Mid-Year Reset

It’s July, and we are halfway through the year. Can you believe it?

So I thought this is a good time for a little mid-year review. A rare mama check-in, if you will.

Organizations have mid-year reviews, and I don’t think it’s a bad idea for us rare mamas to have one too. Obviously, it’s not a professional review but a personal one for us. And it’s not so much to measure our performance, as it is a check-in to see our progress and to realign with our goals.

Often at the beginning of the new year, when the calendar is empty, we have a blank slate ahead of us, and the year is all shiny and new; we have ideas, goals, and intentions for tackling the new year. But then life starts up, and many of our plans or best intentions can get sidetracked between appointments, to-dos, and fire drills.

As rare mamas, we often don’t get a minute to come up for air. Because, let’s face it, most times, life is blazing by as we are just trying to grab hold and keep up with it. But if all we are ever doing is keeping up, how do we get in front of it to ensure that our actions and steps align with our intentions?

We sure could benefit from a little time to float above, look down, and check in to see how things are actually going. An intentional pause allows us to reflect, assess, consider, or reconsider and regroup before the rest of the year flies right on by!

I’ll be honest; for me, this mid-year mark comes at a really tough time of the year. My kids are off school for summer break, so they’re home, and I’m trying to make the most of our time together. We are on a very irregular schedule, and it’s very hard to be intentional about anything related to my goals, intentions, health, or well-being. So if you’re in the same spot, oh, mama, I hear you!

Even further on that, I know many of us are using the summer break to tackle something big like surgery for our child or a burst of PT or OT, or to allow them to try new medications or get all our equipment in place. Those things are so significant that often, this is all we can do! Am I right? Our thoughts are consumed by these pressing and important things. Rightly so!

But, perhaps, it doesn’t have to stop us from mindfully considering where we are at. Or from taking time out for a purposeful pause or to recenter. Because here’s the truth, there is no perfect time for a review. And you know what else is true? There is no wrong time for one, either.

Doing a mid-year check-in is a great way to reconnect with ourselves and the vision for our lives. It’s an opportunity to focus on our mental health and our wellness. It’s a chance to revisit our goals, revise them if necessary, or set entirely new goals. It allows us to assess what’s working and what’s not. It can even help us redefine the path forward and give us a roadmap for the rest of the year.

So let’s consider this our rare mama team meeting for a mid-year review and reflection. Okay, mamas, huddle up!  

I will break this review down into three steps, and we will keep it simple. Because you know, we already got many, many things that are way too complicated on our plates.

First, we’ll reflect on our why. Second, we’ll review the last six months. Third, we’ll reset ourselves for the next six months.

1. Reflect
2. Review
3. Reset

Obviously, we all have our unique set of intentions, plans, and goals. Right? Some of us are working on building better self-care habits or growing stronger in our faith. Some of us are trying to spend more time with family or to find more peace. Some of us are focusing on our mental health, others while others are focusing on physical health. Some of us have goals to tackle something big; others have goals to slow down and find more rest.

Or maybe your plans are focused on something for your child, like a new care team, new medication, or working towards a milestone.

We all have our individual circumstances and situations, but the idea is for this review to serve as a thought starter, a jumping-off point, and a catalyst for your plans for the next six months. So I will be laying out a bunch of ideas and posing questions for you to consider in hopes of getting you thinking and working through your own personalized check-in.

You in? Okay, here we go.

Step 1. Reflect on your why

First, let’s revisit our why.

Our why is the core source of our motivation. Our why helps us understand what matters most. It’s our reference point for all decisions and actions. It’s the driving force that allows us to keep going when times are tough. Our north star.

So when we’re confused about how we will spend your time, or what we want from life, we should go back to our why. When we get out of alignment or out of balance, it’s often because we are drifting from our why. As life starts kicking our butt, it’s easy to feel like we’re going through the motions. It’s not uncommon to lose sight of the more important reasons for being that lie underneath all the layers of life. So let me ask a few thought-starter questions to help us get back to our why:

• What’s your purpose?
• What drives you?
• What is the bigger picture of your life, even within the confines of a rare disease?
• What are you truly working towards in your life?
• What do you want your life to stand for?

Let’s pause and revisit the fundamental values that we hold dear to make sure our actions actually serve and uphold these values as best we can, given our circumstances. Because even if our circumstances aren’t changing, we can change, adapt, and grow. Sometimes that’s precisely what we have to do when it seems like there’s nothing that we can do to change the situations before us.

Once we’ve revisited our why and we’re reminded of the bigger picture and what we’re working towards, we can move on to the next step. Do you have your why in mind? Remember how important it is to you? How deeply you are connected to it?

