Good a. Thanks for joining us on the body and soul podcast called healthy Ish. I am your host, a Felicity Harley. Do you want to finish twenty twenty four strong? Yes? Hell yes, I'm talking strength of mindset of how you're feeling emotionally well. I'm joined today by business advisor and strategist, or as many call her, wingwoman, Michelle Broadbent, and she's
going to share her well. Firstly, her genius approach to protecting your valuable time, admits the chaos of Christmas, and also finishing twenty twenty four in the best headspace possible. Make sure you listening to our chat on extra Healthyish as well, where she discusses how to set yourself up for your best year ahead and inspiring chat and well worth a listen. You can grab that one wherever you get your podcasts. Michelle, welcome to healthy Ish.
Thank you so much for having me.
So nice too. Well have you well you were my last interview for twenty twenty four.
I'm very on it.
Yeah, well let's make it a good one. Hey, but I feel like so many of us are just limping to the end. I mean I am are you yes?
Yes?
Yeah, one of your messages, which is really empowering, is about finishing the year strong. What's this all about.
So, as we've just acknowledged, many people limp to the end of the year, and I think that it is because we tend to really over commit at this time of the year, more so than any time of the year. Our diaries are jam packed with all the commitments that our past selves thought were a really good idea to lock in for December, and all those people that have come out of the woodwork that want to catch up before Christmas, and you know, two months ago when they suggested, oh my gosh, I.
Don't I know you're busy, but let's catch.
Yes, I know it's but I haven't seen you since last Christmas. Let's make sure we do it again before
the end of the year. And as a result of that kind of you know, the pileon, plus all of the other stuff that we deal with as women, as parents, as partners, as cares, as all the other roles that we fill in our lives, we end up with this ridiculously jam pack schedule, and because we're not protecting our own time and energy, we end up like skidding into the Christmas period, an absolutely strung out mess.
You talk about the importance of finding white space. What's this all about and how can we get in our calendars?
So this is this is like the contingency. Okay, so we've all seen that meme where why is it that when you're running late you always like catch your sleeve on the door on the way out. And the fact that this is such a busy, over scheduled time of year, like without jinxing it for everyone. But this is the way that it rolls usually is that this is when
things go wrong. This is when you've got a day of back to back recordings and your child gets sick and there's no one else to look after them, or the uber is running twenty minutes late for the party and you have.
Too many drinks one night and you've got to struggle together there the next day.
Or you've got to go and pick up the car right like because you thought that you would drive and be sensible and then you leave the car behind. So this is why, particularly at this time of year, but really all through the year, it is so important to have white space in our calendar so that if something does go wrong, you have room to move things around in your calendar, and it happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I got really wiped out sick, and I this is my busiest time of year, and I
had to move a whole heap of things around. But because I already had white space in the calendar, it was easy to do that. It's when you're trying to reschedule things when there's no space to do it, that's when you're just adding to the snowball.
I feel like you're telling us to be a bit more ruthless about saying yes to things and no to things. I am how do we do that?
Look? I think it's first of all, you need to start by identifying what is actually important to you, What is important to you, Who is important to you? So I talk about the VIPs and the vampires. So we've got the VIPs in our lives. Who are those people that you know they're really important to us? And for me that's my children, my family, my super important clients. But then there's the vampires, and it's those people often like the ones who will say, let's catch up before Christmas.
Haven't seen you in a year, and it's like, there's a reason that I haven't seen you for a year, and those people that tend to suck the joy out of us, and identifying who those people are and making sure that we save the space, reserve our time and energy for those VIPs and get more comfortable saying no
to the vampires. And that's not easy for everyone to say no. And something that I use is just having that sort of deflection response, having those canned response, so for emails and text messages, even having something pre written and saved in your phone so that when they come through, it's just copy and paste. It's like someone else's being
the baddie, it's not you. I've got a lot of my clients have got assistants and people that actually manage their calendar for them, so they will say, oh, you know, I don't manage my calendar. You need to speak to my assistant Rebecca and Michelle.
How do you personally approach the end of the year professionally and well personally, I suppose yeah.
So look, I wrap up my year doing a beautiful reflection exercise, and that's where I reflect on the year that was personally and professionally. So I've got some questions that I ask myself every year, just around the things that I loved are the things that I didn't love, the things that didn't go so great, the stuff I need to let go of, and the learnings that I got from the year. And this is something that I usually do in that break in between Christmas and New Year.
So this time of year, as I said earlier, is pretty phrenetic, and so sort of taking that energy into doing like goal setting and planning and all that sort of stuff. It's very like sort of frenzied. So what I am doing is just taking that time to do that beautiful reflection exercise to wrap up the year.
I have heard that is actually called a neck de list, when you make a list of all your achievements this ye, have you got a highlight? Is there something from twenty twenty for that you're very proud of?
Look think me personally, like, there's been massive growth in my business this year. I've got to work with some really incredible women. I sort of spontaneously put on an International Women's Day event this year that like sold out without even publicizing it, So that was a really big thing. It was kind of like one of those things it's like, oh, let's see how many people we can get and then before you knew it, have.
You got one for twenty twenty five?
Yes, yes, okay, happening. It's going to be bigger. There will be like you know, more people will know about it next year, so.
Okay, we'll watch your social media.
For professional a big professional achievement. And then on the personal front, my eldest daughter finished high school, so we got through the HC and when I say we, it was there was a household supporting her through that.
We're well done you and have a wonderful twenty twenty five. Thank you for coming on healthy Ish.
Thanks so much you too, Felicity.
White space people, we need more white space in our lives. Thanks for tuning into this chat with Michelle. Make sure you listen to Extra Healthy Ish, where she well shares her very inspiring plan and ideas on how well not only she's going to achieve her goals in twenty twenty five, but how you can as well. I really enjoyed interviewing her. Actually, if you do want any more info, head to body andsoul dot com dot you follow us on socials. You
can follow me or catch me at Felicity Harley. Grab our print edition which is out this Sunday in your local Sunday paper of course, or tune into the other episodes of Healthy Ish that you haven't listened to. There are many out there anyway. Thanks again for listening to this one, and stay healthy ish.