Whew! 2023 was a doozy and not without some major mountain top AND valley moments. Join me as I break down my biggest wins (and lessons) of the past year.
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Did you enjoy listening to this episode? Please drop a comment below or leave a review to let us know. This can help other folks learn about this podcast and we also really appreciate the feedback!
Podcast Episode Resources and Links Mentioned
Learn more about the Old-Fashioned on Purpose planner here: www.prairieplanner.com
Read more about my Annual Homestead Planning Strategy here: https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2024/01/my-annual-homestead-planning-strategy.html
Order my NEW book Old-Fashioned on Purpose now and get exclusive bonuses! http://oldfashionedbook.com/
Have a message you want to share with the world? Apply to be a guest on the Old-Fashioned on Purpose podcast here: https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/podcast-guest-application
Weekly musings from my homestead: http://theprairiehomestead.com/letter
My essays on an old-fashioned life: www.prairiephilosophy.com
My homesteading tutorials & recipes: www.theprairiehomestead.com
Our Wyoming-raised, grass-finished beef: http://genuinebeefco.com
Jill on Twitter: http://twitter.com/homesteader
Jill on Instagram: @jill.winger
Jill on Facebook: http://facebook.com/theprairiehomestead
Whew! 2023 was a doozy and not without some major mountain top AND valley moments. Join me as I break down my biggest wins (and lessons) of the past year.
Podcast Episode Highlights
Podcast Feedback
Did you enjoy listening to this episode? Please drop a comment below or leave a review to let us know. This can help other folks learn about this podcast and we also really appreciate the feedback!
Podcast Episode Resources and Links Mentioned
Learn more about the Old-Fashioned on Purpose planner here: www.prairieplanner.com
Read more about my Annual Homestead Planning Strategy here: https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2024/01/my-annual-homestead-planning-strategy.html
Order my NEW book Old-Fashioned on Purpose now and get exclusive bonuses! http://oldfashionedbook.com/
Have a message you want to share with the world? Apply to be a guest on the Old-Fashioned on Purpose podcast here: https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/podcast-guest-application
Weekly musings from my homestead: http://theprairiehomestead.com/letter
My essays on an old-fashioned life: www.prairiephilosophy.com
My homesteading tutorials & recipes: www.theprairiehomestead.com
Our Wyoming-raised, grass-finished beef: http://genuinebeefco.com
Jill on Twitter: http://twitter.com/homesteader
Jill on Instagram: @jill.winger
Jill on Facebook: http://facebook.com/theprairiehomestead
Hey friends, welcome to Old Fashioned On Purpose, the show where we explore what we have left behind as a culture as we have raced towards progress. But not only that, we talk about how we can get all of the good pieces back into our modern lives. So I'm your host, Jill Winger. I am an author and a creator, and I have been homesteading out on the wide open Wyoming prairie with my family for about 15 years now. I love teaching people old fashioned skills, helping them to wrestle with big ideas and doing deep dives into, let's just face it, pretty nerdy topics. So that's the show. I'm excited to have you here. It's a new year. It's a new season. And I'm ready for 2024. I have spent the last week or two planning and dreaming and looking at what worked and what didn't in this past year. There's something about this time of year between Christmas and New Year's, especially for that first part of January. I'm always just like extremely motivated to plan and dream, and I just love it. It's one of my favorite times of the whole year. So I've been spending a lot of time thinking, and I thought it may be helpful for you. If I distill down some of my big, let's face it, wins and losses or wins and lessons of 2023. 2023 was a good year for us. We had some big wins, we had some awesome projects happen or be completed. There was also some really big lessons that I know will impact me as an entrepreneur, a business owner, and just a human. So, this is partially a selfish episode. I want to kind of break through these things and process them so I really can get them to stick in my brain. But also I think it may be helpful for you. I always find it interesting to hear other people's breakdowns of, you know, what has happened in their life and what they learned. And so maybe you'll find this helpful as well. So I recently sent out an email with kind of how I plan for the year. I talked about how I use the old fashioned on purpose planner, which are still available, by the way, if you want to use the planner that I have created and use every single day. You can go to prairieplanner. com to order. So I sent out that email to my newsletter list and we're going to put it on the blog as well that talks about how I actually plan. But today is really just strictly some of my big lessons of the past year. So as I was breaking these down and trying to decide if I should share this or not, like I felt a little bit frustrated because normally my life is pretty much an open book on my platforms. That's how I like it. I feel like when I can be real and vulnerable, that's how I enjoy creating content the most. That's what y'all seem to resonate with the most. And