With the second half of this year now laid out before us, right now is the perfect time to pause, look back, and see how far you've come in 2024.

Taking a moment for a mid-year check in and reset is a chance to celebrate your wins and all of the ways you've said YES! to you and your dreams so far this year, as well as acknowledge your challenges, the no's you've faced along the way, or where you may still be stuck in telling yourself no. And importantly, to realign your sails for the journey ahead.

With a solid six months of action towards your 2024 goals and the woman whose shoes you are stepping into this year, or maybe, for some of you, inaction, or perhaps like most of us, a little bit of both, the midpoint of the year offers a powerful insight into your progress and a unique opportunity to reassess and adjust to ensure you are on track to achieve your goals and dreams come December 31.

So, today I'm going to share some of my own personal highlights from the first half of this year, reflect on the power of saying YES! to ourselves, and share with you how you can explore where you might still be holding yourself back. I'm also sharing with you the five powerful reflection questions I asked myself mid-year, and some tips to help you bridge the gap between your no and your YES! in the second half of 2024.

Are you ready to make the rest of this year truly remarkable? Then let's dive in.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I'm your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you're ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Hello and welcome to the second half of 2024 my friend and to this week's podcast episode. I remember as a kid thinking adults were crazy when they said the years seemed to get faster and faster with each passing year. And I'm not sure why it is but as an adult I definitely find this to be true.

Perhaps it's societal conditioning from hearing the adult saying this growing up, or perhaps it's just that as adults, we tend to lead such busy lives and we demand so much from ourselves, which makes the time go by very quickly.

In any case, who can believe we are already in July. It just seems like yesterday I was seeing the New Year in with friends in the beautiful city of Lyon in France, with the whole of the year laid out before me.

And I don't know about you, but every year as July 1 hits, I feel this little kind of panic rise up inside of me. This feeling of running out of time, of being behind on what I said I wanted to do. And with that, my self-doubt kick in about my ability to achieve my goals in time for the end of the year. Add to that taking time out for a summer vacation and, well, the anxiety really starts to ramp up.

Now in the past, there have been years where I've let those feelings take over. I have bought into my story of not having enough time and resigned myself to yet another year of failing at reaching my goals and realizing my dreams. And I proved that to be true every single time.

The reality is, these feelings that come up for me, are rarely based on anything factual. They're a combination of my default way of being, of believing I'm always behind and never have enough time to do all the things – which actually comes from my overly ambitious nature, where I simply want to do so much more than is humanly possible, combined with my perfectionist tendencies, which means everything I do takes a lot longer than it needs to – and also my storyteller wanting to pull out all of my old stories of self-doubt and failure to find something to support the feelings I am experiencing that have been triggered by reaching the halfway mark of the year.

When I started taking pause to look back over the first half of my year and allow myself to recognize my achievements and progress, no matter how big or small, and honestly take a look at how I am holding myself back and not showing up for myself in the ways I said I would, it really helped to slow down the pace for me, to quieten the rising panic and anxiety, and to be able to step into the second half of the year in a much more empowered energy, with a much more empowered approach to tackling my goals.

So, today I'm going to share with you how I approach my mid-year check in and the questions and I ask myself to help me shift any lingering no's to YES! in the second half of the year.

But before I do that, I want to backtrack just a little and share with you a powerful tool I've embraced over the years that guides my overall year from month to month and plays a big part of my mid-year check in. And that is choosing a Word of the Year.

In January every year, I choose a word that I want to embody in who I be and the results I create in the year ahead. I think about my goals and the qualities I need to possess to achieve them. I also think about how it is I want to experience my year. And then I use this word to help set the tone for everything I do moving forward.

Since I've been choosing and living by a Word of the Year, it has for the most part had an incredible impact in how my years have turned out. I chose my very first Word of the Year the same year I hit rock bottom in my self-worth. And the word I chose that year was grace.

I knew I needed to show myself so much grace and also to extend that grace to the people in my world and my world itself. And as I embodied the word grace that year, it led me to a place of forgiveness, acceptance, and ultimately to a place of love for myself, first and foremost.

It was an incredibly healing year for me, and a year of very powerful growth, which set me up for the momentum I have been able to achieve in the years that have followed.

For example, the next year I chose the word audacious, and that was the year I made the audacious move from Australia to the other side of the world to where I now live in Europe. Something I had told myself wasn't possible for me for almost two decades. There's no question that deciding to live in an audacious mindset that year helped me to achieve that goal.

So, using a single word to set the tone for how you show up and what you do is a very powerful tool that I highly encourage you to add into your yearly toolkit of personal growth tools.

If you haven't ever done this, it's not too late to choose one for the second half of your year. And if you do choose a word of the year, I want to suggest that it's not too late to change that word if it's not actually guiding you in the way you imagined it would.

I tend to stick to my guns a lot, that's the perfectionism in me, so I always want to see things through to the nth degree. But what I found last year with my Word of the Year was, it didn't truly inspire me in the ways that I thought that it would. It didn't truly capture the essence of who I needed to be.

So in hindsight, it would have been a more powerful approach to change it out during my mid-year check in, but I didn't. And I can see that it didn't impact my results as much as my other Word of the Years have.

But I will offer a word of caution here because it's important to look at what might be behind this word not inspiring you, you not living into and embracing this word? It may not be the word itself, but rather work you might need to do on you to embrace that word.

Honesty is always the best policy in my books, and that honesty needs to start with ourselves, no matter how hard it may be to deal with what we find. What I do know is, on the other side of that work, is the opportunity to experience a truly incredible life.

So, this year my Word of the Year is remarkable. And as I reflect on my year so far, it has indeed been a remarkable year on so many levels from remarkably challenging at times to remarkably rewarding because of those challenges and what I've learned about me. So rewarding in a different way than I imagined, but rewarding all the same.

And that's why it's always important to stay open to the journey and why really embracing your Word of the Year can be so very powerful. This year, I view everything through the lens of remarkable, even my toughest challenges and all the things that haven't gone to plan.

And I'll be honest, I've had a lot of no showing up in my life this year, and that's actually a remarkably good thing. You see what I did just there, right? And I know you're like, wait, what? The Queen of YES! is championing no?

Because if you've been around me, you'll know I'm all about saying YES!. But that doesn't mean YES! doesn't involve no along the way. In fact, the very act of saying YES! to one thing is to say no to another. And often, our best YES! comes from experiencing our hardest no. Sometimes we need the no to understand the value of our YES!.

The thing is, so many of us want the YES! without so much as a glimmer of no along the way. We don't want another corner to turn and another set of steps to climb. We don't want to feel the growing pains, to experience our failures. We don't want to be here when we could be there. We don't want to look in the mirror and do the hardest work of all.

And here's what I know about that. Between your no and your YES! stands a very important journey. A journey from the stories that limit who you be to the stories that help you become who you could be. A journey from your depleted SELF Wealth to becoming SELF Wealthy and SELF Wealthier. A journey of self-discovery, learning and growth. A journey that reveals no in all of its glory so that you can say YES! in the most glorious ways imaginable.

To me, our no's can be a remarkable thing if we choose to use those no's to guide us to our YES!. And on that note, I digress so let me bring this back for my little tangent there and share the five mid-year questions I ask myself to evaluate my progress, celebrate my wins, and realign my sails for the second half of the year. I encourage you to grab a journal and take some time to answer these questions thoughtfully.

Okay, so question one. In what ways have I said YES! to myself and my dreams this year?

Allow yourself here to recognize your wins and celebrate them no matter how big or small. Reflect on all the moments where you took action towards your goals and embraced opportunities that align with the things you want to say YES! to.

For example, I said YES! to starting this podcast, despite my fears and doubts, and it has been a remarkably rewarding experience because of all the ways it has forced me to grow and the impact I know it is already having in the lives of women like yourself who choose to listen in.

Think about your own YES! moments and the impact they've had on your journey. This helps you to not only be in a positive energy of gratitude moving into this next half of the year, but also, very importantly, helps you to collect evidence for how you have, and can, say YES! to you and the things you want.

Here's question two. How has my Word of the Year helped me say YES! to myself and my goals, and in what areas can I embrace this word more moving forward?

Reflect on how your Word of the Year has guided you, helped you grow and inspired your action. For instance, my word remarkable has inspired me to view even my toughest challenges this year through a lens of remarkable growth and learning. It has encouraged me to look for all the ways that I have experienced challenges, experienced hardships, failures, or no's in the past, and how they have led me to remarkable outcomes.

This in turn has reaffirmed to me my resilience and my remarkable ability to always come out the other side stronger and more positively. So, looking for the remarkable in my no's has really helped me stay on track and keep taking action to move forward despite things being pretty tough at times.

If you've been listening in each week or you get my weekly email CREATED, you'll know I've had a lot of health challenges this year, which honestly, have made it very challenging at times to keep showing up here week in week out for you all.

But because I know I can do remarkably hard things, I've been able to push through and publish an episode every single Wednesday come rain, hail, or shine. And that means I'm on track to meeting my podcast goals this year, despite those other setbacks around me.

So, reflect on how your Word of the Year has guided you, helped you grow and inspired your action. And also consider areas where you might not have fully embraced your word and how you can incorporate it more in the coming months. It would be no surprise, having just shared what I shared, that I would like to embrace remarkable health and fitness much more in the coming months.

