Hey friends! It’s Sascha. I love the end of the year. While it can be a stressful time with parties, gatherings, and family, it’s also a time full of promise and goal setting ritual.
The end of the year is a great time to evaluate your prior year and plan for the year ahead.
Resolutions? Maybe, but this post is about plans. What follows is a version of the end of year reflection activity I’ve done for the past four years in a row, originally found at dallastravers.com, (who I followed in her years as a business coach for actors). Once you’ve done it, put it someplace special.
Going back and looking at my prior years’ reflections serves to show me how far I’ve come and where the room is left for improvement. You may enjoy doing the same.
Without further ado, the goal setting ritual:
Step One:
Get comfortable. Grab a notebook, pen, drink, and get settled in the workspace of your choosing. Light a candle, if that’s your thing. You get the idea.
Step Two:
Consider what you’re most proud of in each of the following areas of your life:
- Career
- Health
- Personal Relationships
- Professional Relationships
- Fun
- Confidence
- Finances
- Craft & Creativity
- Marketing Tools & Business
- Personal Growth
- Spirituality
Step Three:
Identify the three primary intentions or beliefs that guided you this year. Perhaps you may notice certain values popped up consistently throughout your year.
Step Four:
What didn’t work as well as you hoped? With compassion, consider the unrealized expectations, unexpected circumstances or interruptions, challenges, upsets or losses, gifts given and gifts received.
Step Five:
What from the year feels incomplete? Are there possible actions you can take to remedy these items?
Step Six:
Create a year-end ritual. Celebrate the challenges moved through and the successes enjoyed. How do you make a renewed commitment to yourself and your goals for the next year?
Step Seven:
What are you looking forward to in the next year? What are 1-3 specific goals for next year?
Step Eight:
What are the changes for which you anticipate or hope? How would you like to create these changes? Who might help you be able to succeed?
Step Nine:
What are your life, career goals, and intentions for the new year? What are you building on and recommitting to from this year? What is new? What resources are you bringing from this year? What resources will you cultivate?
Step Ten:
With whom do you wish to build a stronger relationship? Who would you like to attract into your life? How will your relationships (personal and professional) blossom in the new year? Make a list of 10 people with whom you’d like to build stronger relationships with- you may or may not already know them.
Step Eleven:
What principle or action are you going to give up from this past year so that you can experience a fuller life?
Step Twelve:
How do you want to experience it next year? What color, taste, texture, smell, the sound does it have? If next year has a theme song, what will it be? What images come to mind when you picture the coming year?
Step Thirteen:
Create a vision board. You can do one online or on a piece of poster board. Know what you want, but more importantly, go after it.
Do you have a favorite end of year reflection or goal setting exercise you love?
Cheers to a happy, fulfilled new year.