A/B Conversations: CFP® Your Way Out Of It
A/B Conversations: CFP® Your Way Out Of It
Ep #130 - 2025 Mindset Reset and Reflection with Life Coach Katie McKenna
We all know that New Year’s Resolutions often fail. But studies always show how important goal setting can be. How can we set big goals and focus on big things when life feels hard and there are so many other fires in our lives that need to be put out? Ben tapped Best Selling Author, Speaker, and Life Coach Katie McKenna on the shoulder to come share some tools and resources for how to adjust one’s mindset, build space and time for reflection, and be kinder to oneself as we kick start a new year.
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[00:00:00] Adam Werner: Hi everyone, and welcome to AB Conversations, where we will help you CFP your way out of it. A podcast where you get into the minds of a couple certified financial planners on how we think and feel about everyday financial planning questions, and what should really matter most to you. A healthier financial life starts
now.
[00:00:26] Ben Haas: Hi Katie, welcome to A B Conversations. How are you today?
[00:00:30] Katie McKenna: I am fantastic, Ben. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:33] Ben Haas: This is an awesome way to start the week, for those, they're going to listen whenever they're going to listen, but this is a good way to kick off a Monday morning. Let me quickly introduce you, Katie, I have known for, gosh, for probably five years now.
[00:00:45] Katie McKenna: I think it's five years.
I do think it's five years.
[00:00:48] Ben Haas: Katie's a life coach, professional coach, she's a speaker, she's a facilitator, best selling author we'll throw in there, the book, "How to Get Run Over by a Truck," if you haven't read it, you need to read it, all around just amazing person. So happy that you were being willing to meet me on the podcast again today to talk about a great topic. Although we're going to give a little twist to it.
So why don't I give a little introduction to that?
[00:01:12] Katie McKenna: Perfect.
[00:01:13] Ben Haas: About four years ago, we did a podcast on goal setting. If we can all take ourselves back to the end of 2020, it's an incredibly heavy year, and we just wanted to talk about what it kind of meant to brush ourselves off and look forward to 2021.
So for those that want to go back and listen to episode 15, that was a great conversation that you and I had. I want to give a different twist today though. I think when we think about goal setting, we think about that as a very positive experience looking forward, right? That's why we set New Year's resolutions.
I want something positive to change. But I think for a lot of us, and I'm going to put myself in that camp. Life can often feel heavy frequently. Like it's hard to think big picture goals when we're putting out fires all the time. So I just want to maybe lean on your energy and experience in this space, coaching people through the ebbs and flows of life.
And just talk about the concept of how do we focus ourselves in a way that allows us to maybe be kind to ourselves when those big goals feel not as attainable. And what are the tips and tricks that you kind of share to help people stay focused on maybe the little things?
[00:02:24] Katie McKenna: Well, I appreciate that. I think that's a really good question.
I think it's also, I love the idea of just trying to be a little bit more gentle with ourselves. There is so much around new year, new me. And sometimes the pressure of that can just feel really overwhelming. I know that it does for me. I don't even think that the new year starts until like January 6th.
I really wait until like the epiphany in order for it to be a thing. What I would say is that I think a lot of us right now are not thriving. We are surviving. I will put myself even in that camp. And acknowledging and more than anything else, accepting, accepting that, okay, maybe I'm not thriving right now and that's okay.
Surviving is its own beauty. I think that it's, it's a miracle. Frankly, every day life is really hard. It's hard to be a person.
And sometimes cutting ourselves the slack to say like, I actually woke up today, I put one foot in front of the other, and I move through the day even though it was challenging because we forget that there is another option.
The option is giving up. Yeah. And people do that all of the time. So just sometimes allowing for ourselves to say, you know what? I'm here. I'm trying my best. Does my best look like the greatest thing that's ever happened to me? Absolutely not. And that's okay. But it was my best for today. Something that I would say about like, and you know, I, I hope that I have some tips and tricks, but I guess like maybe tools and resources might even be better because
sometimes tips are great and then tricks are great and you're like, okay, but I've run out of tricks and there's no more.
Yeah. Like, one thing I would say. When you're in a spot where you don't feel like you are able to do anything other than survive when we're trying to think about what do I want when it comes to a positive outcome is instead of asking yourself, what can I do, which is unbelievably active and feels like a lot of pressure.
As I ask myself, what can I stop doing?
[00:04:16] Ben Haas: Hmm. Yeah, I think so, so often, if I heard you correctly, so often we're, we're like conditioned to think I'm either winning or I'm losing, and if I'm not winning.
[00:04:25] Katie McKenna: Yes.
[00:04:25] Ben Haas: If I don't feel like I'm winning, I'm losing. So in the, in the world then of not tips and tricks, but tools and resources.
[00:04:32] Katie McKenna: Yeah.
[00:04:33] Ben Haas: How do we flip that mindset then? Do we need to create space and time for that? Are there exercises that you suggest. What have you seen work or what has worked for yourself?
[00:04:43] Katie McKenna: Absolutely. What I will say is, after I had my daughter, I had deep, postpartum anxiety and depression.
I couldn't really name it. I'm a very positive person. I've been through a lot in my life. I finally had this baby that I was desperate to have. And I thought I would just be so, so happy. And I was a dumpster fire, like, slow motion nightmare. And I could not figure out, why? I'm a life coach, like, this is my whole job. My job is to help people through these kinds of things and I was a version of myself that I barely recognized. And I've been like, okay, my goals were really big of being like, I'm gonna, you know, lose all the baby weight and I'm going to get back into working and I'm going to read all these books.
I actually thought during my maternity leave, I was going to write a second book. I mean, how cute is that? So I had to kind of undo all of these big goals, right? In that way, if we're talking about like surviving versus potentially thriving. What I did is I did a bunch of research.
I was like, okay, if I'm a coach, let me coach myself. If I were my own client, what would I do? And I started to treat myself like a client. And I was like, okay, what are the things that this client might need? Clearly they need to figure out a way to be kinder to themselves because this is really hard.
They do need to move themselves forward. And they also need to start celebrating the wins that do happen because If we don't celebrate those wins, then it's incredibly demotivating. We just keep telling ourselves that like we were not enough. So I came up with this tool that I call 351, which is every morning I would sit down, give myself 20 minutes, before my, hopefully my daughter wouldn't wake up, and it was three things that I was grateful for, five Yay Me's,. and then one thing that I was processing or a challenge that I was coming up against that I wanted to overcome. The research that I found was that the gratitude allowed for me to be more present in my day to day versus thinking about, Oh my God, Katie, you're not doing enough.
Why aren't you exercising? You have this whole day to yourself. And instead I was just grateful for the time to be at home or the ability to do less or whatever it might be. And the five, yay me, is so being affirming about even the smallest things that I did allowed for me to create these building blocks.
So it'd be like, I took a shower today. Yay me, exclamation point. I had to write it down. It felt ridiculous, but it allowed for me to review and say, I've actually done a lot because we so quickly gloss over these small things and act like they're nothing. When in actuality, all of those little puzzle pieces are what build a life.
And then the one thing that I was trying to process, that was like, usually the challenges that I was coming up against. So it was like my opportunity to sort of coach myself. So studies have shown that if you write about a problem for a period of time, this study was shown between two different sets of engineers.
One set of engineers had lost their job and they didn't write every day for a month. And then another set did write every day about what the challenge was, what they were doing in order to overcome this challenge. And the people who wrote every day, the engineers, we're 75 percent more likely to find a job.
So it's just the idea of kind of starting to trust your internal stuff. I think that that's a great place to start, especially if we're thinking about goals.
[00:07:57] Ben Haas: Yeah.
[00:07:57] Katie McKenna: Maybe it's also divining what your goal is really. The best way to know about what you want in your future is to be really cognizant of your present.
What are the things that you're grateful for? What are the things that you're proud of? What do you want more of? And then be like, okay, let's work towards that. Maybe that takes until the second quarter, but like you get there, you know.
