Follow along with the transcript below for episode: The Importance of Reflection with Deborah K. Heisz
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 500 of Live Happy Now. As we wrap up 2024 and head into the new year, many of us are thinking about what we’d like to accomplish in 2025. But it’s important to pause for a moment and look at what we’ve done over the past 12 months. I’m your host, Paula Felps, and today I am joined by Live Happy CEO and co-founder Deborah Heisz, who’s here to talk with me about the power of reflection. As you’re about to hear, taking time to celebrate what you’ve done and review what you’d like to do better can have a profound impact on the way you approached the new year. Let’s have a listen.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:40] PF: Well, Deb, welcome back to Live Happy Now.
[0:00:43] DH: I’m always excited to do a Live Happy Now episode with you, Paula. It’s one of my favorite things we do.
[0:00:49] PF: We’re at the end of the year, which this year just seemed to fly by. So, it was a really good time, as everyone’s talking about what I’m going to do for the new year, how I’m going to go into 2025. It was a really good time to talk about the topic of reflection. I know on our sister podcast, which your part of, Built to Win, they did an episode about the importance of reflection and really from a business development standpoint. From the standpoint of what it does for us personally, I just really wanted to talk about the importance to before we plan for the new year to take that pause and look at what we’ve accomplished in the past year. Can you talk about how that reflection can inform where we want to go?
[0:01:34] DH: Yeah. I think the biggest thing about reflection is it really does, for me, you know, I struggle with this all the time. It creates a sense of presence, right? We all move through life and we’re looking at what do we want out of life? We have these big grandiose ideas in the back of our heads of where we think we’re going, and what we think we’re going to end up. You ask any college student that selected their degree, what they’re going to look in 10 years, what they’re going to be doing. They’re going to tell you and they’re going to be wrong.
[0:02:05] PF: 100% wrong.
[0:02:06] DH: 100% wrong. Maybe 98% right, wrong, I mean, and 2% right. Because when we just go through life and we don’t look at where we are or what we’ve done, we’re really not measuring or even creating that emotional identity with what we want to accomplish. So, for me personally, reflecting back on the past year is, okay, what did we do? What moved us in the right direction? What didn’t move us in the right direction? How do I make sure I get more quality out of my life or how much quality did I get the last year?
By quality, I don’t just mean vacations, although they’re lovely and I love to take vacations and they create fantastic memories. But I mean, how do we create that sense of not just losing time? Because the older we get, the more it just feels like, you know, yesterday was Christmas, right? When we’re recording this Christmas is in less than 10 days, but it just feels like we were just starting the year, because we’re going really, you know, that the older you get, the more it seems time passes quickly. But that reflection point really allows you to say, okay, I set out the year, it’s better if you did do this year to year.
I set out the year with the idea of getting these things done. I got some of them done, some of them moved forward, some of them didn’t move forward. But at least if I reflect, I can say, “Okay, where did I not maximize my opportunities for what I want to do? Where did I maximize my opportunities for what I want to do? Where did I spend time and energy where I really wish I hadn’t spent time and energy?” Because I think we all have those.
How many of us have ever taken – signed up for an online course or a master class or something that we did one hour of a 10-hour class and that what we intended to get back to it, or I’ve got a lifetime membership to Rosetta Stone to learn all of the languages. I currently speak one fluently.
[0:04:13] PF: That’s great. I think you’re not alone in that.
[0:04:16] DH: I know. It really is that, where did I spend my time that was valuable to me? Where did I spend time that wasn’t value and bold to me? For me personally, this ties into my belief that you know, your quality of life is really measured by your memories. Memory is a time driven function, like we get up, we go to work, we get up, we go to work, we get up, we go to work, we get up at Saturday, we do nothing. We watch football or whatever it is that you’d like to do on Saturday. We get up on Sunday. Maybe we go to go to worship. Maybe we, maybe we don’t, depending on who we are – kind of this rhythm that isn’t creating anything resembling a memory, because it’s a rhythm. But you stop and you think, “Oh, I did that. That was really impactful to me. How do I create more of that in my life?” To me, that’s the purpose of reflection. Finding those things, you want more of that are getting you closer to where you want to be.
[0:05:12] PF: Absolutely. I’ve been reading some articles recently. I know Jodi Wellman has done a lot of work in this space where she’s talking about end-of-life review. I really started thinking of it in terms of end of year review, but she has a lot of research that shows how it can build positive emotions. It can help with things like self-identity, recalibrating where you’re headed, but it also gives you this sense of, “Oh, wow, I accomplished that.” Like if you sit down and write down everything, every great thing that you accomplished in 2024, I think you’d be surprised when you really start looking at the good things that you did. The things that you did well. I think we all tend to gloss over even those, especially those little things that we did that meant something, but no one’s going to write a news story about it.
