Dear Friends,

At year’s end, we’re often shocked at how quickly the year flew past. We blinked, and it was suddenly Christmas.

As a coach, I ask each of my clients to reflect on the past year, in order to capture what they’ve learned. If they want to move forward, they need to see clearly what mistakes they made, and how to avoid making them again in the future. We may not enjoy reviewing our mistakes, but refusing to do so means we’re much more likely to repeat them.

I’ve been writing my own annual reviews since 1983. Between Christmas and New Year, I sit in a quiet place with a legal pad or journal and reflect on the highlights of the past twelve months. I reflect back on two things:

what they learned, and

how God supernaturally intervened.

This exercise serves a dual purpose. If it has been a difficult year, I look to the future with hope and inspiration and confirm how well God took care of me. And, if it has been an exciting year, I thank God for my blessings! It is up to you to turn the inspiration you received all year to motivation and change. Keep changing and growing. These exercises will help you get started.

There are several ways you can do this. First, you can take your calendar for the year and review how you spent your time. Then capture your thoughts on paper.   Here are the kinds of things I thought about concerning my year:

My goal would be:

• reflect on how I spent a year of my life so that I might learn from my successes/mistakes
• discover what I should repeat
• celebrate my successes
• determine what I should change
• track God’s supernatural intervention in my life/work

Following are several different strategies Do whatever works best for you, but JUST DO IT!  Here are some ideas.

Idea #1

Reflection Highlights 2014:

What would I repeat:

What would I change:

Some valuable questions I use for reflection (these are from author John Maxwell’s book Thinking for a Change: 11 Ways Highly Successful People Approach Life and Work)
 Personal: What have I learned that will help me grow? How can I apply it to my life? When?

Team: What did I do with others that made both of us better? Can we do something else together to continue our mutual success?
Value: What did I do to add value? How do I know I added value to that person?
Leadership: Did I lead by example? Did I lift my organization to the next level? What did I do and how did I do it?
Health: What did I do to take care of my physical well being?
Discoveries: What did I encounter to which I need to give more thinking time? Are there lessons to be learned? Are there things to be done?
Memories: What have I done to create good memories? Was it because of a comment, an action or a share experience?
Difficulties: What went wrong? Could I have changed it? What do I need to do differently next time?
Successes: What went right? Did I create it? Is there a principle I can learn from the experience?
People: Whom did I meet? What were my impressions?
Spiritual: Did God bring someone special into my life? Did God heal a relationship this year? Have I seen spiritual progress in my journey? What special prayers did God answer? Did I feel God’s physical or emotional healing?
Conclusions: Have I closed each day appropriately? Have I expressed gratitude? Have I learned something, loved someone? Have I enjoyed and lived the day to the fullest?

How you organize your reflection time is up to you. You may want to adapt the above to your own values.

Idea #2

Or you can try a system similar to what Dick Biggs uses in Burn brightly without burning out: Balancing your career with the rest of your life (Successories library):

2014 Year in Review

Idea #3

Putting your thoughts into actions is the next step:

2014 Reflection Action Plans for 2015: