thank you so much to squarespace for sponsoring this video the last time i did a mid-year review
video i was at 90 000 subscribers i had not done my room remodel yet we were only about four months
into the pandemic and it hadn't really started to affect me yet all of that was bound to change um
but so i sat down recently to do my 2021 review and i printed it out on paper because i just
i like having things on paper it feels more formal can you tell i've had two gap years and i'm
starting to miss the structure of school i've also prepared a mid-year review worksheet for you that
you can download from the link in the description as you're watching this video i'll tell you when
to pause it you can fill out your own answers to the questions and then by the end of the video
your mid-year review will be done like magic okay so the first step is to list out all of your wins
and accomplishments from this first half of the year i think it's so easy to forget all the good
things that happened especially when we've had such a difficult past year that all of the good
moments can just sort of fade into the background hum of stress and anxiety that we've had
and so to jog my memory i like to go through all of my journals and notebooks my day one
app my calendar and just write down every little thing no matter how small that i've accomplished
so what i wrote down was number one okay this one's kind of serious but it's very honest so
um i wrote down that i was really proud of myself for managing to pull myself out of sort of these
recurring episodes of depression i feel like towards the beginning of the year i was trying to
hack my brain and figure out why is this happening but even when i felt like i was doing everything
right in terms of habits and taking care of myself sometimes it still happened and so i'm proud of
myself for kind of coming to a place where i was like you know what maybe there is nothing to
learn from this maybe there's no deeper meaning to this depression that i've been experiencing maybe
it's just something that's been happening and it sucks um i think it's been happening because of
the pandemic and not being able to start college and stuff so that was the first thing i wrote i'm
proud of myself for getting through that another thing i'm super proud of myself for is finally
hiring a virtual assistant i am building my bliss bean team which is just like insane to say out
loud speaking of the bliss bean i grew my youtube channel to 220 000 subscribers which is not um as
fast growth as i experienced last year but it is growth and behind that was a lot of consistent
work and effort and that's the part that i'm really proud of is the work that went into it
the numbers are just a small indication of that work i read 18 books i decluttered my room and
my closet and like everything in my life i worked with an accountability buddy which
was super helpful and i set a lot of boundaries with freelance projects that i was working on
so this next category i titled happy moments and bits of gratitude so i didn't do this last year
but i wanted to create a new category because not everything necessarily fits into wins and
accomplishments so what are the beautiful moments coincidences opportunities etc that happen to you
this year again you can look through your journal your calendar all that good stuff to try and jog
your memory and just make a big list so just a sampling of what i have on my list i discovered
music by grimes and it has been a while since i so completely fell down the rabbit hole of
discovering music from a new artist so that was really fun i wrote down going on walks with my
family getting my covid vaccine i had my first video hit a million views that was really cool
you might also want to make a list of like challenges that you face this year and lessons
that you've learned from them i don't do this because i feel like i already review that kind
of stuff on a weekly and monthly basis and i try to keep the vibe of the mid-year review super
super positive but if you feel like that would be helpful you can add that as an extra step
so my next step is looking at every area of my life and writing a short paragraph
on how the last six months have gone and how i want the next six months to go so for example
in the blogging slash career category i wrote i've been uploading videos pretty consistently and i
think the quality is improving a lot of people have also been telling me that it seems like i'm
better able to let my personality show on videos which is good um as i said i hired
a virtual assistant and i've just been doing a good job of keeping things organized with her for
the next six months in terms of content i want to launch my new course and create a new newsletter
or something similar um not gonna share too much on that for the moment on the business side of
things i want to hire an accountant and outsource as much as i can to my virtual assistant and maybe
even to other people in the learning category i wrote that i put a pause on studying korean
mainly due to depression and like not having as much time and energy because of that
instead i focused more on spanish and really enjoyed my classes i've read 18 books so far
this year and i've also been enjoying listening to some new podcasts for the next six months i
want to get a lot better at my personal knowledge management so i want to start using a note-taking
tool where i can link notes to store my ideas i want to take notes on all the books that
i've read so far this year and i also want to read this book called how to take smart notes
thank you so much to squarespace for sponsoring this video if one of your goals for the second
half of the year is to make a website or a blog or a podcast or a personal resume or anything