[00:08:17] Ben Haas: So much good stuff in there to unpack. Writing it down is so important and you creating the space to do that and the space what I heard you say was I took 15 20 minutes before my daughter got up. I think it's so easy to overestimate the importance of this like one big moment or this big chunk of time.
But then you really underestimate the value of just making those, those small moves forward or those small improvements on a daily basis. So, I mean, I've heard that too, journaling, when we think about goal setting, when we think about drafting financial plans, that's the whole point, get it written down so that you have something to reflect on, but you got to break it down into micro actions.
So I'm really happy to hear you share that same mindset of writing it down is not only therapeutic, but it does offer the opportunity to then reflect back on it. Right? We have to be able to look backwards before we look forward.
[00:09:10] Katie McKenna: And I love you circling it back to the financial plan because I think that that is really, really important.
You can't be what you don't see, right? You can't, if you cannot envision what you are doing currently or what it is that you like, I think sometimes, like, when things feel particularly heavy, something that I've noticed with my clients a lot lately is how hard it is for us to get in touch with even what makes us happy?
What gives us joy? And, seeing the things that we're grateful for, the things that, that we feel proud of, what we're processing, or even to see the growth that we've had of the, of the challenges that we're having, what we're writing about. That is a great way to reflect and be like, I am not where I was three months ago, two weeks ago, whatever it is. Our memories are short on purpose so that we can continue to forget some of the bad things or hold on to it, or like we forget the good things because of our lizard brains, like all of it makes sense, but I really, I do agree with you that it is the small steps that really get us to where we need to be.
I think that is the greatest thing that is intimidating about New Year's resolutions, especially goal setting, or anything like that is that the majority of goals of new year's resolutions are released by, I think it's February 7th. But if we try small stuff where we can see actual progress of just being like I'm going to try to reflect.
I'm going to reflect like a little bit more.
[00:10:36] Ben Haas: Yeah. I've heard you speak in different places about that fresh start effect. So I want to maybe tie these two things together when we think about a long term goal or, you know, wanting to improve on something, but we need to kind of bring that down into micro actions and be kind to ourselves.
Walk us through this whole mindset of, hey, even if it's not going well and I need to be kind to myself, how does that mindset of a fresh start effect really come into play? And what would you encourage there?
[00:11:06] Katie McKenna: I think that so much of the pressure that we put on ourselves is not in line with reality.
It's this idea of you being able to suddenly become a different person who suddenly like doesn't want to have a glass of wine after your kids go to bed or is exercising every day is just it's unrealistic. I didn't look at my daughter when she was learning how to walk and was like, just run, just do it.
If we think of that, like with our children and then we start to reflect on it for ourselves, it becomes a very different animal. My sister actually, this morning, she and I are doing Whole 30, I call 7/8 30. Cause I'm like, there's no way that I'll be able to do the whole thing.
But she's like my, you know, my diet went sideways this weekend and I was like, Monday is a great day to start again.
[00:11:54] Ben Haas: Yeah.
[00:11:54] Katie McKenna: There is, even a half a step, if you decided that you were going to eat one more vegetable during the day, that's that's a win.
That's better than it was before. And trying to cut yourself slack, and also just to like really delight in that stuff, allows for you to be motivated because the truth of the matter is is that the studies have shown that like corporal punishment, you know, if, if parents or, or, or like even teachers, if they scream at kids or, or hit
them, maybe they'll have a minute, like a day or two of them falling in line, but because they're afraid.
But if you approach it with gentleness of being like, that was really hard. You're trying your best and I know you're going to try again tomorrow and we're just going to cut ourselves in slack and be like, it's being a person's really hard right now.
[00:12:45] Ben Haas: Yeah.
[00:12:46] Katie McKenna: You have a higher likelihood of being successful because there's kindness and generosity involved versus being like saying the mean things that I know that I say to myself that are really, I would never say to another person.
[00:12:56] Ben Haas: Yeah. And in that story, there should be no surprise in messing up and there's certainly no shame in it. I know how I am. Like you wake up the next morning, I eat that whole bag of potato chips. Of course I did. They're delicious.
[00:13:09] Katie McKenna: They're so good. They're that way on purpose. They're so delicious.
