Many of us are so busy worrying about the future that we forget what we’ve accomplished in the past months. That’s why I made this 2021 recap video diary to serve as a reminder of just what an amazing year 2021 has been.
We’ve made it to 2022!
Now that the fireworks and celebrations are over, you’re probably itching to get right down into business. I know exactly how you feel.
But try to slow down and think for a second. Ask yourself: have you laid down everything you needed to start the everyday grind once again?
You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about your goals, your plans, your expectations of how your 2022 is going to be – are they all set?
If you haven’t yet, then there’s no better time than now to start planning out what you want to accomplish for this year and beyond.
But if this is your first time and you don’t know exactly what to do, then you better stick around, because, in today’s post, I’m going to walk you through my 2021 recap video diary, specifically on how I planned my 2021, how it went, and my biggest learnings from it.
And of course, I’m doing this so you can take the little bits and pieces that worked for me and apply them to your own life.
So, let’s get started.
First, let’s talk about what happened in 2021.
2021 Recap Video: What Happened in 2021
First Quarter of 2021 (January, February, March)
I started off 2021 with a bang.
On New Year’s Eve, I made the most life-changing decision ever – I got married!
I reinvented my Create and Validate Program.
One of my biggest goals for the year was to create a program that will serve my target audience. So, I decided to do a little research. I started by interviewing over 50 aspiring entrepreneurs in a span of two months to truly learn what they felt they needed to succeed and create their own business.
It took me a while to figure out what would work best for my audience, but I finally came up with something. So, I decided to overhaul my Create and Validate Program to include relevant content that my clients needed – and that’s how the Validate Your Biz Blueprint program was born.
All that research almost instantly paid off because as soon as I launched Validate Your Biz Blueprint to my existing audience, I was surprised to see that it resonated with them. Soon thereafter, the Validate Your Biz Blueprint was helping me hit all my income targets for the year.
I worked fewer hours per week.
The most impressive thing that happened was that I finally hit working for only 4 hours a day, 20 hours a week. It was amazing!
I had been trying to cut back on my workload for years, but it wasn’t until I found a way to make it happen. What I did was simple. I logged all my hours using apps like Toggl and Clockify, and I simply became more mindful of how I was spending my time.
As a result, I’ve managed to reduce my weekly hours significantly, and I’m still able to achieve more results in less time.
I successfully completed a round of Whole30.
The concept of Whole30 was simple: one should avoid consuming food that may cause inflammation and cravings in the next 30 days. So, for 30 days, I was able to stick to this elimination diet, and the results were incredible.
My skin cleared up, my energy skyrocketed, and I felt great!
Q1 Summary
So for Q1, I had a great start, and I was able to check several things off my list. But there are still many more things to come.
Enter Q2.
Second Quarter of 2021 (April, May, June)
I launched an evergreen version of the Validate Your Biz Blueprint.
It’s amazing how this played out because the Validate Your Biz Blueprint – Evergreen version went live the week before my baby Isabella was due. I was able to pull this off because I have successfully built an automated lead gen funnel that generates leads without me having to be as hands-on as I used to be.
I gave birth to Izzy, but it wasn’t quite like I expected it to happen.
Giving birth to Izzy was another story. I had prodromal labor, which is real labor, but it goes on and off – and I had it for a week. I went through a very challenging period, one that tested my physical strength and endurance. It was a spiritual birth for me as well, in the sense that I came out of it with a solid understanding of both myself and life in general.
Thank goodness, my husband and I took 3 months off of work. Despite what I went through, we were still able to accomplish so much around the house.
Above all, the most beautiful thing is, I was still able to give birth to Izzy at home, as planned. Everyone in my family was there, and I couldn’t have asked for better support from everyone.
Q2 Summary
I think that my Q2 went as planned, though not as smoothly as I wanted. But still good. Everything went great, including hitting my monthly revenues for this quarter despite taking 3 months off.
So, let’s get on with Q3.
Third Quarter of 2021 (July, August, September)
We’ve finally been able to travel as a family after many months.