Now, if you are new to this concept or you don't have a Word of the Year, that's perfectly okay. Ask yourself this instead. What guiding principle or value can I adopt to inspire and direct my actions for the rest of 2024?

Okay, so moving on to question number three. And this is a big one, my friends. Where am I stuck at no?

Identify all of the areas where you are saying no to yourself and your ability to make your dreams your reality.

To help you do this, think about where you feel fear, maybe fear of failure, judgment or rejection. What stories are you telling yourself about achieving your goals that perhaps are stopping you taking action? How are you not being the woman you want to be? Where are you maybe viewing your obstacles and challenges as insurmountable? Where are you stuck in indecision?

Think about the areas of your life where you feel stuck or where you're not making progress. Where are you telling yourself no?

From me, I'll be honest. I know I need to show my face on social media via video, not just in still images. I know the women I want to help want to get to know me better and they want to see my face and hear more about me and my life. This is something I have found incredibly difficult to push past. I am very camera shy. I don't really like sharing a lot of my personal life. I know there's a good chance you can relate to this.

But ultimately, my goal is to be an example of what is possible when you say YES! to yourself and your dreams. So I know part of being able to achieve this is going to require me to show that by showing up and talking to you all on social media via video, letting you all come inside my daily life.

I have been stuck at a very firm no on this for some time now and this is something in my mid-year reflection that I can see is really holding me back and I would very much like to change that in the second half of this year. So when you see me showing up like this, be sure to come and give me some love and help me celebrate my win.

Now, following on from this, the next question I ask myself is, what is standing between my no and my YES!?

Take a look at the obstacles preventing you from moving from no to YES!. This could be your self-imposed limitations, such as self-doubt or perhaps a fear of failure. Or they might be external obstacles, like time constraints or a lack of resources. But recognizing these barriers is the first step to overcoming them. So what are the main obstacles that stand between your no and your YES!?

For me to show up on video on social media and open the doors to my life more intimately, I had both internal and external obstacles that I know I'll need to resolve. Firstly, my stories around showing up in this way. And secondly, the time it will take me to go through the learning curve of showing up and posting content in this way.

Which brings me to the final question I asked myself, so this is question number five. How can I bridge the gap between no and YES! in the second half of 2024?

So you've celebrated your wins, your progress, and gained evidence to support your ability to say YES!. You've looked into how your Word of the Year has supported you, and where you can embrace it to support you even more moving forward. You've identified the areas where you are telling yourself no, and then what stands between your no and your YES!.

So with all of that information and insight, it's time to develop a plan to overcome the obstacles that remain for you and shift yourself from any lingering no's to fully stepping into your YES! this year. Now, this might involve changing your mindset, perhaps seeking support, or somehow adjusting your approach.

For me, I know first up that I will be doing some really intensive work to rewrite my limiting stories around showing up on social media in the way I desire and embracing a remarkable mindset to help me bridge this gap. I also know there are going to be some practical steps I will need to take to address being able to show up and post this kind of content. Like figuring out all the steps I need to take from recording right through to posting.

So with the insights you have gained from your first half of the year, what specific actions can you take to move closer to your goals? What are the things that will help you say YES!?

Remember, you can achieve a lot in six months. So if you are like me and you get to this part of the year in a little bit of a panic, take a deep breath, reflect, review and reset yourself and your sails to help guide you in the direction you want to head. Changing the set of your sails is not going to get you to where you want to go overnight, but it will change the direction you are heading in an instant.

And listen, there's really no shortcut in the journey from no to YES!. But you can fast-track it by shifting the stories that stop you saying YES! to who you could be every single day. By investing into yourself to build your SELF Wealth bank balance. By being willing to embrace every no to learn from it how to say YES!. And regularly checking in to ask yourself, what's standing between my no and my YES! today? What is it I must learn from things that tell me no? How can I think differently, feel differently and do things differently to shift my no to a YES!? What action can I take today to say YES!?

Now, at the start of this episode, I promised I would share some tips on how to bridge the gap between your no and your YES! in the second half of 2024. And so I want to finish up this episode with those tips. And I have three tips for you.

So tip number one is to regularly spend time to edit your limiting stories. The stories that keep you stuck in your no’s.

I edit my stories at a minimum every single morning as part of my daily morning journal routine. If you have downloaded my free daily journal pages, you will see how I do this. And if you haven't, be sure to check out the show notes for a link to this download. Also, you may want to listen in to an episode I recorded just a little while back, where I share how I use these daily journal pages. I can't recall the episode number, but it's called My 3 Morning Musts for Self-Created Success.

Basically, I use my Self-Creation Shift process as a guide to help me rewrite my stories every single morning. And I also use this process to help me rewrite my stories right throughout the day, when they pop up as I go about taking action towards my goals.