so I, I usually just like to lay it all out the, this year and these lessons are a little bit different because there are things I cannot say. As I try to keep it professional. And so I was feeling like maybe I couldn't talk about these things or I shouldn't talk about them. And so you're going to see today where I am taking things on a little higher level versus talking about a lot of specifics. I would love to talk about the specifics, but I don't think it would be the most tactful things. Or the most professional thing I could do. so If you hear me being a little more. that's on purpose. If you want to ask me about these, if I ever see you in person at a conference or an event, and you want to ask me about these specifics, I'd love to talk about them on a one to one basis. It's just not something I feel like I should blast to the world because sometimes I forget how many people listened to this podcast. I was looking at our stats for the last year. We had 2. 2 million downloads just in 2023 alone over seven and a half million all time. So there's a lot of people that listen, even though sometimes it feels like I'm just talking to myself here in my little studio. I just want to be tactful. So that's why things are maybe a little more. So, first lesson, let's just dive right in. This was my biggest and hardest lesson of the year. This is the one that I will definitely be carrying forward, and I feel like, you know you know, we frame things as failure sometimes, or we have such a aversion to failure in our culture. And I don't feel like any of these things on my list were failures. They were just lessons that will help me become more powerful and more educated in future dealings. So my first lesson, my biggest lesson of the year was be extremely careful. About who you partner with on big projects, right? This was a tough one this year. Again, I can't say a lot. But that was the one I have wrestled with the most, and I have had the most sleepless nights over. It really matters. If you are doing business especially, even if you're just doing local projects, you're doing homestead projects, and there's a lot at stake, be very cautious about who you are pairing up with. Even if the people around you Say it doesn't really matter. Even if they say, Oh, this is not a big deal. It's okay. Ignore this. Ignore that. It really does matter. And I've learned. through the past year or so. That there are small alignments that matter more than you think. Alignments in how you both think about things. Alignments in how you move through life. Alignments in your perspective of the world. It can end up impacting the final result a lot more than you may realize. So when you're looking to partner with someone on a large project, look at their track record. Look at What they specialize in, you know, don't assume that just because they have maybe one track record in one category that they'll just magically be different with you, right? It does matter. I also think it really matters on what someone's specialty is, right? You might like things about them, but if their specialty isn't really in line with the project you're wanting to create together, you might take that into consideration and see if that still will align with your goals because it does matter. So again, I know I'm being vague. But this was a tough one for me this year. And I don't think it all is lost. I think that it is something that'll be really important for me to carry forward. But partnering it can be extremely powerful and it can be an amazing way to create leverage in your life and in your businesses, but you got to make sure you're partnering the right. And kind of the second lesson that goes along with that in a very big way. This isn't a new concept, but I am consistently and constantly being reminded of this in my own life. And the reason that I had that first lesson that ended up being a struggle for me this past year was because I didn't listen to my gut when I was making that choice. Thanks. My gut was telling me something, I felt it very clearly, and what I did instead is I went to a bunch of advisors, or people in my circles, and I asked for their advice. That's not a bad thing to do, and those people were definitely not trying to lead me astray, but their perspective, and their relationship to that situation was different, and so I listened to their advice instead of listening to my gut, and I truly believe that is How I got into that sticky situation. So again, all is not lost. This, this wasn't a failure in my life per se, but it was a lesson that I'm absolutely going to be paying. And I think that the listening to your gut and listening to your intuition can be such a tough thing for many of us for a couple of reasons. I think part of it is that sometimes our modern life doles that intuition, right? I think in Generations past, millennia's past, we had to lean on that more just to survive. That was a part of being a human or human biology that we really needed to make sure we weren't going to be eaten by wild animals or we could hear things out in the woods if we're walking, you know, things like that. That was more of a primal gut feeling that we were very much in tune to. We don't really need all of those pieces anymore in our modern, comfortable, convenient society, as much, right? Not as much. So there's that. We kind of let our intuition become dull, or rather, it's not dull, but we just dull its taps on our shoulder, we