123 Year End Reflections

Happy Holidays! I hope your Christmas was just as magical and joyful as my and that you are enjoying this downtime to the fullest. It’s perfectly ok to be doing absolutely NOTHING at this time of the year or binge as much TV as you want because you deserve it, anything you want, it’s your life.

I know we’re all so looking forward to the new year, what new beginnings and adventures it will bring. BUT, it’s so important to reflect on the year before moving on with new goals and new experiences. By taking the time to reflect, it sets the stage for continuous improvement, determines what worked in the past year (as well as what didn’t work well), and ensures the greatest ultimate success according to your life plans.

Take some time on your own to contemplate your personal and professional life with a blank piece of paper or file or journal. Hey, light a candle, put on some calming music, whatever rocks your boat to get you in a place to think and reflect.

So what are year end reflections? It is to recognize your accomplishments and give yourself kudos for what you did well this year. Last week I was telling a friend I felt like I accomplished nothing this year. The moment I said that I realized that can’t be true. This also shows the importance of self awareness by the way. Everything starts with awareness. So I reflected on my accomplishments and definitely gave myself some kudos for becoming a two time Amazon bestseller with both books I co-authored in. I also want to celebrate that this podcast is streaming in 68 countries in the world and I get to impact beautiful souls from all over the world. An amazing soul from South Africa wrote “Everything about this show is professional and exactly what everyone needs. Enjoy every episode!” Thank you so much, reviews and messages like this one just warms my heart and reminds me that I HAVE indeed accomplished something this year. So list out your accomplishments, the more you list, the more you’ll see how far you’ve come and it will serve as a motivation to accomplish even more next year.

Besides recognizing our accomplishments, it’s also important to reflect on the lessons you learned, as well as the knowledge and skills you acquired. This year, in addition to professional life coach training, I’m trained to be a certified happiness coach because I believe there is no other way to live life but to live a happy life. One personal life lesson I learned is that life is ironic. It takes depression to value happiness. And it takes stress to value calm. And it takes absence to understand presence. But through it all, it’s the fun of life. Life is an experience to be cherished every step of the way.

Finally acknowledge your mistakes and missteps. This is not to beat yourself up but so you can use them as tools, self-improvement tools and analyze and plan ahead how you could do better moving forward the next year.

So to sum up, the most important year end reflection questions are:

What accomplishments are you proud of this year?
What lessons did you learn this year?
What mistakes did you make and how can you prevent that in the future?

If you have more time, you can go into more details:

Which of those accomplishments is your proudest and why?
If this year were a milestone on your life timeline, what would the milestone be?
How did you take care of yourself this year?
What have you not done this year that you wish you had?
What did you struggle with last year that you want to conquer or embrace this year?

Life is a journey, I’m here to support and guide you to live your best life, happy reflecting and happy new year!