Reflecting on a Year Gone By

Several years ago, just before the end of the year, I found myself in a small meditation group hearing each person tell their brief thoughts about the year gone by. None had anything good to say about the year. The general sentiment was "I'm really glad that's over" (and this was long before 2020).

I was one of the last ones to talk and I had a totally different story. I was in shock at the negative vibe because I'd had an absolutely amazing year! I'd traveled, I'd taken two amazing transformational courses in San Francisco and London, I’d met some amazing people, and I'd experienced exponential personal growth. Really, a great year.

Out with the Trash?

I started to wonder about this thing we do of trashing the year that's just gone by. I started to notice that people tend to do this a lot every year and it really bothered me!

I thought: You just spent 365 days of your life doing a whole bunch of different stuff in your life and now you're dumping it out like some old trash?

I get that some people really do have difficult and terrible times, but that's not the case for the most of us and certainly wasn't the case for the people in that meditation group.

We accomplish so many amazing things over the course of a year and we never take time to acknowledge or much less celebrate those accomplishments. What would it look like to really reflect on that? I think most people would be truly amazed and inspired.

After this, I started a workshop on doing just that: completing the year powerfully through reflecting on what we accomplished and on setting clear and achievable goals for the coming year. I also started to support people in planning and getting to those goals.

Those are still my most popular and talked about workshops and people ask for them every year, so something resonates here.

What about 2020?

Right, so, now we're talking about 2020 which was admittedly an absolute s**tshow of a year. A true dumpster fire of a year.

And yet, I had a lot of really great things that happened to me this year and I bet you did, too. In the midst of covid and protests and all the rest of it, there were probably some good things happening in your life. We shouldn't forget those!

Why not make a list of the good stuff that went on in your life last year and the goals that you did accomplish. Even if it is simply the connections with friends and family that you refreshed more frequently in your isolation, that's a good thing!

I don't want to take anything away from how terrible and difficult this past year has been for most - even devastating for some - we must remember that. And moving the calendar forward a day from 31 Dec to 1 Jan is not changing what is actually happening on the ground and in the world.

Time to Get Inspired

What this change of date does, however, is give us room to reflect and to find inspiration and to create a plan of action. There’s a lot of positive energy that goes along with the change of year. We can use that energy to get inspired and make commitments for what we’d like to accomplish in the future.

This is not about New Year’s resolutions. Those don’t actually work. 90% of people that make New Year’s resolutions stop within 2 to 3 months.

This is about putting the previous year into perspective and then putting it into the past so we can focus on what we want to create next.

I have a specific process for this and I’ve worked with a lot of people that have gotten incredible results from this.

I’d love to share this with you and take you through the process!

Please get in touch or join one of my workshops if you are interested in knowing and learning more.