Now, you can get access to that process by taking my YES! Block Assessment over on my website, which is also available to you for free. And I highly recommend this for discovering your most predominant YES! Block, which is going to be very insightful for you moving forward. Again, check out the show notes for a link to my YES! Block Assessment.

So that's tip number one. Listen, to change the story of your reality, you first must change the stories you tell yourself about your SELF and what is and isn't possible in your world. So edit those stories and edit them on a regular basis.

Now, tip number two is to focus on embracing the identity of the woman you become with your edited stories, with your new, more empowering stories.

Who do you show up as with these new stories about who you are and what's possible for you? What do you believe, how do you think, feel and act? What kind of decisions do you make? How do you think and feel about your challenges and what do you believe about your ability to say YES! to your goals? Not just in the second half of this year, but today, right now in this moment.

Visualize the woman you become with your new story and start acting as if you are already this version of you. This is going to help you make decisions every single day that will lead you from your no to your YES!. Every decision you make from this elevated version of you, no matter how big or small the decision is, is going to help you take action that is in alignment with your YES! and gradually help you bridge the gap.

And my last tip is this. Incorporate your new stories and your new identity into your daily life. Establish daily routines that reinforce your new stories, those new beliefs you want to adopt about yourself and what's possible for you, and being who it is you want to be. Focus on doing the things you would do in your day as that next level version of you, showing up as her in everything you do.

One of the ways I like to do this is by scheduling who I be onto my calendar. And that's sounds a whole lot harder than it really is. So let me give you an example here.

Let's say your old story is, “I'm just not a woman who can lose weight easily” and your new story is, “I'm a woman who is learning how to become fitter and healthier”. Now, with your new story, you become a woman who gets up earlier to go to the gym because you are focused on being the fittest version of yourself you can be. Notice also how the focus here is not on losing weight, but on the kind of things you would do if you were focused on being the fittest and healthiest version of you who is at her ideal weight.

Now, with that information, I know I need to get up earlier, so I'm going to plan out my day and my schedule accordingly. I'm going to put the time I need to wake up on my calendar and also look at what time I need to finish up my day to allow for a restful and proper night's sleep. I know as this version of me I also need to allow time for a healthy breakfast and so that goes right onto my calendar as well. And so forth. You get the idea, right?

So think about how would you show up every single day as a version of you who has said YES! to her goals and made them her reality by the end of this year? What are the things you would do that would be in alignment with being that version of you? Schedule them and simply show up for what you schedule. This is the easiest and most powerful way I know to step into the shoes of the woman who says YES! to herself and the life she wants for herself in these next six months.

So they are my three tips from shifting from your no to your YES! in the second half of 2024. Edit your stories, elevate who you be, and show up every single day embodying your new stories and your new identity.

The thing I want most for you to take away from today's episode is that the first half of this year doesn't need to determine the second half. You can use how your year has unfolded, whether it's positive or negative, to help you say YES! moving forward. If you've been strong in saying YES! already, great! You can really tap into that to help you gain even more momentum in these next six months.

And if you've been caught up in your no's a little more than YES!, that's perfectly okay too. As I say, almost on repeat, because I really can't say this enough, awareness is the key to change. You cannot change what you don't know exists. So use this midpoint in the year and this review and reflection process to help you become aware of where you are stuck in no and how you can start taking action towards your YES!.

It's never too late unless you never start. So don't get caught up in panic, in telling yourself there isn't enough time, that what you want isn't possible by December 31, that your first half of the year has set the scene for what you can do in the second. You get to decide these things are not your truth and you get to take hold of these next six months with both hands to steer yourself in the direction of your dreams.

If this is your first time, perhaps, coming across me and listening into this podcast, and you haven't yet added your name to receive my weekly email called CREATED, I highly encourage you to do so.

Every week I send out action steps based on those Edit, Elevate and Embody tips I just shared, and I do not share these anywhere else. So if you want ongoing support to help you bridge the gap between your no and your YES! in the second half of 2024, my weekly email CREATED is going to become your best friend.

It's free to join and you may just find yourself having the kind of A-HA moments every Wednesday that will help drive you powerfully forward to saying YES! to your biggest boldest dreams this year. You'll find a link to join CREATED alongside all of the other resources I've mentioned today in the show notes.

I hope you've found this episode today really helpful, and I encourage you to invest into yourself and your YES! by taking some time to pause and do this work. I promise it really is so worthwhile. Remember saying YES! to yourself is the most powerful decision you can make.

Here's to the rest of 2024 being truly remarkable for you, my friend. I'll be back next Wednesday with an episode that I think you're going to love.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what's stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my FREE 60 second quiz to find out what's standing in your way today and I'll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it. That's https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.