[0:06:04] DH: I think we’re as humans wired to focus on what we’re failing at, right? We talked about that a lot on this podcast. We’re just really wired to not be generous with ourselves. We’re not focused on congratulating ourselves or even feeling satisfied in what we’ve done. You talk all the time about, okay, the main thing when you accomplish your goal is you feel really good for five seconds, then you’ve set another goal, right?
It’s that reflection of, I really did get something done. I created positivity. It really does help fulfill your emotional well so that you can feel good about things. But you know the other thing that it really does when you can reflect on that is the best way to describe it is I once worked with someone and we’d worked together for 10 years and he said, “This place is exactly the same as it was 10 years ago.” In my mind, it was nothing like it had been 10 years ago. We launched multiple projects. We’d changed massive things. We’d grown from $30 million company to a $300 million company. But in his mind, he could only see that there were certain problems we hadn’t fixed yet.
[0:07:12] PF: Oh, interesting.
[0:07:14] DH: Focused on the things that hadn’t changed. He neglected to focus on – to recognize that positives had happened in so many other areas. No, we hadn’t gotten really better about pre-planning. Okay. That’s what he was focused on. But we had done remarkable things and that just didn’t enter into his mindset, because his focus on what he hadn’t gotten done. If this part of your reflection, you’re not taking the time to write down what you did accomplish and you’re only focused on what you didn’t accomplish, it’s not going to be a positive experience.
[0:07:48] PF: No. Then you’re going to just be beating yourself up and saying, “Well, this is what I have to do for 2025.” Instead of, as you mentioned earlier, looking at what went well and saying, “I like that. I like how that felt. I want to do more of that.”
[0:08:00] DH: Yeah. I think we can naturally sit here and listen to everything we’ve – list everything we’ve failed at. We’re not sitting around struggling –
[0:08:07] PF: Or if you can’t call your mother, maybe she can.
[0:08:09] DH: Exactly. Or your spouse or anything else. But you know, anybody else who knows you well. That’s not really what reflection is about. Yes, part of reflection is identifying things you wish had gone better and trying to figure out how you can improve on those things, but that’s not the major piece of it.
[0:08:31] PF: Right.
[0:08:31] DH: Reflection is exactly recognizing what happened, thinking through how that made you feel, identifying the good things that happened, identifying things that maybe happened and surprised you or didn’t go exactly the way you thought they would go. Do that process so that you can then align it with an expectation, or a plan for next year, which is what somebody has spent the holiday season doing is planning out our next year.
[0:08:58] PF: Yeah. So, when you do reflection, do you do it by yourself? Do you do it with someone else? Do you do both? How do you manage your reflection?
[0:09:06] DH: Well, personally, I’m so introverted interior driven. I have to do it by myself, but after I’ve done it by myself, I do share my key learnings, or the things that I’ve discovered, or I’ve thought about, or that made me, I had a stronger emotional tie too. I do share those with my spouse. I don’t do it with my spouse, but I share them.
[0:09:33] PF: It seems like this could be a good family activity where you could really support one another. If everybody, I know you have three kids in various stages of being teenageness. So, if everyone wrote down like what they were proud of or what they appreciated about the last year and then kind of look at what that means going forward. Then you all come together. I think you get a better understanding of one another and you have something to celebrate with each other in your reflection.
[0:10:02] DH: I agree. That is the better way to do it by yourself and come back together and share. I will caution anyone with teenagers at getting them to reflect in various stages. So, my senior, actually my sophomore would probably be the best at it, right? But my seventh grader if you ask her what went well this year, the answer will be nothing, because she’s in seventh grade, right? So, don’t set your expectations so high that they’re going to spend quality time with it and at that age, they may need a little guidance. It may be a good idea to sit with them and just ask the basic questions. Part of the, “Hey, what are we going to do next year? How can we make your life better? How can – what would impact you in a positive way? What was the best thing that happened to you this year?”
Once again, seventh grader might say nothing. Yeah, but I’m – we’re also, I have a senior. So, going through that college selection process and that what do you want to do next process, and reflection can really help build that. Because even though it’s a change of life moment, adequate time reflecting on what made you have, feel great? What did you really enjoy doing? What experiences did you have that you want to repeat? What did you feel like you set out to do that you really got done and you felt great about? What did you set out to do that you maybe decided that I thought I wanted to do that and I didn’t?
