By Felipe Marquez
December is the month when we should always take a moment to reflect and analyze how the year was. A month when we can examine the goals we set to see if they were accomplished and try to understand where we may have miscalculated. This is usually challenging because we easily judge ourselves and find excuses for not achieving our goals. So, I have a better idea for you! Instead of judging ourselves for not achieving those goals, let’s practice something different; start focusing on what we did WELL, how we accomplished it, and then consider an approach to beat those goals with something much better. Analyzing our gains will give us better feelings than focusing on our supposed failures.
To start this analysis, let’s stop for a second to write, or type, everything that we think we conquered this year, which can be everything and anything. For example, how many pounds we lost, how many miles we can run now, how many books we read, how much time we spent with our family, how much more productive we were in our job, etc.
Once we have noted those points, add a column for each “win” and write what we did differently to achieve those wins. For instance, “How did I lose 10 pounds? I added one more day at the gym every week and started eating healthy.”, “How was I able to make more time for my family? I permitted myself to turn off my cellphone during the weekends and took my family on short trips.”
Now that we have recorded our achievements and what we did to accomplish those, now let’s go one step further! Add another column to what we think we can do more next year to take our goals to the next level. For example, “I read eight books during the year by adding 30 minutes to my reading time. To read more than eight books, next year I can add one more reading day to my weekly routine and stick to the 30 minutes that I already had added.”
Here is an example of how your notes can be organized:
In our lives, we always try to look for mistakes instead look for achievements. But I’m sure that if we start to focus on what we did do and figure out how to do even better next year, we’ll be proud of ourselves, understand our achievements much better, and discover how to improve more and more.
It is time to place more value on our achievements and build on those.