[00:13:15] Ben Haas: But then the reflection now, this is like a personal coaching session. Cause I heard you talking to me in that story with your sister, it's just to figure out how to avoid putting myself in that situation again. Right? So if, if you almost normalize the mess up, and make sure there's no shame in it, then we can release that to be able to go, okay, hit the reset button. Today's a new day. This week's a new week, fresh start. I like that mindset, because it does allow you to then say, I just need another at bat. I need my next at bat to see if I can do a little bit better the next time.
I think you're the one that introduced me to this productivity planner I use, but I like to not think about the day, the year being 365 opportunities to either win or lose. When we zoom out from that, I've got things I want to get done this week, then it does allow me to be a little kinder to myself on that day that wasn't as productive because the kid's sick.
I didn't get a good night's sleep. You know, somebody needed something else from me that day. That zooming out too, I've, I've heard you talk about that does, I hope, present opportunities to circle and celebrate more little wins.
[00:14:24] Katie McKenna: Yeah.
[00:14:24] Ben Haas: Not being so hard on ourselves if things don't go exactly like we wanted them to go.
[00:14:29] Katie McKenna: Absolutely. I really appreciate that. I think that the idea of win or lose is just tomfoolery. Because we are, hopefully we live long lives and we're playing the long game. You know, there are times when I'm not as productive, but is productivity my barometer or is it being present in different ways?
Like, trying to understand what you value is also a really lovely thing. Maybe instead of having goals of being like, I'd like to get clear on what I value. What is it that really matters to me? Something that's interesting that another tool that I use is called, The Ideal Day Mad Lib, which is this really cool thing.
It's from the author, Jenny Blake. She wrote a book called pivot and she has this great online tool and I've used it. And I, I've done some shifts and changes and I have, it as a tool and resource in my, in my little, arsenal. But what it allows for you to do instead of trying to be like, what's your dream?
What do you want to be? You know, I think that's really hard. Is it the same thing with asking what are your goals? I think that that's a tough thing when it's January. You've just like tried your best to get through Christmas. Being a person is generally hard. There's not a lot of sun. You're like, I don't know, man, get off my back.
Like, it asks you to put in words or actions or feelings, or adjectives to more deeply understand. When you're asked to like, just think a little bit creatively versus like whole wide world creatively, it gives you a better sense of what you value. It gives you a better sense of what might be missing in your day to day, and lets you make goals built around that.
One of the things was like at night I unwind by doing X, Y, Z thing and I filled it out actually recently, and I was like with a cup of tea, and the fire on, and I'm reading a book. And I was like, girlfriend. You have an electric kettle. You have got a fireplace. You have also got so many books. Why is this in your dream scenario?
This could be right now. It helped me to be like, what I'm doing is not working for me. Watching television is not working for me.
Maybe that means that my phone and I need to reduce our relationship, you know, like.
[00:16:39] Ben Haas: All of us.
[00:16:40] Katie McKenna: That's one thing I could do less, you know, it was just an interesting, I thought it was kind of helpful to see in that way, even for myself.
, I'll send you the link. And if you want to share it with your listeners, I'd be delighted. And also send along the three, five, one, two. So you can have it for your listeners as well. The ideal day Madlib probably takes about 20 minutes. What I would recommend is doing like one regular ideal day, Madlib, like just like whatever it is that you would love to be happening in the next week.
And then like one big, audacious, huge dream of what you could like for your life to look like. And especially if we're trying to goal set and it feels hard, those will give you a little bit of an idea about how to kind of potentially even, like manifest a little bit more, you know?
[00:17:22] Ben Haas: Yeah, I love it. And it's, it's interesting that you give the example of, you know, just reading by the fire cup of tea. We've had a lot of conversations recently with clients that I think have gotten themselves into a spot where they are financially secure. But how they have that money serve them, right? If money is just a tool to live the life you want to live, how that serves them is a, almost a difficult thing to figure out.
So I'm wondering if, just a resource that comes back to what are the things that do give me joy in my life. And I'll go back to this idea. Sometimes we think that has to be something huge that I'll have to spend money on this huge trip, or I need this next toy or whatever that may be for somebody.