All of that can help guide – help us guide him in selecting the right situation for him for next year, for first year in school. It’s not – but without doing that reflection, it’s just like you’re jumping off the diving board and do a new pond. You don’t know why, you just, oh, okay – they acceoted me and I’m going. Okay. That’s –
[0:11:53] PF: I think too, when we’re in our teens and 20s, we’re just trying to grow up so fast. We’re just trying to get through it. We are ready for that next thing. I just remember just tearing through life, like I had all these things I wanted to do and get to. If you take that, I think what an incredible habit to teach them to build into their lives of taking that pause and reflecting on what went well and being able to appreciate that and use that as a stepping stone to what else they might want to do that they hadn’t even thought of.
[0:12:23] DH: Well, I think a lot of kids end up – I’m calling them kids, but they’re young adults, which we know the young adult population has a huge impact on the world as a whole, right? A lot of times the people driving chains, driving awareness. All you need to do is pick up social media and you realize the end or 30 world is our thought leaders and –
[0:12:41] PF: Right.
[0:12:41] DH: Maybe not our good thought leaders, but our thought leaders in a lot of ways. But I think driving that reflection, what happens is you go to high school, then you have to go to college, and you have to pick a major, and you have to get out, and you have to get a – there’s a certain element of auto. They’re on automatic pilot where they just know they have to make a choice so they make a choice, not a choice based off reflection, not a choice based off of what’s truly going to matter to them, but really just choices, because they have to make a choice.
We can look at them and you see it under a microscope, but if you look at an adult, it can be quite similar. If you’re changing jobs, changing towns, dating. All these things you feel compelled to move to the norm as supposed to really sitting down and thinking, “Okay, I can take this job and it’s going to make a lot of money for me. I’m going to be really successful, but will I actually enjoy what I’m doing?” It’s a balance, but I think you have to reflect on yourself and what you do and what makes you feel the way the right way and what you’ve accomplished in order to make better decisions.
[BREAK]
[0:13:51] PF: We’ll be back with more Live Happy Now in just a moment.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:14:00] PF: Welcome back to Live Happy Now. Then once you’ve had the chance to do that and you really have sat with it and embrace that reflection, then you want to like start looking at the new year. You want to start, are you the do you set an intention? What kind of person? You don’t seem like the vision board type to me.
[0:14:20] DH: Well, you know me well. You know I’m – and I believe in vision boards for a lot of people. I am not one of those people. I think that they work. I absolutely believe in them. I believe they work for a lot of people. I have extremely long term and extremely short term. I kind of leave the middle out. So, like if you ask me what my one-year plan is, is to get closer to my long-term plans. If you ask what my three-month plan is, I can pretty much tell you everything I’m doing. That’s kind of the way I work.
So, like I look at, okay, where do I want to be is with my family in five years. What am I doing last year? Then what am I doing next year to get closer to where we want to be as a family in five years? It’s not a vision board. It’s more of a five-year goal. I like the word goal better. But then what am I going to do this year that’s going to be closer to that? What can I do this coming up year that will get me closer to the place that I want to be? I travel a lot for business, do I want to be traveling this much in five years? No, is the answer, right?
How do I set up to where that works to where I’m still successful and can still do what I do? Because I love what I do and I still see myself doing it in five years. But being a place where that’s comfortable, so that flows back into my work habits. I categorize it that way. Then I look at what’s the next thing? What’s going to get me there? But I also, and I think this is really, really important. Part of my reflection is always, what am I not going to do anymore? What am I –
[0:15:56] PF: That’s interesting. I’m glad you brought that up.
[0:15:58] DH: It’s huge. What am I going to stop doing? Like, it doesn’t have to be big stuff, but there’s things that you’re like why am I doing this? Well, I’m doing this just because somebody asked me to, or I’m doing this just because I’ve just always done it, but there’s a certain element of stop doing things. Stop doing things that don’t contribute to where you want to be, or who you want to be, which doesn’t mean you can’t do your laundry. Somebody has to do your laundry. Either pay somebody to do it or do it yourself. Nobody likes doing laundry. But it really is, what did I do this past year that really didn’t fill my bucket and was more of an obligation and probably wasn’t worth my time or energy or focus?
[0:16:42] PF: I like that. As you said, a vision board works, setting an intention works, picking a word that you’re going to live by. All those things work because you’re focusing on something. Whether it’s the way you do it as setting goals and making a plan is telling your brain, this is what we’re going to look at for this year.
[0:17:03] DH: Well, it’s also telling your brain, for me, a lot of planning, and I think this is true for most people, is if I know where I’m going, I’m a lot less stressed about going there. It relieves stress, and anxiety, and worry to have that plan. I’m going to use an example. It applies to a lot of people. Let’s say that part of your biggest concern is debt. Well, that’s okay. You have debt. It’s okay. You don’t need to pay it all off next month, right? You just need to chip away at it. What behaviors do I have that will benefit reducing my debt, what behaviors and goals do I have that will not benefit my debt?