don't listen to it as much. That's part of it. I think another big piece of it, and you may relate to this or you may not, But for me, I have so struggled to listen to my gut and listen to my intuition due to the religious conditioning I had as a kid. And I've talked about this on and off on the podcast. I don't talk about it a lot. But I think some of you may be in the same situation. But I was raised that our intuition was always wrong. I was actively taught that. And they use different Bible verses to back that up. One of the big ones I can still remember is Jeremiah 17, 9. Your heart is deceitful, deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it. Right? So that verse was used to say, Hey, whatever your gut feeling tells you, whatever your brain tells you, it's wrong always, always. So never trust it. And so what you would do instead is they would recommend that you always look to an authority figure, someone around you. And so what I got really good at doing. is squashing what my body and what my intuition would tell me and I would instead go to the people around me and ask for their advice. Now, that's not always a bad thing. It's great to have wise counsel. It's great to have mentors. I have lots of amazing mentors in my life. But, you can't let that supersede what your gut is telling you. And what happens in those structures and organizations that focus on that sort of teaching is you end up with a whole lot of people who end up kind of acting inadvertently. Like sheep, right? They just sit around and wait for an authority figure to tell them what to do. They can't make decisions. They can't move decisively through their life. And that was me for a very long time. And now I don't believe those Bible verses are talking about distrusting you or God. I think those were taken very much out of context during that period of my life. So I have learned that You know, God, if you want to, if you're a spiritual person, God gave us these intuitive urges. That's a huge part of us, and it's important that we listen to that. So I've had to learn how to trust that, even though it's felt scary over the years. But when I listened to it, it's never led me astray. And it's such a powerful tool in every aspect of my life, but also especially in business. And so this year was a wonderful reminder that, hey, don't forget. That's your, your biggest tool. That's your most important decision, decision maker is to listen to your gut. And I'm really grateful now that I have mentors in my life that honor that, right? So I really appreciate my current business coach. He's someone I go to for advice. He helps me plan and scheme and often when he's advising me, he'll be, he'll tell me something, he'll give me his opinion and he'll be like, okay, stop, what, what does your gut say? What are, what is your intuition telling you right now? And I think that's really important that he honors that. And I really appreciate that. So anyway, that was lesson number two. Painful, but important. Listen to your gut. Do not discount it. All right, lesson number three. I've talked about this a little bit before. If you listen to my husband's podcast, Christian's podcast, called Stop Hiding, he talks about this a lot. Lesson number three, no one is coming to save you. You've got to have your own So, I think this happens to us a lot, even though I'm really aware of this concept, I still find myself kind of subconsciously falling into it and feeling like I'm stuck because I'm waiting on someone else to take action, waiting on someone else to show up and fix it. It's not like I'm literally sitting there going, Oh man, I hope someone comes and saves the day. But I find myself, excuse me, pausing action or delaying action. And when I get clear on why I'm pausing, it's because I'm usually waiting for someone else to come up with the solution. And that basically never happens. And if you want to create big momentum in your life or your business or your homestead, you're going to have to stop waiting for someone else to solve it for you and you're going to have to solve it yourself. So here's a, here's an example. It doesn't relate to this year, but I think this is a really good example. So. But several years ago we had a couple different TV networks or production companies courting us to do a show. They would, we did sizzle reels and we had lots of phone calls and it was exciting, right? And so I got really excited over the possibilities of having a show on a network and all the excitement that would come with that. And what I found myself doing a couple weeks or a couple months into that process, because it's just a slow process to get answers from networks and answers from production companies, just like the TV network industry is just like crazy. So I found myself pausing. I didn't realize I was doing it first, but I was kind of had this little thing in the back of my mind. I'm like, well, I'm not really sure where I want to take my business next, but it'll probably be okay because we'll get the show. And then. That'll solve that problem for me, that'll, that'll help us get more eyeballs and help us with marketing and then I won't have to worry about solving my own problems and figuring out where to take things. And that was a mistake, right? And those shows didn't happen. Surprise, surprise, a lot of times that doesn't happen when you, you have networks to calling. Very rarely do those things actually go through, I know that