I hope you had a chance to take a glance at my new eBook about personal growth. In this blog, as promised, I want to share with you another important area regarding personal development – self reviews, specifically year-end self-reviews.
Year-End Self-Reviews
As you know, stopping to evaluate where we?ve been is paramount if we want to move forward to bigger and higher goals.?December is a great month to evaluate the past year. Let me share with you how I do it, and hopefully you will find some of these ideas helpful for yourself.
The approach is simple. List everything of significance?you did ?for every month of the year, then evaluate and reflect on each. The ultimate goal for me is to do the following four actions or “thought exercises” on each event that took place.
1. Reflect and celebrate -?Celebrate wins, and be grateful for the blessings.
2. Lessons learned -?Articulate lessons?from wins and failures.
3. Hold myself accountable -?Did I do what I said I would do? ?If not why not?
4. Focus?your goals -?Sharpen old?goals.?Set new goals for next year.
So here are the first two steps to get you started.
STEP ONE – Start with January 2013. Begin by going to your calendar (or diary) and list everything of significance you did in January. The first step is to simply list them, then group them in these four categories which makes it easier to analyze and think through them.
- The successes
- The failures
- The mixed results
- The goals that were supposed to be met
STEP TWO – Now that you have those listed, for each and every item apply the end-goals described above. For example, if one success you had was hiring a great person to your team (say a great accountant), then this is how it will look:
Example:
January 2013
Successes: (Place here the “good” things that happened.)
- Hired a great accountant
- Reflect and celebrate -?I am very thankful to have this person helping me.
- Lesson learned -?It is imperative to have someone on a team with a strong financial background.
- Hold myself accountable -?Not applicable here.
- Set a new goal -?I need to find a CPA by March of 2014.
- Finished a public speaking class on-line
- Reflect and celebrate -?This was a great class that has improved my speaking.
- Lesson learned -?I need to have continual training in this area as well as coaching.
- Hold myself accountable –?This was supposed to be finished by December of 2012.
- Set a new goal –?I will sign up for Toastmasters by May of 2013.
(Finish the list of all the good things that happened in January.)
Now continue, still for January 2013, and make a similar list for the other three criteria:
- Failures: (Place here the bad things that happened)
- The mixed results: (Place here the events that were good and bad)
- The goals: (Place here the goals that were supposed to be met and define the goals for 2014.)
Repeat the same process for every other month of the year.
I started this process a week ago and have finished January and February of 2013. I am now reviewing March of 2013. My goal is to finish the rest of the year within the next two weeks.
I will share more ideas with you next week, but what I mentioned here is the heart of the review process.?I hope some of these ideas can help you as you reflect on 2013 and plan for 2014.
Your Friend,
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