Okay, let’s move on to step two.  

Step 2. Review the last six months

Take a look back and think about things like:

What are your best memories? Uncover why these memories are so dear to you. I bet it’s because they uphold and encourage your why.

What are you proud of? I know you’re working hard, and I bet there are some things that deserve for you to take a moment and pat yourself on the back. Go on, give yourself an “Atta girl!”

What are you grateful for? Even if the first half of the year was a total mess, I bet there’s still something that you’re grateful for. Identify those things and spend time thinking about why they matter to you.

Thinking about your best memories, what you’re proud of, and what you are grateful for helps you hone in on the things that work well. Let’s celebrate those! We rare mamas celebrate every victory. Yes, even the small ones, we’ll take them! It’s important to spend time here feeling the goodness in our lives and identifying what’s working so that we can incorporate more of this into the next six months.

As you review, also take a look at your goals. Ask yourself these questions:

• What goals did I set?
• Did I make progress toward them? If so, honor that progress!
• Are those goals still important?
• If they are and you weren’t able to make progress towards them, what got in the way?
• What are the barriers you’ve been facing? Time, energy, money, fear?

Sometimes we have all of these plans and goals, and when we try to put them into play in our real lives, we bump into all kinds of barriers. That’s okay; that’s the reality. This is true for all of us. So it’s important to pause and figure out how to handle these barriers instead of continuing to bump up against them. We may need to remove barriers, recalibrate, or change course altogether.

Next, let’s take a look at our habits. We all know that big goals actually come down to small actions, and often they are in the form of our daily habits. So it’s important to ask ourselves questions like:

• What habits helped me make progress?
• What habits didn’t? Take note of this; it’s going to be an essential piece of regrouping for the path forward

As we reflect, let’s think about:

• What’s working well?
• What is not working well?
• What has turned out differently than you expected? Why?

Let’s also check in on our basic needs:

• How is our wellness?
• Are our basic needs being met?
• Are we getting enough sleep?
• Are we finding balance? Downtime?

Once we’ve spent time thinking back on the last six months and taking a little inventory of what worked well and what didn’t work well, hopefully, we’ll gain a little perspective on where we’ve been, where we are, and where we want to go.

From there, we move on to step three.

Step 3. Reset

The purpose of doing all of this is to help guide our next steps. Checking in isn’t a time to feel guilty about what we haven’t gotten to yet. It’s about figuring out what hasn’t worked and considering how to change it on the go-forward. So we test, learn, and refine. And then we reset. We can do this by asking ourselves questions like:

• What do we want your next six months of life to look like?
• What do we need to reprioritize for the rest of the year
• Where do we need to refocus our time and energy?
• What can fall away?

Yep, something might have to! And that can’t be the things that are dear to us, so what else can it be? If you’re running into time as a barrier. Perhaps you should consider what we need to take our focus from. What can we let go of?

• What changes can we make based on what’s working and what’s not working?
• If we identified barriers when we reflected, what are those things, and can they be changed?
• How can we overcome those barriers so that we can progress toward our goals?
• What daily habits can we put into place to get there?
• Can we start building new habits over the next half of the year?
• Can we commit to doing something for 10 minutes each day?

As you take inventory of what hasn’t been working, you may have all sorts of feelings that arise. You may feel frustrated or disappointed. Rare mama life throws us such high-stakes situations that necessitate our time, and it sends us so many things to do that it’s hard to have time for anything else. It’s easy to get pulled off track. So you know what we do? We recognize this, and we give ourselves patience, understanding, and grace.

Maybe your why and goals are crystal clear, but life has thrown too many curve balls, and you haven’t been able to attend to your goals. That’s okay. Perhaps, this is a reminder to simply start again. When you can, and life allows, just start again.

To sum up, here are a few key pieces we talked about for our mid-year review and reflection:

• Reinvigorate with your why
• Celebrate successes
• Give yourself grace
• Change course if something’s not working
• Create daily habits that move you toward your goals
• Just start again

Reflect, Review, Reset.

Remember, there’s never a perfect time for a check-in/review. But there’s never a wrong time for one, either. So come back to this post whenever you need a reset. And if you’d rather go through this process by listening to it step-by-step, then you’re in luck because I’m offering it up in podcast format too. Click here to listen: https:/raremamas.com/episodes/ep29-rare-mamas-rising-mid-year-reset-with-rare-mama-nikki-mcintosh

Now off you go! Rooting for your always rare mama team and cheering you on from the sidelines.