now. But waiting for them to solve my problems or save me, I'm using air quotes there. Was stopping progress in my business. And so when I finally realized what I was doing, I was like, wow, they'll stop it. Like, they're not going to save you. This is on you. You get to figure out this problem. You get to solve this problem. Then the idea started flowing. I started creating more forward momentum. And honestly, it feels better when you're taking charge, when you're taking action, sitting around and being the passive person. Hoping that, you know, the universe smiles on you and throws some opportunity your way. Like, that's not how it works. You got to get out there and create what you want. So anyway, that's a lesson from a couple years ago, but that was a powerful one. And I still catch myself doing that in little ways in my life every so often, right? And I have to remind myself, nope, that's not how this works. You gotta jump in and take charge. So if you're fine, if you find yourself waiting for someone to give you permission, someone to open a door for you, someone to give you an opportunity and you say, Oh, I can't do that because I'm waiting for this. Maybe see if you can reframe that and figure out a way to take charge, take ownership, and put that back on yourself. Responsibility can be scary, right? Taking charge can be scary, but that's where meaning and opportunity really lies. So, that was lesson number three. Lesson number four. This was kind of a fun lesson. This was a, this was a good lesson of the year. If you want to advance in an area of your life, usually the best way to do that is to jump off. The deep end. So, I learned this lesson this year with horses, actually. This is one of the most enjoyable parts of my year. Was the strides I made in understanding some bits of horsemanship that I had really been struggling with. So this lesson came this spring and summer. So I had been working with my six year old gelding. Him and I have had a rocky relationship. I love him to death, but I. inadvertently had done some things early in his training that was making him pretty insecure, off balance. And as a result, he would just act a little psychotic sometimes. He didn't feel safe. It was hard to write him outside. We just weren't getting along very well. And so I'd been working on that for a while and we started to make some progress. This spring, I finally started to be able to ride him outside and work cows and do those things. But I was really hesitant to kind of push him out of his comfort zone and push myself out of my comfort zone because I just didn't know what was going to happen. And so I was taking these teeny little incremental baby steps, which are sometimes exactly what you need to take. Right? Baby steps are awesome. Don't discount the baby steps. But I think I was, I was undercutting what I was capable of and what he was capable of. So it all kind of came to a head. This summer when we hosted our annual horsemanship clinic and I got to be put in some situations and he got to be in some situations that were way further ahead of where my baby steps were at that current time, right? There was a lot of stimulus. There was a lot of things happening. And initially I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is over that we're, we're, this is over my head. But then as we, you know, toughed it out in those situations, I realized that's exactly what he needed and he was capable of more than I thought. And I was capable of more than I thought. And so in that seven day horsemanship clinic. We, I feel like we made a huge monumental leap in our relationship and in our confidence together. Just because if I had been doing it on my own and I hadn't had someone to push me off the ledge, I mean, I probably would have got there maybe, but it would have taken a long time. So I think that just underscores the value of good mentors and good advisors in our life. You know, even if you're a super disciplined person. You know, I feel like I'm pretty disciplined, I'm pretty good at pushing myself, I'm pretty good at calling my own bluff and, and pushing myself into what I need to do, but even people like I'm going to put you in a situation that's beyond your comfort zone, and that's where really big learning happens. So that was a fun lesson this year, little nerve wracking initially, but I'm still reaping the benefits of that. Jump off the deep end even now. And that horse and I are getting along better than we ever have. So that was pretty awesome and a pretty special experience to see our relationship come that far this year. Okay, next lesson. Where are we at? I lost track of my numbers. I always do this. One, two, three, four, five. Lesson number five. This is kind of a business lesson. I think it could also apply to other projects or homesteading. This one was more of kind of an annoying lesson for me this year. And it is, sometimes you need to micromanage. And at first blush that might sound like a weird lesson or counterintuitive. I think there are two types of people. There are people who naturally micromanage and there are people who are naturally a little more hands off. Surprisingly I am actually more of a hands off person as much as I, it's hard for me to sometimes outsource or it's hard for me not to want to do everything myself. When I have someone in my life who I have assigned to a task, I love for them to take ownership. I love for them to run. I love to give