It’s New Year’s Eve, tomorrow is the beginning of a whole new year and you’re thinking about setting your New Year’s resolutions. Maybe you’ve set a few resolutions in the past and nothing in your life ever changed. Maybe you gave up after a few setbacks. I want to show in this two part post how to reflect on the past year and create an amazing vision for next year that is going to generate some amazing energy in your life in a positive direction. Let’s start with a little reflection.
Wow! Has it been a crazy year for you? Have you had some heartache or setbacks? Has it been a roller coaster ride or smooth sailing? Have you experienced great joy and growth? Maybe it’s a year you never want to forget or a year that you never want to remember. Wherever this year end leaves you, take a few moments today and reflect upon the past year so we can prepare ourselves to set our Best Intentions tomorrow.
How to find your way back to joy when you’ve had a really challenging year?
When I was finding my way back to joy after my husband died, I distinctly remember our first family holidays and celebrations and just watching from a point that seemed outside my body. I was surprised at how quickly after he died people were acting happy again. I faked it. I felt numb. I thought I would never feel real joy again.
One day I was sitting on the deck at my father in laws at sunrise and read this scripture, “The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders, where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy.” Psalm 65:8 I watched the sun rise and listened to the birds singing. As they got louder and louder, I realized something. A smile had snuck onto my face and I felt a peaceful joy in my heart.
I set an intention that day. I decided there were only going to be so many sunrises and so many sunsets in my life and I was going to see as many of them as I could. Even if the rest of the day brought sorrow, I was going anchor my day with the Lord’s songs of joy.
As the old year ends and the new year begins, reflect back on your songs of joy. Whether in the midst of struggles or from the greatest celebrations of life, think about those joys that were sprinkled in between. These are your songs of joy, the anchors in life that you keep you in the game.
10 Questions to Help you Reflect on the Past year
Here are a few questions to ponder and reflect on tonight as you celebrate loudly or sit at home quietly. In 2018,
- What did you most enjoy?
- What was your greatest challenge?
- How did you serve others?
- What were you most grateful for in 2018?
- What was your greatest personal accomplishment?
- What did you start doing and Why?
- What did you stop doing and Why?
- Who was the one person that checked in on you the most?
- Who did you check in on the most?
- Who were the top 3 people who had the biggest impact on your life in 2018? Was that impact positive or negative?
How do I set intentions for 2019?
Here are few questions to ponder and reflect up on while you are preparing to set your intentions for 2019. Don’t worry too much about them. What comes to mind quickly? Do you see any patterns? We will spend more time on these tomorrow. In 2019,
- What do you most want to experience?
- What challenge do you want to overcome?
- How do you want to serve others?
- What would you be most grateful for?
- What do you want to learn or accomplish?
- What would you like to start doing and why?
- What would you like to stop doing and why?
- Who do you want to check in with more?
- Who would you like to be in your top 3 people of positive impact in your life in 2019?
- What do you most want to be celebrating at the end of 2019?
Why a little self reflection is good for you?
The most important benefit of self-reflection is becoming self aware. At regular intervals in your life, it is good to look at your life and yourself from an outside point of view. A view that is not emotionally tied to the conflict or the outcome at the time. Just look back and see it, tell yourself, yes this happened and evaluate how you felt about it at the time.
Self reflection is healthy when we leave it there. These are things we learn about ourselves from and we learn how to do things that are going to have better outcomes for us in the future. It is important to reflect, to evaluate what we did well and what we could have done better. It is important to reflect on who and what we encountered that had a positive impact on our lives and who and what we encountered that had a negative impact on our lives. We learn from reflecting on it and then we leave it.
We leave both the positive and negative in 2018. What? Not the positive. Hear me out. You can’t live in past success or thrive in past failures. We can’t grow if we don’t build up on our past successes and we will drown if we drag the negative with us into the future.
Today, reflect on the past year for tomorrow we press on!!