If you’re a regular reader, you know I put a lot of stock in the value of reflection as a tool for personal growth and unearthing some golden insights.
Each New Year, I carve out time to reflect, review and reconsider, with the idea of translating that effort into a new perspective, a goal or commitment that is intended to move me forward in some area of my life.
While the approach I take can vary from year to year, this practice of mining my gold, is consistent.
Below is a list of tools I’ve used to jump start my reflective juices - you might be familiar with some or all of them.
1. Reflect on your Gifts
This is one I came across recently: Answer this question: “What gifts came to you in 2019?” I was quickly able to come up with 10. Your gifts might be material things, they could be life changes and lessons, new awareness that has been awakened for you and even thoughts, feelings and other burdens that you’ve been able to let go.
This was a great tool to help me recap the past year, acknowledge my accomplishments and blessings and use that energy to set me on a path to create, give and receive gifts in the year ahead.
2. Set an Intention
An intention isn’t the same as a goal. Where a goal focuses on the future, intentions are about the present moment and they are lived each day.
I have a friend who sets an intention for the whole year with a single word.
She finds greater value in focusing her energy in this way because in her words: resolutions fade away. When she reflected on her intention this past year, she made an important discovery: her single word played out in a way that wasn’t even close to what she thought it would be. It was unpredictable, and more powerful than anything she could have imagined.
3. Set a Goal
Setting a goal is a great way to get things done, to motivate you to take action and to complete tasks. A SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound) can be a bit tricky to wrap your head around at first. SMART goals are recognized for being effective because they capture what exactly it is you are going to do, when you are going to get it done and how you know you’ve done so. It’s also got built in elements to help you confirm it’s something within your power and resources to accomplish.
4. START, STOP, KEEP
What is it that you are going to do more of, less of or differently? You can explore that with three simple questions:
What do I want to start doing?
What do I want to stop doing?
What do I want to keep doing?
This one cuts right to the heart of the matter. I’ve recently recommended this approach to a client who was ready to vision the next 5 years of his business.
“What the new year brings you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.”
Vern McClellan
Last year at this time, I posted a blog I called Reflection before Resolution. At that time, I was focused who I wanted to BE (how do I want to show up) and what did I want to DO.
Full disclosure: I never did follow through on my commitment to make room for yoga in the way I thought I would.
What I have done, is to modify my workout so about one third of my time is spent doing a variety of stretching exercises, including some yoga moves.
Pass or fail?
Let’s not forget to be kind to ourselves. We are, at the end of the day, a work in progress. And that is why mining your gold is so important. So we can be a little better tomorrow than we were today.
“A moment’s insight
is sometimes worth a life’s experience.”Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