For the first time in many months since the pandemic happened, we’ve finally been able to travel as a family. We went to Georgia, with 3 kids and a baby in tow. There were a few hiccups, though, but that didn’t prevent us from having fun.
[photo of me and my family traveling]
I went back to work in August.
After being off of work for 3 months and having a baby to take care of, adding work to my routine again was very challenging.
I had inadequate sleep. So, I began to experiment with a few new routines. Some worked, while others didn’t.
I sought help.
During this time, I also hired a coach to help me with my mindset blocks and a million other things that I needed help with. Under my new coach’s guidance, I began to think outward and looked for ways on how these tasks and responsibilities could work for me, instead of just following how others are doing in their respective businesses.
An unexpected learning opportunity opened up.
So, an unexpected thing happened. Jess Ekstrom’s team reached out to me through email!
By the way, Jess is the founder of Headbands of Hope. She is also a very well-regarded keynote speaker and a former mentor of mine. In fact, I had taken her program, Mic Drop Workshop, a few years back. It was one of the programs I took that helped me land my first TEDx Talk.
This time around, I was invited to join her new program, which is called Mic Drop Academy.
My professional speaking business was on hold at this point. In fact, I never had any plans of re-launching my pro-speaking business this time of the year, because of the pandemic and the pregnancy a few months back.
But when I heard about Jess’s new program, I decided to give it a shot (with my husband’s support, of course). After all, pro-speaking is something that I will circle back to once everything settles down. Besides, the Mic Drop Academy is an amazing opportunity to get high-level mentorship from Jess and her inner circle.
So, I signed up for the program, which is happening in the following quarter.
I had my gallbladder removed.
Just when I thought I had everything under control, I got sick. In July, I had gallbladder issues. In fact, I’ve been in and out of the hospital because of it. Turns out, gallbladder disease runs in my family, and I just found out about it after my pregnancy.
Unfortunately, I had to have my gallbladder removed. As a result, I had to put off work for a couple of months. I was out of commission for another two months because of the surgery.
The real struggle began.
With my husband going back to work, and my son going back to school (which I both anticipated), I knew that there were going to be a few adjustments. But with the surgery, I knew that I would have to adjust even more.
I admit that I really struggled. With everything that’s happening, I realized that I’ve been having difficulty finding time for myself. And then, it hit me: I was under so much pressure because I had unrealistic expectations on what I could accomplish, with a new baby, and a husband who has to go back to work.
I thought I could still achieve everything I’ve accomplished in the past at the same run rate, but that’s not completely realistic at all — and it began to negatively affect my life.
Q3 Summary
My Q3 started out well. But the unexpected things that hindered me from being able to complete all my goals for that quarter were: 1) my gallbladder removal, and 2) my unrealistic expectations of what I could accomplish during that period.
In the latter part of Q3, I realized that I wasn’t as productive as I expected to be. I was struggling to keep up with everything.
Now, let’s talk about Q4.
Fourth Quarter of 2021 (October, November, December)
Postpartum depression…
With everything that has happened in the previous months, I began to feel overwhelmed. I suffered from postpartum depression. I had a mental breakdown over things that I thought I had no control over.
At that moment, I realized I needed space for myself to recover. So, I gathered myself up and figured out ways how I can address the situation.
So I did the following:
I hired a team.
One of the reasons why I felt overwhelmed was because I did most responsibilities on my own. So, I went ahead and hired a team of four people to help me with content – and get them up and running in just a week, which is amazing.
I had to confront my social media addiction head-on.
I was spending way too much time — mindlessly scrolling — on my phone. I didn’t even realize I was addicted to social media until I reached a point where I could barely function anymore. That’s when I decided to take some time off to rethink my relationship with social media.
So, I hired a digital wellness coach to help me understand my feelings towards social media, which eventually led me to understand some things about myself. And it turns out, some of these things are rooted deep within my subconscious – as far back as my childhood goes. This is also one of the reasons why I decided to take on therapy as well because all these personal issues are all kind of tied together.
