Mission Possible - Week 14

During this LAST week of Mission Possible, this is the quote that comes to mind.?

When you embrace change, the winds you thought would defeat you, will actually push you towards your divine destiny”

- Joel Osteen?

Four months ago when I started this crazy challenge, “100 days, 5 goals in the 5 areas of my life”, after being laid off and my world turning upside down, I would have never imagined I would be where I am at just a few months later.?

I am so grateful for all the challenges, learnings, opportunities, and achievements. But I am especially grateful to each one of you for accompanying me in many ways during this journey. For this week’s blog post,? I shared some tips and my biggest lessons from this adventure with you. Here we go!

On Day 93, we talked about the 4 signs that let you know that you need to organize yourself. These 4 signs are the following:

1. You constantly arrive late
2. You don’t finish your tasks or assignments on time
3. You forget commitments
4. You constantly feel stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed

On Day 94, we took on part 2 of the signs that you need to get organized. Here they are:

1. You get distracted easily and hop from one task to another
2. You constantly have conflicts with your schedule
3. You can’t find things or important documents
4. You have difficulty staying focused or motivated

On Day 95, we touched on how to deal with the constant changes in our world. Whether it is a new job, new entrepreneurship, loss of job, starting relationships, loss of loved ones, or building or breaking bad habits, we need to learn how to approach these situations. Here are the 5 steps to best deal with change:

1. Understand the change: what is changing? What impact will this have on your life? Why is this change happening?
2. Identify how you feel: take some time to reflect and dig deep about how you feel.???
3. Think about what your options to implement/adapt to the change: brainstorm what the different pathways look like
4. Evaluate your options: think about the pros and cons of each one
5. Pick an option based on what is really important to you and identify the first 3 steps to implement your decision.

On Day 96, I shared with you a very interesting statistic: 38% of people feel like their levels of stress increase during the holidays. Here are 5 tips to avoid stress and anxiety this season:

1. Take some time to recognize and accept your feelings: if you cannot be with your loved ones during this time, be aware of your emotions and understand that it's ok to feel sad. You cannot force yourself to feel happy just because it’s the holidays.
2. If you feel alone or isolated, make the effort to connect with your loved ones or reach out to your community: look out for community events or other social events. It can also be useful to talk to a friend or family member about how you are feeling.
3. Enlist yourself as a volunteer or do something to help others: this is also a good way to feel good and meet new people.
4. Respect and leave aside the differences
5. Create and stick to your budget: before going out and shopping for gifts and food, decide how much money you want to be spending beforehand. Don’t try to buy happiness with an avalanche of gifts.

On Day 97, we touched on waking up in a bad mood. Maybe it’s because it’s Monday or because we didn’t get good sleep last night. Whatever the reason may be, here are 5 tips to solve it:

1. Accept your emotions: denying them will only intensify them
2. Listen to music: it has been proven that this will create positive emotions
3. Journal: take some time to understand where the bad mood is coming from
4. Do something you like or have fun with
5. Talk to someone: just simply sharing how you feel with someone will make you feel better

On Day 98, I touched on 3 health lessons I learned during the most challenging year of my life. 2022 came to an end and it is time to reflect on everything that has happened in the past year. The 3 lessons are the following:

1. The effects of habits multiply: there are some habits that have a compounding impact on your goals. For example, exercising in the morning will push you to drink more water. Drinking more water will help you avoid overeating. Not overeating will help you have more energy and increase your focus throughout your day.
2. Take care and protect your mental health: take care of your mental health with habits like meditation, planning, journaling, and therapy. Also, protect your mental health by setting clear boundaries around your time, your space, your body, and your finances.
3. Slow down to accelerate: a lot of times we will slow down at the moment (resting and recharging) to accelerate in the future.

On Day 99, I gave you a systematic process to reflect on 2022. The steps are the following:

1. Write down in a column: accomplishments, learnings, intentions, and blessings
2. Write in a row: career, health, relationships, professional development, and finances
3. Fill out all of the empty space!

On Day 100, we closed with the three most important lessons I learned about finances this year. They are the following:

1. Make revising your finances a weekly habit: your weekly budget revision is essential to be proactive about your spending and not reactive about the decisions you made.
2. Never run out of gas: always have saved up 6 months of monthly spending. This will cover you in unexpected situations and always incorporate a contingency plan of 5-20% of your budget for unexpected expenses.
3. Live under your limits today to live without limits in the future: create a budget that includes a percentage of savings and investment and stick to it. This will give you flexibility and financial freedom in the future.

The end.?

Thank you for reading and being part of the past 14 weeks of my life, where I turned what might be perceived as one of the worst things that can happen to you into the best opportunity of your life - all of this by implementing agile methods.

Special thanks to Santiago Mansur Monroy , my business partner and loving husband, and Cesar Enriquez , my content editor, and mastermind behind this challenge.