Sometimes it is just the very little things that if money wasn't an object, how would you bring more positive emotion, energy, meaning purpose into your life? So I love being able to share those little tools and resources.
[00:18:20] Katie McKenna: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:18:21] Ben Haas: It does sound to me like the through line in everything you've talked about is giving yourself that space and time to truly reflect.
[00:18:30] Katie McKenna: Because there's, that's the thing that I think we miss out on a lot. And I know I'm naming a lot of other people, but I'm just so inspired by so many other people. Like, Mel Robbins has a wonderful podcast called the Mel Robbins podcast. And she had a great recommendation, which
was before you make a resolution, she offers up these seven reflection questions.
And it was like, what were your highlights of the year? What were the low parts of your year? What do you want to be doing more of? What was a sticking point for you? What was frustrating? Kind of like, what do you want to do less of? And just kind of like, and from there and like a couple of other questions, it was like, stop, start, continue.
What do you want to stop doing? What do you want to start doing? What do you want to continue doing? And then from there, looking at the answers to these reflection questions and then really thinking about what is it that you want from this year? What do you think would be great for you?
And then asking what is one step you can take today to get you closer to that goal? Which I think is just like the loveliest is taking action immediately. And if that is just like putting a clementine in your dome instead of a donut, that is one step, you know?
[00:19:41] Ben Haas: Yeah. Momentum builds.
[00:19:43] Katie McKenna: Absolutely. And acknowledging them.
[00:19:45] Ben Haas: Katie, I appreciate our time together. Each and every time we have these conversations and, it was a little bit selfish of me to say, hey, would you donate some of your time to my listening audience?
[00:19:56] Katie McKenna: It is not a donation, sir. It is an investment. I'm investing in you.
[00:20:01] Ben Haas: This has been wonderful. I know that we could probably go on for hours here. And I would love to share you with everyone for much more time, but you've been generous already. Here's what I heard.
Reflecting is so important, jotting things down and making space and time. And what I heard, you know, as feeling like a busy person. So for everybody out there that feels that they're in that space too, this is start somewhere 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes a day, find a tool or an exercise that works for you.
Maybe it's journaling. Maybe it's taking a walk. Maybe you can find those habits that allow you to check multiple back boxes at the same time, right? Health and wellness. It's important to be kind to yourself. Yeah, you know these resolutions, these goals, they don't need to be big and
Every day is a new day to hit the reset button and just try again.
[00:20:48] Katie McKenna: Absolutely, and be as generous to yourself as you are to people around you. If you're willing to cut other people slack. You know that somebody else is having a hard day and you're willing to be generous to them. That is a great New Year's resolution is to be as kind to yourself as you are to other people.
I think that that is something that all of us can do more of.
[00:21:09] Ben Haas: Great. And I, I promise I'll share some of the resources that you shared in the podcast here, you know, in the show notes and if anybody wants to connect with you, they certainly can find you.
[00:21:21] Katie McKenna: They can find me on at www. katiecmckenna.com and Instagram katiecmckenna and I'm on LinkedIn and I would love to meet you and to have us connected.
I think that'd be wonderful.
[00:21:33] Ben Haas: Wonderful thing. Thank you so much for your help again today. You're the best. Thank you.
Hey everyone, Adam and I really appreciate you tuning in. Please note that the opinions we voiced in the show are for general information only, and are not intended to provide specific recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be most appropriate for you, consult with your attorney, your accountant, and financial advisor, or tax advisor prior to making any decisions or investing. Thanks for listening
Investment Advice offered through Great Valley Advisor Group, a Registered Investment Advisor. Great Valley Advisor Group and Haas Financial Group are separate entities. This is not intended to be used as tax or legal advice. Please consult a tax or legal professional for specific information and advice.
Ticket #008557
Investment Advice offered through Great Valley Advisor Group, a Registered Investment Advisor. Great Valley Advisor Group and Haas Financial Group are separate entities. This is not intended to be used as tax or legal advice. Please consult a tax or legal professional for specific information and advice.