So, on top of hiring a digital wellness coach to help me with my habits and creating boundaries around my digital business, I also enrolled myself back into therapy to explore some things I had forgotten.
Mike and I made some adjustments to give me some ME time.
My husband and I started a brand new routine in the morning, where we both get up at the same time. Instead of jumping right into the responsibilities for the day, I have a full hour to do things for myself. It was my ME time, where I could meditate, do yoga, exercise, journal, and do everything else that helps me with my well-being. The best part is that my Mike is fully onboard with this new routine. While I’m fully immersed in my ME time, he’s fully engaged in taking care of our little Izzy.
And this new routine worked beautifully for both of us, especially me. Doing all these activities first thing in the morning for a full hour gave me an opportunity to feel much more connected with my intuition and all the other things that matter to me.
I completed the Mic Drop Academy.
Despite all things that had happened, I was still able to complete the Mic Drop Academy. I learned so many valuable lessons from this course, and I’m looking forward to using all my new learnings when I’m finally ready to go back to my pro-speaking business again. And I intend to do that in 2022.
I spent quality time with my family.
I know that I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating. Family matters most to me. And I want to make sure that I’m making time for them every single day. That’s why we always have regular date nights (even with all the babysitting that’s going on). We even baked cookies!
We also visit a few attractions as a family every once in a while. In fact, recently, we just went to a light show as part of the holiday activities. We also had an ugly sweater party with friends.
We caught COVID-19.
As the year was about to come to a close, the coronavirus pandemic hit too close to home. My entire family, including my baby, Izzy, caught COVID.
But despite all the challenges, we managed to stay positive and keep each other grounded. The silver lining is that we were able to bond over our shared experience.
2021 Recap Video: How My Entire Year Went
As you can see on how my entire year went, I did manage to accomplish quite a lot. Things had gone as planned (though not EXACTLY as planned), but the entire year still went on perfectly. It was tough, but I managed to check every bit off my list.
The key takeaway here for me is that sometimes things happen for a reason. We could have planned for every little detail, but sometimes things take a little detour – and it’s okay. There are, after all, many ways to climb a mountain or reach a destination.
What I’m Planning in 2022
Now that you’ve taken a sneak peek of what my 2021 looked like, let’s talk about goals for 2022. And if you have been following me for quite some time, you probably know by now that my goals for the year are focused on 5 pillars of my life, and these are: 1) relationships, 2) business and career, 3) health and wellness, 4) finances, and 5) spirituality.
For relationships, my goal is to have people respect my time better. I also want to establish a reliable Corrie Lo and Co. team, as well as prioritize my relationship with myself as much as I do with other people.
For business and career, my goal is to have a book deal by the end of 2022. I also aim to automate my revenue from coaching and hire a full-time salesperson in the middle of the year. I also want to start booking keynote speaking gigs again.
For my health, wellness and spirituality, I want to stay attuned to my body again, and learn how to eat intuitively by not restricting myself too much. I also want to slowly get back to movement.
As for my finances, I won’t be tracking revenue as much because the goal is to simply do better than I did the month before. I’m also looking forward to renovating our home office so we can transform it into a formal office and studio.
Finally, I am planning to take two months off this summer so I can spend time with my kids, and be able to nurture my gifts as a channel.
Lastly, I’m making a conscious decision to protect my intuition and creativity at all costs so I could be fully present in the moment and be consistent through my actions.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed reading my 2021 recap video diary. Most importantly, I hope you were able to learn something from my experiences last year.
And if you haven’t started planning yet, it’s not too late. There is never a better time to plan than now. If you’d like to learn the process I used to create my goals as well as this recap, you can visit my goal setting post as well as my recap routine posts to learn how.
If you’re reading all this and doubting yourself that you can’t do it, I’m telling you… yes you can! You can prove it to yourself by taking my quiz here and testing your entrepreneurial mindset. You’ll surprise yourself.
I look forward to your accomplishments and achievements for 2022 and the years to come.