With the second half of this year now laid out before us, right now is the perfect time to pause, look back, and see how far you've come in 2024.

Taking a moment for a mid-year check in and reset is a chance to celebrate your wins and all of the ways you've said YES! to you and your dreams so far this year, as well as acknowledge your challenges, the no's you've faced along the way, or where you may still be stuck in telling yourself no. And importantly, to realign your sails for the journey ahead.

With a solid six months of action towards your 2024 goals and the woman whose shoes you are stepping into this year, or maybe, for some of you, inaction, or perhaps like most of us, a little bit of both, the midpoint of the year offers a powerful insight into your progress and a unique opportunity to reassess and adjust to ensure you are on track to achieve your goals and dreams come December 31.

So, today I'm going to share some of my own personal highlights from the first half of this year, reflect on the power of saying YES! to ourselves, and share with you how you can explore where you might still be holding yourself back. I'm also sharing with you the five powerful reflection questions I asked myself mid-year, and some tips to help you bridge the gap between your no and your YES! in the second half of 2024.

Are you ready to make the rest of this year truly remarkable? Then let's dive in.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I'm your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you're ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Hello and welcome to the second half of 2024 my friend and to this week's podcast episode. I remember as a kid thinking adults were crazy when they said the years seemed to get faster and faster with each passing year. And I'm not sure why it is but as an adult I definitely find this to be true.

Perhaps it's societal conditioning from hearing the adult saying this growing up, or perhaps it's just that as adults, we tend to lead such busy lives and we demand so much from ourselves, which makes the time go by very quickly.

In any case, who can believe we are already in July. It just seems like yesterday I was seeing the New Year in with friends in the beautiful city of Lyon in France, with the whole of the year laid out before me.

And I don't know about you, but every year as July 1 hits, I feel this little kind of panic rise up inside of me. This feeling of running out of time, of being behind on what I said I wanted to do. And with that, my self-doubt kick in about my ability to achieve my goals in time for the end of the year. Add to that taking time out for a summer vacation and, well, the anxiety really starts to ramp up.

Now in the past, there have been years where I've let those feelings take over. I have bought into my story of not having enough time and resigned myself to yet another year of failing at reaching my goals and realizing my dreams. And I proved that to be true every single time.

The reality is, these feelings that come up for me, are rarely based on anything factual. They're a combination of my default way of being, of believing I'm always behind and never have enough time to do all the things – which actually comes from my overly ambitious nature, where I simply want to do so much more than is humanly possible, combined with my perfectionist tendencies, which means everything I do takes a lot longer than it needs to – and also my storyteller wanting to pull out all of my old stories of self-doubt and failure to find something to support the feelings I am experiencing that have been triggered by reaching the halfway mark of the year.

When I started taking pause to look back over the first half of my year and allow myself to recognize my achievements and progress, no matter how big or small, and honestly take a look at how I am holding myself back and not showing up for myself in the ways I said I would, it really helped to slow down the pace for me, to quieten the rising panic and anxiety, and to be able to step into the second half of the year in a much more empowered energy, with a much more empowered approach to tackling my goals.

So, today I'm going to share with you how I approach my mid-year check in and the questions and I ask myself to help me shift any lingering no's to YES! in the second half of the year.

But before I do that, I want to backtrack just a little and share with you a powerful tool I've embraced over the years that guides my overall year from month to month and plays a big part of my mid-year check in. And that is choosing a Word of the Year.

In January every year, I choose a word that I want to embody in who I be and the results I create in the year ahead. I think about my goals and the qualities I need to possess to achieve them. I also think about how it is I want to experience my year. And then I use this word to help set the tone for everything I do moving forward.

Since I've been choosing and living by a Word of the Year, it has for the most part had an incredible impact in how my years have turned out. I chose my very first Word of the Year the same year I hit rock bottom in my self-worth. And the word I chose that year was grace.

I knew I needed to show myself so much grace and also to extend that grace to the people in my world and my world itself. And as I embodied the word grace that year, it led me to a place of forgiveness, acceptance, and ultimately to a place of love for myself, first and foremost.

It was an incredibly healing year for me, and a year of very powerful growth, which set me up for the momentum I have been able to achieve in the years that have followed.

For example, the next year I chose the word audacious, and that was the year I made the audacious move from Australia to the other side of the world to where I now live in Europe. Something I had told myself wasn't possible for me for almost two decades. There's no question that deciding to live in an audacious mindset that year helped me to achieve that goal.

So, using a single word to set the tone for how you show up and what you do is a very powerful tool that I highly encourage you to add into your yearly toolkit of personal growth tools.

If you haven't ever done this, it's not too late to choose one for the second half of your year. And if you do choose a word of the year, I want to suggest that it's not too late to change that word if it's not actually guiding you in the way you imagined it would.

