The end of the year is a moment of excitement and reflection. We are excited to begin a new chapter and make a fresh start. Regardless of what you feel, whether it be simple and easy to label or complicated and challenging understanding, reflection can be a helpful way to confirm your unique encounter. Reflection can also help develop space for gratitude while delivering insight that may inform how you move forward into the following year in your life.
What Are the Highlights of Your Life This Past Year?
Find the highlight for every month or season that you felt was outstanding. If you are experiencing difficulty recalling everything you did in the last 12 months, look back in your diary and find out what stood out to you. If you don’t have a journal, you can always look back in your planner or browse your online calendar to help you remember what you did throughout the year.
Build a Gratitude List
Don’t forget to be grateful! Take a few minutes and write down things you are thankful for from the last year. To make it easier for you, there are a few categorizations that you can use as a kick-off point.
You can be grateful for the following:
People – for certain people or for our collective identity.
Mission – for specific factors of what we’re about it and what we’re doing.
Accomplishments – the stuff we’ve done as individuals or as a team
Observations – for the lessons you’ve learned and understanding you’ve acquired.
Self-reflection – A Tool for Learning
Reflection is a structured technique that allows us to take a step back and methodically evaluate past incidents. Thinking about your past can help you uncover what’s holding you back and straighten out, or find the ideas you need to stay focused on reaching your big goal.
Why Should you Reflect?
Self-reflecting is a humbling but compelling encounter, and it is one of the best ways to improve our understanding, uncover how we do our best work, and strengthen our overall performance. To help you reflect on your year, we have put together 6 phases of the reflection process.
The six phases of the reflection process:
Descriptive – What happened in the situation?
Examination – What emotions did we feel throughout the situation?
Evaluation – What worked well and what didn’t work well?
Analysis– In this phase, the learner tests, confirms and adjusts assumptions.
Illustrating Final Thoughts – What else could have been done?
Future Steps – What will you do in case a similar scenario occurs?
Why Does Reflection Work?
Study shows reflection is essential to helping us expand and integrate learning and successfully apply it to our lives and work. To get the most value, we must move beyond the surface level of what occurred and drill down a little deeper. You must develop regular reflection time into your day, week, and month to be highly effective. The end of a year is an excellent opportunity to take a bigger picture look, commemorate and get a broader viewpoint on your year.