you already know where to go if you've watched any of my previous videos you probably know that
you should go to squarespace squarespace makes it super easy to make any type of website that
you need because you just drag and drop the blocks you pick your colors you pick your fonts and bam
you have a website i think this is super important because a big reason why people don't go ahead and
start their blogs or their youtube channels or whatever creative project that they have
is because they're intimidated by that learning curve in the beginning and by the amount of time
investment that it will take but if you use a drag and drop website builder like squarespace you have
no excuse because to set up a blog literally all you do is like you pick a template you make a blog
page and then you make your first post so it is perfect for beginners but it also has so many
customization options and different integrations that can help you if you are a more advanced user
and i would consider myself to be one i've been using squarespace since 2017. i don't need to
hire a programmer or anything like that i can just update my website myself and it grows as the bliss
bean grows so if you want to try a one week free trial you can head to squarespace and then you
can use my code the bliss bean to get ten percent off your first purchase of a website or a domain
alrighty so the next step of your mid-year review process is to think about what is it that you want
to do in the second half of the year so i like to read through what i wrote when i was reflecting
on each of the categories of my life because usually i've already explicitly stated some goals
if not explicitly then i can take what i wrote and kind of shape it into a goal generally i
don't push myself to come up with many other goals aside from what it is that i already wrote
having too many goals just dilutes your focus and so i want to focus on what was already on
my mind when i was doing my reflection you could upgrade what you wrote though so for
example if in your blogging category you wrote that you wanted to start a youtube channel
maybe the goal that you write is that you want to start a youtube channel and upload 20 videos
before the end of the year that way you can't dilly dally on it and you have to get started
soon so here are a few of the goals that i wrote first of all i want to build a second brain
there's like a certain corner of the productivity sphere on the internet where this is huge so
you might have heard of it already but if not there's this guy named thiago forte
and he has a course called building a second brain where he basically explains how to set
up a system for storing all of your personal knowledge your ideas your writing etc so that
you can then have very easy access to those ideas so that you can remix them repurpose them etc
another goal of mine is to launch my course that is happening in july so keep an eye out for that
and i want to hire an accountant because i am very much out of my element when it comes to finance
stuff so for each of these goals write them down and then write the very first step that you could
take towards that goal so for example for my goal to find an accountant my very first step
is to just go online and find one agency firm whatever a group of accountants is called and
reach out to them to set up a meeting so that then i have at least one option to choose from
make sure you also think of some goals that are fun i didn't make a whole separate category for
that on the worksheet because i think it embeds into other categories so like going on a trip for
example might be something that you do for your mental health technically or cooking new recipes
might be something that you do for your cooking hobby so as you're coming up with goals for all
of those categories that are on the worksheet always be also thinking am i also having fun
so after that the last section of the worksheet is just these six boxes for you to get a big
picture overview of the year ahead of you it's not supposed to be a detailed calendar
it's just a summary to see what's coming up which months are busy what's the best time
for me to work on each of these goals that i've written for example for me i wrote that for the
month of august i'm going to be in europe in september i'm starting college and so
probably should not schedule too many things for august and september because i will already be
quite overwhelmed i wrote that the building a second brain course starts in october um that i
should try and find my accountant before i leave for europe so kind of putting all of your goals
on a very rough schedule puts you light years ahead of just having a list of goals with no
dates attached to them because if you do that you're gonna be tempted to leave all of them
for the end of the year and then we all know what's gonna happen they're not gonna happen
and that's it you're done those papers didn't scatter the way i wanted them to i love doing
a mid-year review because it kind of feels like you've got that motivational inspirational energy
of new year's but write smack dab in the middle of the year so you don't have to wait until december
to feel like you've got a fresh start the more often you sit down to reevaluate your goals and
adjust your plan the better and halfway through the year is just a very natural point to do that
so i hope you enjoyed this guided exercise again if you want to follow along on the
worksheet that's right down in the description if you enjoyed this video please give it a like
let me know in the comments what your top three wins from the year have been so far i did that
for last year's video and it was just so nice to read all of the responses in the comments
also of course be sure to subscribe to my channel before you go and i will see you next week bye