I tend to stick to my guns a lot, that's the perfectionism in me, so I always want to see things through to the nth degree. But what I found last year with my Word of the Year was, it didn't truly inspire me in the ways that I thought that it would. It didn't truly capture the essence of who I needed to be.

So in hindsight, it would have been a more powerful approach to change it out during my mid-year check in, but I didn't. And I can see that it didn't impact my results as much as my other Word of the Years have.

But I will offer a word of caution here because it's important to look at what might be behind this word not inspiring you, you not living into and embracing this word? It may not be the word itself, but rather work you might need to do on you to embrace that word.

Honesty is always the best policy in my books, and that honesty needs to start with ourselves, no matter how hard it may be to deal with what we find. What I do know is, on the other side of that work, is the opportunity to experience a truly incredible life.

So, this year my Word of the Year is remarkable. And as I reflect on my year so far, it has indeed been a remarkable year on so many levels from remarkably challenging at times to remarkably rewarding because of those challenges and what I've learned about me. So rewarding in a different way than I imagined, but rewarding all the same.

And that's why it's always important to stay open to the journey and why really embracing your Word of the Year can be so very powerful. This year, I view everything through the lens of remarkable, even my toughest challenges and all the things that haven't gone to plan.

And I'll be honest, I've had a lot of no showing up in my life this year, and that's actually a remarkably good thing. You see what I did just there, right? And I know you're like, wait, what? The Queen of YES! is championing no?

Because if you've been around me, you'll know I'm all about saying YES!. But that doesn't mean YES! doesn't involve no along the way. In fact, the very act of saying YES! to one thing is to say no to another. And often, our best YES! comes from experiencing our hardest no. Sometimes we need the no to understand the value of our YES!.

The thing is, so many of us want the YES! without so much as a glimmer of no along the way. We don't want another corner to turn and another set of steps to climb. We don't want to feel the growing pains, to experience our failures. We don't want to be here when we could be there. We don't want to look in the mirror and do the hardest work of all.

And here's what I know about that. Between your no and your YES! stands a very important journey. A journey from the stories that limit who you be to the stories that help you become who you could be. A journey from your depleted SELF Wealth to becoming SELF Wealthy and SELF Wealthier. A journey of self-discovery, learning and growth. A journey that reveals no in all of its glory so that you can say YES! in the most glorious ways imaginable.

To me, our no's can be a remarkable thing if we choose to use those no's to guide us to our YES!. And on that note, I digress so let me bring this back for my little tangent there and share the five mid-year questions I ask myself to evaluate my progress, celebrate my wins, and realign my sails for the second half of the year. I encourage you to grab a journal and take some time to answer these questions thoughtfully.

Okay, so question one. In what ways have I said YES! to myself and my dreams this year?

Allow yourself here to recognize your wins and celebrate them no matter how big or small. Reflect on all the moments where you took action towards your goals and embraced opportunities that align with the things you want to say YES! to.

For example, I said YES! to starting this podcast, despite my fears and doubts, and it has been a remarkably rewarding experience because of all the ways it has forced me to grow and the impact I know it is already having in the lives of women like yourself who choose to listen in.

Think about your own YES! moments and the impact they've had on your journey. This helps you to not only be in a positive energy of gratitude moving into this next half of the year, but also, very importantly, helps you to collect evidence for how you have, and can, say YES! to you and the things you want.

Here's question two. How has my Word of the Year helped me say YES! to myself and my goals, and in what areas can I embrace this word more moving forward?

Reflect on how your Word of the Year has guided you, helped you grow and inspired your action. For instance, my word remarkable has inspired me to view even my toughest challenges this year through a lens of remarkable growth and learning. It has encouraged me to look for all the ways that I have experienced challenges, experienced hardships, failures, or no's in the past, and how they have led me to remarkable outcomes.

This in turn has reaffirmed to me my resilience and my remarkable ability to always come out the other side stronger and more positively. So, looking for the remarkable in my no's has really helped me stay on track and keep taking action to move forward despite things being pretty tough at times.

If you've been listening in each week or you get my weekly email CREATED, you'll know I've had a lot of health challenges this year, which honestly, have made it very challenging at times to keep showing up here week in week out for you all.

But because I know I can do remarkably hard things, I've been able to push through and publish an episode every single Wednesday come rain, hail, or shine. And that means I'm on track to meeting my podcast goals this year, despite those other setbacks around me.

So, reflect on how your Word of the Year has guided you, helped you grow and inspired your action. And also consider areas where you might not have fully embraced your word and how you can incorporate it more in the coming months. It would be no surprise, having just shared what I shared, that I would like to embrace remarkable health and fitness much more in the coming months.

