10 Meaningful Areas to Reflect on as the New Year Approaches...

Happy Person at desk with Cup of Coffee

Reflection time is not just important—it's ESSENTIAL. It gives us the opportunity to acknowledge our challenges, difficulties—and our successes. It helps us see where we have grown and what directions we would like to take next.

And what better time than the end of December?

It's a quiet time for so many of us. And with the new year almost upon us, this is a great opportunity to think about who we value in our lives, where we are on our spiritual or life journey, what we've achieved in the past year and what we'd like to achieve in the upcoming year.

This pondering time is also essential to meaningful goal-setting for the upcoming year. Sure we can just get out our goal-sheets and write our goals down, but if we pause and reflect first, we'll dig deeper when goal-setting and those goals will align more with our values and who we are.

So, I encourage you to set aside some time to ponder and reflect.

Stare out of the window. Jot down your wants, successes and learnings. Prepare for the year ahead by processing the year just past, and considering what you want from the year ahead.

Here are 10 meaningful areas to reflect and ponder on

  1. List a) the most important people in your life, b) people who drain you and c) people who inspire you.
  2. What you'd like MORE of and LESS of in your life.
  3. Your big achievements this past year (include personal, spiritual and professional).
    NB. This is what you're most proud of - what you'd like to celebrate!
  4. What you are most excited about for the coming year (if you don't have anything, then this is something you may want to work on)
  5. What do you already know you want to accomplish this coming year?
  6. What you would like to express in your life or work more?
  7. What does it mean to me to have a full and rich life?
  8. How could I have more fun and joy in my life?
  9. What is my biggest challenge in the upcoming year?
  10. What do you secretly need to acknowledge?

Just because we increase the speed of information doesn't mean we can increase the speed of decisions. Pondering, reflecting and ruminating are undervalued skills in our culture. Dale Dauten 

PS. Perhaps you'll also take the opportunity to email your clients and encourage them to do some reflecting too...

Check out our Vision & Goal-Setting Toolkit here:

Love Goal-Setting? Would you like some awesome tools to help? Get 10 awesome Coaching Tools PLUS User Guide. Help clients envision, set exciting and meaningful goals, commit and take action!

If you liked this article about End of Year Reflection, you may also like:

Emma-Louise Elsey Headshot

Contributing Author:

Emma-Louise Elsey has been coaching since 2003 and is the Founder of The Coaching Tools Company and Fierce Kindness.com. She's passionate about coaching and personal development. Originally a project and relationship manager for Fortune 500 companies she combined her love of coaching, creativity and systems to create over 100 brandable coaching tools, forms and exercises including 30+ completely free coaching tools. She now serves coaches and the coaching world through her exclusive newsletter for coaches, Coaches Helping Coaches Facebook Group and many other great tools for coaches, plus resources and ideas for your coaching toolbox. The Coaching Tools Company is an official ICF Business Solutions Partner.

Learn more about Emma-Louise & see all their articles here >>

Image of Happy Person at Desk with Laptop and Cup of Coffee by KimSongsak via Shutterstock

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.