E187: June 2022 Alignment Report

We are officially wrapping up another month, and there are some business rituals and routines I practice around month end, or first of the month; around this time essentially…

Welcome back to the Women’s Empowerment Podcast, I am your host and Healthy Habit Mentor Valerie LaVigne – It is SO GREAT to have you here today!

We are officially wrapping up another month, and there are some business rituals and routines I practice around month end, or first of the month; around this time essentially.

[00:49] Something I do at the beginning of every month is what I call an Accountability Meeting. You can get a behind the scenes look at this in episode 132.

Okay, back to the Accountability Meeting. This is a meeting I have with myself where I go through the previous month and track certain things in my business. I also use this time to set goals for the upcoming month. I’ve been doing this for YEARS and the ritual has evolved a little over time, which is great because my business has also evolved over the years.

I’ve recently started changing a few things in my accountability meeting, and I’ve adapted these new changes from a dear friend of mine, Chantelle. Chantelle is an Educator for Entrepreneurs and has a podcast called Aligned Action – I’ll link to her website + podcast.

Chantelle has not only been a great business bestie of mine, but we’ve also worked together on several projects including my website and branding, my pilates studio’s website, and hosting each other on the podcasts.

I enjoy her well-thought-out podcast episodes, and usually listen to them while I’m out for a “Hot Girl Walk” – which side note can we change this trend to “Healthy Girl” putting it out there!!

Anyway, on Chantelle’s podcast she has a series you could call it, which is a monthly Alignment Report. It’s super similar to my monthly accountability meeting and I’ve recently adapted her alignment report as part of my monthly meeting.

Chantelle goes over:

What felt in alignment?

What didn’t feel in alignment?

And meaningful actions she took that month.

My adaptation is:

What felt good + how can I experience more of this?

What didn’t feel good + how can I improve or adjust this moving forward?

What actions did I take to stretch myself out of my comfort zone + any specific meaningful actions?

Okay so it’s super similar LOL but I do have some other parts of my meeting that are different from these questions.

I really do enjoy this Alignment Report, so as a way of shamelessly promoting my friend (who isn’t an official sponsor btw), and also taking you behind the scenes into my business and life, I am sharing my June Alignment Report with you!

Here we go!

[03:38] THE GOOD

Let’s start with the good:

I started the month with a really cool Funnels workshop and it wasn’t what I expected at all. It wasn’t your usual webinar with a step-by-step formula, but instead a model that allowed for customization and intimacy with your customers for a more organic customer experience. I’m really excited to implement more of this into my own business – coming soon.

At the beginning of the month I also blocked off an entire day just for “ME!” I got my hair done, my nails done, and made reservations at a local Mexican restaurant with THE BEST SPICY MARGARITAS in town! I really enjoyed this day and it felt very in alignment and also gave me such great energy and high vibes for the month.

This was my first month on TikTok – follow me @vallavignelife – and I intended to post once a day, which was going great for like 9 days and then… woomp/woomp I’ll talk more about that later. HOWEVER in alignment was that I threw myself out there and had fun and the feedback has been awesome! Reworking my strategy for this for sure!

One of the new members of the Healthy Habit Membership and I had a 1:1 call this month and it was a follow up call from the month before. She’s been implementing a new evening routine to help her have more meaningful and supportive mornings. I really want to share something that has been working really well for her with this new routine is actually that she has TWO different evening and morning routines because she works two very different jobs.

We kept it very simple with evening routine A and evening routine B, for job A and job B. With an easy-to follow outline or checklist of things she chose to include in each of the routines. It might sound like a lot for starting a new habit, but she was already incorporating these things into her routines, what she lacked was consistency.

To help her she printed off one of my basic trackers and wrote out the two different evening and morning routines on the back and made any notes inside the tracker on the front. We did this together. I know it’s simple, but sometimes these super simple actions don’t get done BECAUSE they’re so easy and we think we’re going to get to them later.

A month after our call, she had gotten into a great flow of morning routines, and we made some tweaks to the evening routine. From implementing this evening routine, we actually discovered that it would be more helpful if we made this her “PM” routine and she did the tasks right after work for a smoother transition into a more relaxing evening. So far it’s going really well for her!

I blocked out more time than usual for social events and dates with friends this month which felt really amazing. I was able to say YES to invitations like being a part of my friend Tasha’s photoshoot for her new meditation studio!

I also won a Fascia Stretch Therapy session at my gym and it was so wonderful and I definitely need more of this in my life.

The last thing that felt really great for me, and in alignment was getting back into sending out a weekly email, but this time doing it SOOOOO differently. Before I was batching the emails and they were boring and about each podcast episode – but like teasers of them. Anyways BLAH that’s boring hahaha

So now they’re fun and I write them within 72 hours of sending it so it’s more real-time, real-emotions sort of deal. I also have a new section to the email called “Keepin’ it Fresh!” This will be a little different each week with links to funny videos, cool finds, or items to shop. I’ve been collecting links and adding them to my notes app so I have a relevant library when I sit down to write the email.