Now, if you are new to this concept or you don't have a Word of the Year, that's perfectly okay. Ask yourself this instead. What guiding principle or value can I adopt to inspire and direct my actions for the rest of 2024?

Okay, so moving on to question number three. And this is a big one, my friends. Where am I stuck at no?

Identify all of the areas where you are saying no to yourself and your ability to make your dreams your reality.

To help you do this, think about where you feel fear, maybe fear of failure, judgment or rejection. What stories are you telling yourself about achieving your goals that perhaps are stopping you taking action? How are you not being the woman you want to be? Where are you maybe viewing your obstacles and challenges as insurmountable? Where are you stuck in indecision?

Think about the areas of your life where you feel stuck or where you're not making progress. Where are you telling yourself no?

From me, I'll be honest. I know I need to show my face on social media via video, not just in still images. I know the women I want to help want to get to know me better and they want to see my face and hear more about me and my life. This is something I have found incredibly difficult to push past. I am very camera shy. I don't really like sharing a lot of my personal life. I know there's a good chance you can relate to this.

But ultimately, my goal is to be an example of what is possible when you say YES! to yourself and your dreams. So I know part of being able to achieve this is going to require me to show that by showing up and talking to you all on social media via video, letting you all come inside my daily life.

I have been stuck at a very firm no on this for some time now and this is something in my mid-year reflection that I can see is really holding me back and I would very much like to change that in the second half of this year. So when you see me showing up like this, be sure to come and give me some love and help me celebrate my win.

Now, following on from this, the next question I ask myself is, what is standing between my no and my YES!?

Take a look at the obstacles preventing you from moving from no to YES!. This could be your self-imposed limitations, such as self-doubt or perhaps a fear of failure. Or they might be external obstacles, like time constraints or a lack of resources. But recognizing these barriers is the first step to overcoming them. So what are the main obstacles that stand between your no and your YES!?

For me to show up on video on social media and open the doors to my life more intimately, I had both internal and external obstacles that I know I'll need to resolve. Firstly, my stories around showing up in this way. And secondly, the time it will take me to go through the learning curve of showing up and posting content in this way.

Which brings me to the final question I asked myself, so this is question number five. How can I bridge the gap between no and YES! in the second half of 2024?

So you've celebrated your wins, your progress, and gained evidence to support your ability to say YES!. You've looked into how your Word of the Year has supported you, and where you can embrace it to support you even more moving forward. You've identified the areas where you are telling yourself no, and then what stands between your no and your YES!.

So with all of that information and insight, it's time to develop a plan to overcome the obstacles that remain for you and shift yourself from any lingering no's to fully stepping into your YES! this year. Now, this might involve changing your mindset, perhaps seeking support, or somehow adjusting your approach.

For me, I know first up that I will be doing some really intensive work to rewrite my limiting stories around showing up on social media in the way I desire and embracing a remarkable mindset to help me bridge this gap. I also know there are going to be some practical steps I will need to take to address being able to show up and post this kind of content. Like figuring out all the steps I need to take from recording right through to posting.

So with the insights you have gained from your first half of the year, what specific actions can you take to move closer to your goals? What are the things that will help you say YES!?

Remember, you can achieve a lot in six months. So if you are like me and you get to this part of the year in a little bit of a panic, take a deep breath, reflect, review and reset yourself and your sails to help guide you in the direction you want to head. Changing the set of your sails is not going to get you to where you want to go overnight, but it will change the direction you are heading in an instant.

And listen, there's really no shortcut in the journey from no to YES!. But you can fast-track it by shifting the stories that stop you saying YES! to who you could be every single day. By investing into yourself to build your SELF Wealth bank balance. By being willing to embrace every no to learn from it how to say YES!. And regularly checking in to ask yourself, what's standing between my no and my YES! today? What is it I must learn from things that tell me no? How can I think differently, feel differently and do things differently to shift my no to a YES!? What action can I take today to say YES!?

Now, at the start of this episode, I promised I would share some tips on how to bridge the gap between your no and your YES! in the second half of 2024. And so I want to finish up this episode with those tips. And I have three tips for you.

So tip number one is to regularly spend time to edit your limiting stories. The stories that keep you stuck in your no’s.

I edit my stories at a minimum every single morning as part of my daily morning journal routine. If you have downloaded my free daily journal pages, you will see how I do this. And if you haven't, be sure to check out the show notes for a link to this download. Also, you may want to listen in to an episode I recorded just a little while back, where I share how I use these daily journal pages. I can't recall the episode number, but it's called My 3 Morning Musts for Self-Created Success.

Basically, I use my Self-Creation Shift process as a guide to help me rewrite my stories every single morning. And I also use this process to help me rewrite my stories right throughout the day, when they pop up as I go about taking action towards my goals.