What habits do you have that you can deploy that will help that to take the anxiety away? I picked one that’s true for a lot of people, a lot of people have debt, but there’s other things. There’s worry. I’m worried about my son and where he’s going to school, and what he’s going to do, and what he’s going to be like on his own. Well, I can’t actually – he’s got to do that, not me, but I can put together a strategy and a plan of, okay, we’re going to go visit a school here. We’re going to talk about this. We’re going to talk about that. We’re going to have a conversation. We’re going to get him a debit card, so he can manage his own money rather than it being on a credit card. Things like that. There are things we can do to eliminate the anxiety. I think reflection and planning, if you don’t do those, you’re anxious about things that are completely within your control.
[0:18:41] PF: Let me ask you. I’m glad you brought out up the anxiety, because we are heading into a year where about half of our population feels anxious, and half of our population feels hopeful and they may not be getting along with each other very well. How do we at this juncture create a plan and a practice that we can use to go into this year with more calm, more confidence and a greater sense of it’s going to be all right.
[0:19:13] DH: Being anxious about things you can’t control is I think one of the most difficult things that we as humans deal with. We’re anxious about stuff we have no control over and there literally, there’s no control for any of us over individually, collectively asked, but individually we have no control. I think what you need to do is figure out what you can control and how these possibilities that you’re worried about or these possibilities that you’re hopeful about just think through and reflect on what impact that would have on your life and how would it change decisions about the way you’re living right now.
If you’re hopeful and it happens, what does that mean? If you’re hopeful and it doesn’t happen, what does that mean? If you’re worried and it happens, what does that mean? You have to identify with specificity what it is you’re creating anxious. What you’re anxious about or what you’re hopeful about. Otherwise, it’s just an emotion unattached and you can’t really manage unattached emotions.
They’re just things you feel, right? But I think if you can take an anxiety for me what’s always worked and this is not something I would recommend for everybody, but for me personally, I frequently ask myself, well what’s the worst that can happen? I’m by nature a risk taker, so sometimes that answer is, oh, and I better not do that, because that bad is really, really bad, right?
[0:20:40] PF: You go, that would not go well.
[0:20:41] DH: The worst that can happen is, okay that’s not something I want to potentially deal with, but most of the time what the worst that can happen is I might be embarrassed, or I might make somebody angry, or I might – something like that, but what’s the worst that can happen. Those are all things I can deal with or maybe it’s a bad investment decision the worst that can happen is you lose the money you invest. So, make sure you don’t invest more than you can lose and mitigate the risk, right? Well, it’s the same thing with emotions. Don’t invest more than you can afford right?
[0:21:12] PF: I like That.
[0:21:13] DH: Don’t spend your time being anxious about things you can’t control and don’t invest so much emotion in something that you can’t control that you’re devastated by it.
[0:21:25] PF: Well, I appreciate you sitting down with me and spending some time. I would be remiss if I did not address the fact that this is our 500th episode of Live Happy now. So –
[0:21:36] DH: Wow.
[0:21:37] PF: What a way to wrap up the year, right? 500 episodes. I’m very glad that I could do this one with you.
[0:21:45] DH: Well, reflecting on those 500 episodes. I’m really excited I got to do this one with you as well. I think that, I don’t want to gloss over when we talk about reflection and we talk about looking back. I think we talked about this earlier in this episode, Paula, but I think it’s really important for people to understand that we forget our accomplishments and we forget our positive emotions so much more quickly than we forget the negative things that happen. If you can create your diary, and your bible, and your list of all of the good that you’ve done in the world and all of the good things you’ve witnessed in the world you’ve got that as your security blanket in those times when you seem overwhelmed by the negative.
Take the time look back. I guarantee you things were not as bad as you thought they were. If you’re the eternal optimist they may not be as good as you thought they were, but take the time. What we’re all about is improving your personal well-being that’s what live happy is about. Giving you the tools to improve your personal well-being. Take the time to reflect. It’s worth it
[0:22:56] PF: Awesome. Well, Deb, thank you very much and we’ll see you in 2025.
[0:23:02] DH: For episode 500 and something, but wow, 500, Paula. That’s amazing.
[0:23:06] PF: I know.
[0:23:09] DH: That’s about 250 hours of listening for those of you haven’t. This is the first one you’ve listened to, so plenty of drive time –
[0:23:13] PF: In case you got some – yeah, in case you got some traveling ahead of you.
[0:23:18] DH: All right, you take care.
[0:23:20] PF: Have a great one.
[OUTRO]
[0:23:25] PF: That was Deborah Heisz. Talking about the power of reflection. If you’d like to learn more just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode. That is all we have time for today, we’ll meet you back here again next year for all new episodes and until then this is Paula Felps reminding you to make every day a happy one
