Your Year In Review

Near the end of every year, I take a few days and go on a personal retreat at a cabin for a few days. This is a tradition I have been doing for the last almost ten years. And It has served me incredibly well.

I go through a whole process throughout the few days with goal setting, planning, strategizing, etc., but one of the most important things I do is a year in review. I kick off the first night by going through my calendar day by day, week by week, month by month, writing down each and everything I am grateful for and what I learned. I literally go through everything I have done personally and professionally and reflect on it. This has been a tradition that I look forward to the most. The gratitude I feel for the opportunities I have had fills me with great joy and insight.

We can get so busy with life that we fail to reflect on the past. But we have to remember to appreciate our past successes and learn from our past failures. Too many people and organizations don’t take the necessary time to look behind them. We get so focused on what is ahead and what is currently consuming our attention that we miss opportunities to assimilate what has happened. Reflective thinking gives insight into future possibilities. What we learn from the past gives us the fuel for the future.

I encourage you to do a year in review for yourself, your team, and possibly your organization. Don’t let the year end without dedicating time to reflect on the last year’s happenings. And if you lead a team, make sure you take time to celebrate the wins over the previous year. Look at how far you’ve come, even if you didn’t hit all your goals. If you can’t appreciate the past, you won’t appreciate the future. And if your team is only looking at what is ahead, they can fail to feel fulfilled in the present. If we only focus on what we haven’t done, we will fail to see what we have done. Progress always needs to be recognized and celebrated.

Take some time to think about how far you’ve come and what you have accomplished this last year…it will do more good than you probably think.