Now, you can get access to that process by taking my YES! Block Assessment over on my website, which is also available to you for free. And I highly recommend this for discovering your most predominant YES! Block, which is going to be very insightful for you moving forward. Again, check out the show notes for a link to my YES! Block Assessment.

So that's tip number one. Listen, to change the story of your reality, you first must change the stories you tell yourself about your SELF and what is and isn't possible in your world. So edit those stories and edit them on a regular basis.

Now, tip number two is to focus on embracing the identity of the woman you become with your edited stories, with your new, more empowering stories.

Who do you show up as with these new stories about who you are and what's possible for you? What do you believe, how do you think, feel and act? What kind of decisions do you make? How do you think and feel about your challenges and what do you believe about your ability to say YES! to your goals? Not just in the second half of this year, but today, right now in this moment.

Visualize the woman you become with your new story and start acting as if you are already this version of you. This is going to help you make decisions every single day that will lead you from your no to your YES!. Every decision you make from this elevated version of you, no matter how big or small the decision is, is going to help you take action that is in alignment with your YES! and gradually help you bridge the gap.

And my last tip is this. Incorporate your new stories and your new identity into your daily life. Establish daily routines that reinforce your new stories, those new beliefs you want to adopt about yourself and what's possible for you, and being who it is you want to be. Focus on doing the things you would do in your day as that next level version of you, showing up as her in everything you do.

One of the ways I like to do this is by scheduling who I be onto my calendar. And that's sounds a whole lot harder than it really is. So let me give you an example here.

Let's say your old story is, “I'm just not a woman who can lose weight easily” and your new story is, “I'm a woman who is learning how to become fitter and healthier”. Now, with your new story, you become a woman who gets up earlier to go to the gym because you are focused on being the fittest version of yourself you can be. Notice also how the focus here is not on losing weight, but on the kind of things you would do if you were focused on being the fittest and healthiest version of you who is at her ideal weight.

Now, with that information, I know I need to get up earlier, so I'm going to plan out my day and my schedule accordingly. I'm going to put the time I need to wake up on my calendar and also look at what time I need to finish up my day to allow for a restful and proper night's sleep. I know as this version of me I also need to allow time for a healthy breakfast and so that goes right onto my calendar as well. And so forth. You get the idea, right?

So think about how would you show up every single day as a version of you who has said YES! to her goals and made them her reality by the end of this year? What are the things you would do that would be in alignment with being that version of you? Schedule them and simply show up for what you schedule. This is the easiest and most powerful way I know to step into the shoes of the woman who says YES! to herself and the life she wants for herself in these next six months.

So they are my three tips from shifting from your no to your YES! in the second half of 2024. Edit your stories, elevate who you be, and show up every single day embodying your new stories and your new identity.

The thing I want most for you to take away from today's episode is that the first half of this year doesn't need to determine the second half. You can use how your year has unfolded, whether it's positive or negative, to help you say YES! moving forward. If you've been strong in saying YES! already, great! You can really tap into that to help you gain even more momentum in these next six months.

And if you've been caught up in your no's a little more than YES!, that's perfectly okay too. As I say, almost on repeat, because I really can't say this enough, awareness is the key to change. You cannot change what you don't know exists. So use this midpoint in the year and this review and reflection process to help you become aware of where you are stuck in no and how you can start taking action towards your YES!.

It's never too late unless you never start. So don't get caught up in panic, in telling yourself there isn't enough time, that what you want isn't possible by December 31, that your first half of the year has set the scene for what you can do in the second. You get to decide these things are not your truth and you get to take hold of these next six months with both hands to steer yourself in the direction of your dreams.

If this is your first time, perhaps, coming across me and listening into this podcast, and you haven't yet added your name to receive my weekly email called CREATED, I highly encourage you to do so.

Every week I send out action steps based on those Edit, Elevate and Embody tips I just shared, and I do not share these anywhere else. So if you want ongoing support to help you bridge the gap between your no and your YES! in the second half of 2024, my weekly email CREATED is going to become your best friend.

It's free to join and you may just find yourself having the kind of A-HA moments every Wednesday that will help drive you powerfully forward to saying YES! to your biggest boldest dreams this year. You'll find a link to join CREATED alongside all of the other resources I've mentioned today in the show notes.

I hope you've found this episode today really helpful, and I encourage you to invest into yourself and your YES! by taking some time to pause and do this work. I promise it really is so worthwhile. Remember saying YES! to yourself is the most powerful decision you can make.

Here's to the rest of 2024 being truly remarkable for you, my friend. I'll be back next Wednesday with an episode that I think you're going to love.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what's stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my FREE 60 second quiz to find out what's standing in your way today and I'll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it. That's https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.