them a ton of autonomy and independence in that. I, I know when I've had bosses back when I was an employee who did that for me, that was so powerful for me. It made me step up. It made me feel competent. And so I like to give that gift to. Those in my life as well. Sometimes that works brilliantly. Sometimes it does not. And I had learned that this year, that sometimes you have to manage even when you have managers who you have hired to do things in your life, or employees, or whatever. So, that was something where, I think that was a little bit like back on that lesson of no one is coming to save you, perhaps I was waiting for those People who I had hired in my life to solve certain problems or fix certain things, and I then just kind of threw them out, not threw them out, but I like, you know, said, Harry, here you go. This is your deal. You know, have fun. Good luck. And sometimes you have to manage them a little bit more as a boss, as an employer, and be a little more aware and have a little more followup. So that was a good lesson as a business owner. Also, you know, I've kind of prided myself on not being a micromanager and I was kind of annoying for me to have to go, well, Jill, I think you actually are going to have to micromanage a little bit more than you thought. So also in balance, right? You can micromanage someone to the point of you're killing their motivation. You're killing their drive. We don't want to do that. But sometimes you have to be a little more plugged in. I think this works with kids too, or it applies to children sometimes. Sometimes when I know with ours, they're awesome with their chores, they're really responsible with chores, they handle everything in the barn and the chicken coop. But this summer we, and this fall, and this winter, we have become aware that there were some corners being cut, right? We had given them a little too much autonomy, a little too much independence. So sometimes you have to come back in and hold some accountability there. So anyway, that's more of a business y lesson, but a good one nonetheless. All right, next lesson, when you know you're supposed to do something, when your gut, when your intuition tells you, you are supposed to do it, do not quit, no matter how hard it gets. This lesson came with the charter school, which I've talked about a little bit on previous episodes. Christian, I know I've been promising this for a while. This week, Christian and I are going to record the charter school episode, for those of you who are interested, to give you the whole gory details the whole story. But this lesson of don't quit was so powerful this year, you know, in a nutshell, we'll talk more about it in depth on that episode. We knew we were supposed to help with this charter school. We knew it in our gut. It was confirmed over and over to us. It was the hardest thing we've ever done. We've never faced opposition on anything like that before, ever. The amount of nastiness that came our way, and the amount of effort some people put into trying to shut it down was unbelievable. Like, I've never seen anything like it. And there were so many times we doubted it. We doubted our in we doubted our abilities, we doubted if we were doing the right thing, we doubted if You know, we should just stop until it all came together. It was like, it was wall, wall, wall, wall. Until all of a sudden all the walls just literally disappeared. It was insane. It was the most supernatural thing I think I've ever been a part of. It was crazy and if we had quit during those times when we were doubting our ability and that's why I say we, it was not just Christian and I, there's a whole group of local people who literally carried this torch, didn't sleep many nights, blood, sweat, and tears, devoted their lives for free, right? No pay, no incentive for them other than wanting to help the community when we as a collective were so discouraged and run down. If we had stopped then, we wouldn't have been able to see. The victory that came and, and when it came, it was like, it was beyond our abilities. It was beyond what we could have orchestrated. It's just like all these massive brick walls literally just all of a sudden came down within the course of a couple of weeks. It was unreal. Like it was absolutely unreal and we would have missed it if we would have quit. So that's my encouragement to you. If you had struggles this past year, if you're gearing up for big, hairy, audacious projects in 2024. And you know you're supposed to do it, right? Your gut is telling you, you know, hold on to that knowing because it will be tested and there will be times when you doubt and it's okay to doubt. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it just because you're doubting. And here's another piece. Just because it's hard, it doesn't mean you're not supposed to do it. Just because it's hard. I see this so much and I always call it out when I hear people say it, it'll get a little rocky and they'll be like, Oh, this wasn't meant to be. God doesn't want it to happen. The universe doesn't want it to happen. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What makes you think that just because it's supposed to happen, it's going to be smooth sailing? Like, that's never promised to us. That's, that's never a guarantee. And sometimes the very struggles are what makes you into the person who is able to run this project and create this thing. You need the challenges and the struggles. Like, nothing good. Comes when life is just smooth sailing when maybe that's not always true, right? But you know what I mean, right in order to get growth in order to get change There has to be an element of pain. There has to be an element of struggle I think about it in the gym a lot, right if I want big muscles that doesn't come from a workout that feels nice That will never come it has to come from a workout. That is hard a workout That is challenging a workout that is literally breaking down my muscle fibers So they can be rebuilt into something stronger and I think that is such an awesome metaphor for anything we're doing in life That's challenging. We have to go through that breaking down period that challenging period to get the growth So I'm so glad we didn't quit on the charter school project. It's now up and running We just completed our first semester gearing up for our second It's amazing, but it wasn't without a lot of blood sweat and tears, but it was worth it So if you know in your gut you're supposed to do something Keep doing it. Do not. All right, my last lesson of 2023. I don't know what number it is. I've lost track, but this is a big one. It also has to do with my word of the year. Each year I don't do really resolutions, not into that, but I do like to pick a word and set an intention for the year. And this year's word is streamline. And my lesson of 2023 is that streamline is Greater than the shotgun approach. When I think of this in my mind, I think of streamline and then that little greater than symbol than shotgun. Streamline is greater than shotgun. And what I'm talking about when I say that is the shotgun approach is what Christian and I call, honestly, kind of how we've lived our life the past couple of years. We've said yes to a lot of projects that had a lot of irons in the fire. I don't regret that. I don't regret saying yes to those things. There was windows of time. There were. Things that just needed to happen then. Yes, it stretched us. Yes, it put a lot of different things on our plates. Yes, it created a measure of chaos. I don't regret that phase of my life. However, now I feel like it's time to get back to that streamlined approach again. And, you know, if we can get focused and targeted on any area of our life, that's always going to yield more results than just blasting out energy and effort in every direction and hoping something sticks. So, that was my lesson for this past year, and it's going to create 2024. I'm not prepared to share those right now. I will be sharing those. But we're getting pretty strategic and we're getting very much in this mode of analyzing what's working, what's not working maybe looking at what's good in our life, but the good things might be getting in the way of the great things and making some tough decisions. So stay tuned on that. I want to bring you along for that process just for your own curiosity and also I think it may be helpful to some of you because I think. It's really easy to get into that shotgun lifestyle where we're just blasting a whole bunch of things at the wall, hoping something sticks. Not always a bad thing. I think there are seasons for that, honestly. But if we want to create that big momentum, we have to get really strategic and streamlined. So that's what I'm thinking about a lot right now. And I'm excited to see where that takes us. So friends, that's my list of my big lessons for the past year. That was helpful in some way to you, or maybe it just satisfied your curiosity. I think the unexamined life is not worth living as Socrates said. And so I think it's really important that we take some time. It doesn't have to be, you know, January 1st or right after Christmas. But even now, as you listen to this episode, if you haven't taken some time to do an audit of the past year, do it. It's enlightening, it's powerful. It can turn hard things in your year into. And I think that's really important. And it helps us to not make those same mistakes over again. So spend some time journaling. Use your planner. If you want to grab an old fashioned on purpose planner, you can do so over at www. prairieplanner. com. And yeah, I hope 2024 is a year of growth and meaningful challenge and good lessons for you. So, real quick, before we conclude, what to expect in our upcoming season. Again, I don't have a theme. I've, I've kind of steered away from themes because sometimes I just have to go where curiosity takes me. So I have some good guests lined up for the year we have TJ Robinson, the olive oil hunter coming on to talk about why olive oil quality matters. I have some Homestead First Aid stuff, some cool interviews about growing year round in a greenhouse. I think you guys are going to love that one. Some herbalism, lots of good stuff. I think I'm also going to be doing some more solo episodes this year. I enjoy the solo episodes and looking at the stats, I think you guys also enjoy them. Sometimes they're my most downloaded episodes. So look for some more thoughts from me some more reflections and ruminations. So I'm excited about that. And yeah, thanks for being here. Thanks for listening. Thank you for making Old Fashioned On Purpose one of the top podcasts in its niche in 2023. I appreciate your shares and your comments and your reviews more than you know. So happy New Year, friends. I look forward to an exciting 2024. Thanks for listening to the Old Fashioned On Purpose podcast.