All of these things were “HELL YES!” for me this month and I’m super grateful for them.

[10:30] THE BAD

Now… the not so great or aligned parts of my business and life.

This month was a real kick in the ass when it came to creativity. Oh My LANTA! I really struggled with producing content or cool ideas – nothing really excited me and I just really didn’t like that feeling. It took me some time, but I realized that I wasn’t actually “doing nothing,” but rather in a phase of YIN + receptivity. When I came to this realization and fully allowed myself to surrender it was like a veil had been lifted and I was able to connect a bit deeper to my creativity. But I REALLY had to let go – which was super challenging for me because I have a lot of type-A tendencies. If you haven’t already listened to last week’s episode called Flow Over Force, I talked a lot about this and how to shift into more of a flow state, even when you aren’t feeling so motivated to take action.

This month on TikTok was really the beginning of an experiment, and if I’m being 100 percent honest I had no idea what I was doing and I was super scared because I heard a lot about bullies on TikTok LOL

So far I haven’t had any interactions with trolls, but I still don’t really know what I’m doing. I think the reason why this feels out of alignment is because:

The app isn’t about aesthetics – and if you’ve been on my instagram you know I’m about this and it’s one of the things I love about instagram (@vallavignelife)
I haven’t been feeling that creative zhuzh + desire to take action so it’s really a combination of these things

In terms of changing things up and making improvements though: I’ve been doing a lot of “research” to see what the eff is going on over on the app and how I feel most comfortable showing up – I have some ideas and have been feeling more excited about them and about acting on them.

This month my boyfriend Craig and I were supposed to go camping. We took time off work, bought some new camping gear, packed for a two night adventure with lots of backcountry hiking, and we started driving to our destination. About half way through the drive (1.5 hours on the road) we checked the weather since it was touch and go thunderstorms and saw that it was going to start raining the moment we arrived and not really stop until we were scheduled to drive back home.

UUGGGH. Camping is already a challenge for us, but camping in the rain is pretty miserable. As much as it sucked to turn around and drive back home, we made the 3 days off worthwhile with some local hikes, sleeping in (in our comfy/warm/dry bed), and spending quality time together. The reason why I’m putting this in my not-aligned category is because I was secretly manifesting not doing it because I am not in as great of shape as I was last year when we did this hike - or the couple years before that when I also did a lot of intense hiking with a heavy pack.

What’s even more tough for me to admit is that this wasn’t the last time this month that I was feeling anxious about something and was crossing my fingers that the rain would postpone and truth be told… this is NOT like me. Yes I get nervous, but I do NOT back out of things.

I am realizing that my lack of creativity and motivation has been trickling into other areas of my life and not in a positive way. It wasn’t until I really ALLOWED myself to be open and to receive and recognize that I was in a YIN state that I felt “safe” and “okay.” I was mostly experiencing guilt and shame.

The other event was a huge outdoor pilates class that I taught last year. Yes, last year I had butterflies in my tummy and there were 120 people there last year – but this year… This year I was super nervous and secretly not wanting to teach. It’s difficult for me to explain why, because I’m not really sure why – other than what I mentioned before and the lack of motivation.

HOWEVER I did teach the class, and it was really incredible, which actually leads me into the final section of this alignment report:

[21:20] THE MEANINGFUL

The meaningful actions out of my comfort zone.

Posting videos on TIkTok despite my untrue fears of online bullies
Teaching an outdoor pilates class to around 80 people and feeling totally in my zone of genius while doing it + it reminded me how much I love pilates + love sharing it with people
Visiting a new pilates studio out of town to try out a new teacher and space. I think this makes me a better teacher and studio owner
Connecting to my gut-response. I’ve been asking myself “yes or no questions” and tapping into the gut instinct to make decisions. I’ve been using this strategy in as many areas of my business and life as possible – and it actually led me to creating this particular podcast episode, among other aligned opportunities!
I started working with my business coach and our second call is later today but so far it’s been amazing and I’m excited to see what will transpire!
Letting go of the need to take action and totally being in my feminine/receptive/yin phase and consciously allowing invitations and opportunities into my life!

Well I hope you liked this new podcast episode and I guess it was also a bit of a behind the scenes into my business and life. Let me know what you thought of this episode by screenshotting the show + tagging me on instagram @vallavignelife or you can simply DM me there – a few more of the listeners have been connecting with me and I have to say I really LOVE IT!

If you aren’t yet on my email list and you want to be, you can download the Habit Tracker and/or Dream Life Roadmap some of my freebies that also get you access to my weekly email full of bonus goodies!

Share with me what felt good, bad, and meaningful for you this month, I’d love to hear it! Meet you here next week!

Podcast Host

Valerie LaVigne

Valerie is the creator and founder of Valerie LaVigne Life and the Women's Empowerment Show. She helps busy and empowered women create healthy habits so that they can become the best version of themselves and transform their lives. Learn more about Valerie here!