End Of Year Review?

Time To Acknowledge Your Successes

With Christmas approaching and the end of another year drawing closer it is easy to get caught up in the hectic whirl of preparations for the festive season. You may well be feeling even more madly busy than usual.

But you know what? When things get hectic like this, it is even more important to carve out a bit of quiet space to just slow down and reflect a little.

Winter – a time to reflect

I don’t know about you, but there is something about the winter months with the cold weather and shorter days that make me want to snuggle down and semi hibernate.  And this snuggly feeling always gets me in reflective mood.

(Hmmm, interesting aside…do you guys in Australia get snuggly and reflective in what I guess is Summer for you? And if you are doing your end of year review in glorious BBQ weather, what influence does that have on how you approach it?  I’d love to hear! Scroll down to share your thoughts.)

So take advantage of that snuggly feeling, take a bit of time out and look back over the successes of the year that is nearing its end.

But proceed with caution!

It is so easy, isn’t it, to fall into the trap of dwelling on what went wrong?   The plans that were not fulfilled, the goals not achieved.  But where does that get you?  All it does is lock you into a negative perception of yourself and your life.

So your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to explore the best of the last 12 months.

What was good about the last 12 months?

What I’d love you to take the time to do, is to review everything that was RIGHT, everything you enjoyed, all the successes big and small that you can think of and write them all down with a smile of satisfaction.

You may be a year older and a year wiser but let’s focus on the ‘year wiser’ bit.  In what way have you grown over the last year?  What have you learned about yourself that will make you better able to deal with life next year?

If you need help with finding the positives, just imagine you are sitting alongside yourself as you might sit alongside a child doing the same exercise.  Be supportive and encouraging.  Give yourself little prompts and nudges that point your thinking in the right direction.

Try taking each month at a time, explore what happened and tease out the good bits. They don’t need to be mega achievements, little things are just as important.

You know how good it feels when someone praises you for something you have done.  Well, now is the moment where you do that for yourself by acknowledging you successes.

And if you find the negative creeping in, (and you can be pretty sure that it will!) scribble the thought down on a scrap of paper, then scrumple it up with glee and chuck it in the rubbish bin that you have placed at your side for this very purpose.

Why is this so important? 

You may be wondering what is so important about this exercise.  Well it is all about rebalancing your perception yourself and your life. Instead of constantly having what I call ‘ain’t it awful’ conversations with yourself, you make a conscious effort to see the good things that are happening all the time.

You’ll find that this automatically sets you up in a positive frame of mind as you see that there have been some successes along the way.  This will not only help you tackle Christmas with the right kind of energy, but it will also give you a really solid starting point when you do your forward planning for the New Year when you know you are really going to take your career in hand, don’t you?

A Christmas Smile!

Oh, and if you want something in addition to your own successes that will give you a warm snuggly feeling, take a look at this video that is doing the rounds.  Is that customer service or what?!

From the 5 Minute Career Coach December 2013

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