really sounded like a perfect chance for me to meet a whole bunch of female business owners and teach them about how to feel less overwhelmed.
- 5:55Michelle Gauthier: So I said yes to that and forgot about the business event, thinking I can go another time or another year or whatever.
- 6:01Michelle Gauthier: Then the week comes for this retreat where I'm gonna be a speaker and I got my presentation all ready to go.
- 6:07Michelle Gauthier: And the Monday of that week, we had been having some really bad rains in Missouri and St.
- 6:12Michelle Gauthier: Louis, where I live.
- 6:13Michelle Gauthier: And the place that was supposed to host the retreat got flooded, had no power, and had to cancel the whole retreat.
- 6:21Michelle Gauthier: And that was obviously shocking.
- 6:23Michelle Gauthier: And I wanted to make sure everyone was okay who was involved, and everything was as good as it could be, considering that Mother Nature is always the boss.
- 6:30Michelle Gauthier: So there I sat at my desk on Monday morning thinking, I still have this ticket to this hell yes live event.
- 6:36Michelle Gauthier: And it's Monday, and the event starts tomorrow on Tuesday.
- 6:39Michelle Gauthier: And here was the really weird part.
- 6:41Michelle Gauthier: I had an empty schedule.
- 6:42Michelle Gauthier: Normally I have a fully booked schedule with clients, but I had already moved all my clients for the week.
- 6:47Michelle Gauthier: I hesitated for one second, I journaled about it for a minute, and then I decided, oh, this is the guidance I was looking for.
- 6:52Michelle Gauthier: I got in the car the next morning and I drove to Kentucky.
- 6:55Michelle Gauthier: I had called the place where I previously had a hotel room, but had canceled it, and they said they were fully booked.
- 7:02Michelle Gauthier: And I was like, whatever, I'm going anyway.
- 7:03Michelle Gauthier: I found somewhere else to stay.
- 7:05Michelle Gauthier: I'll figure it out when I get there.
- 7:06Michelle Gauthier: And when I was about 20 minutes away from Lexington, Kentucky, where I was going, I called the hotel and said, Hey, I was just checking to see if you maybe had a room open up.
- 7:13Michelle Gauthier: And they're like, Oh, yes, indeed we did.
- 7:15Michelle Gauthier: I said, Great, I would love to have it.
- 7:17Michelle Gauthier: So I booked the room, and when I got to this beautiful hotel and I went to my newly found room, all the lights on were in there.
- 7:23Michelle Gauthier: You know how sometimes in a hotel room they turn on all the lights, but there was one light that was flashing and it was just flickering.
- 7:28Michelle Gauthier: And to me, I always take that as a sign that my energy is vibing so high that the lights are flickering.
- 7:35Michelle Gauthier: So I thought, yep, this is the place.
- 7:38Michelle Gauthier: This event was just everything I needed.
- 7:40Michelle Gauthier: It was like a plus 11 out of 10 content, people, everything.
- 7:45Michelle Gauthier: I hired Becca to be my business coach, and I really look forward to finding out what my quantum leap is.
- 7:51Michelle Gauthier: As I continue to be open, take steps in the right direction.
- 7:54Michelle Gauthier: That's a big part of manifesting that I think people who say manifesting is crazy.
- 7:59Michelle Gauthier: I think it would be crazy for me to sit on my couch and say, hey, I want to make this big change in my business.
- 8:03Michelle Gauthier: Bring it to me on my couch.
- 8:05Michelle Gauthier: No, you have to say it.
- 8:06Michelle Gauthier: You have to look for signs, you have to take action, you have to get in your car and drive to Kentucky, even if you don't have a hotel room, because you have a feeling that this could be the next best thing for you.
- 8:14Michelle Gauthier: So here's what I recommend that you do this week.
- 8:16Michelle Gauthier: Pull out your goals, pull out your goals from January.
- 8:19Michelle Gauthier: Not to judge yourself for where you are, but to be curious.
- 8:22Michelle Gauthier: First look at what you have done really well.
- 8:25Michelle Gauthier: And then look at places where you might be behind or a goal that you haven't started on yet.
- 8:29Michelle Gauthier: And instead of asking, how do I work harder to catch up, ask instead, what are my options here?
- 8:34Michelle Gauthier: If I am open to this, show me a way to get to this goal.
- 8:38Michelle Gauthier: Say it out loud or write it down or whatever prayer gratitude practice you already have.
- 8:43Michelle Gauthier: And then just wait and see and look for signs.
- 8:47Michelle Gauthier: Maybe listening to this podcast is your sign.
- 8:49Michelle Gauthier: I'll keep you posted on what happens with my goal in a future quantum leap update.
- 8:53Michelle Gauthier: But for now, just know I'm not there yet, but I said the thing, the universe started talking back, and then I took action.
- 8:59Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so in summary, a mid-year check-in is something that I recommend that you do, but it's not about beating yourself up.
- 9:05Michelle Gauthier: If you are behind on anything, it's about getting honest, getting bold, and then paying attention to what shows up next for you.
- 9:12Michelle Gauthier: And by the way, if you like the idea of being in a year-long group where we're checking in on our progress and our overwhelm every single month, making sure that we never fall too far behind and we celebrate where we're really kicking butt in life.
- 9:27Michelle Gauthier: DM me on Instagram and I will put you on the wait list for next year's group.
- 9:32Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 9:38Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com.
- 9:44Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.