Year Review and New Year Resolutions Are Fun

Do you want to review your whole year and compare it with the stirring goals to do what you love you had? When taking a good look at your accomplishments, you can be immensely amazed!

A few precious minutes can make a sincere difference on appreciating your progress. Note what you did in all aspects of your existence this year. It gives perspective before starting anew and correcting your path.

For example, I love what I did and appreciate it even more since yesterday, when I did the review exercise. This year I started writing professionally, I created 3 bold blogs, wrote or adapted over 200 useful articles, 11 ebooks and 1 book while I raised my youthful boys at home. I did it! (Ok, too much Dora and WordWorld these days). I’m making my dreams stunningly come true.

Doing the review is really putting to light the major accomplishments. The good times and progress are striking.

But next year it will be less intense. Yeah right… No, it has to because I give myself a lot into my projects and I calculate I was more than working full time, leaving aside much needed time to relax. Lessons learned!

What I’m doing is already designing what I do to work less but more strategically. I’m recentering myself in the midst of my life, and not my life for the career I want.

I guess I was swept off my feet by my passion. What’s important is to learn from the past and put our priorities first.  

How you can review your year and create cherished New Year resolutions:

1. Write down all aspects of your life: Family, relationship, career, friends, extended family, health, material, etc.
2. Bullet point what you did in each aspect. If you have trouble remembering, review month by month what you did.
3. Compare with the goals you had at the beginning of the year. You know, your New Year resolutions you swear you would sincerely do? Yes those! Go further if you want, realize how far you got by reviewing your whole life so far. Connect the dot backwards, as advanced by Steve Jobs in his famous Do What You Love speech. It will help knowing your unique path.
4. Correct right away what you aren’t satisfied with. Create an action plan and put it in your schedule. For example since my husband works at odd hours, to still be close I plan to write him a short email every workday. Yes, Love Letters 2.0 style, but since we don’t use cell phones, emails will work just fine (if you didn’t know 2.0 is the expression for the participative internet we have today). Find something effective and easy to add to your schedule.
5. Reassess your priorities. What comes first for you? Find the most quality time for it, addressing it first in your day for example.
6. Evaluate how far you have to go with your dreams. Pick what really satisfies you, what you really love to do.
7. Dress your next year goals list. Write them the more realistically you can. Plan them month by month. Next year I’m publishing my book, writing an ecourse, as well as starting to homeschool my kids and planning to be more Zenful (Buddhism books coming my way for Christmas). I’ve put in an agenda the tasks, and chill-out moments, I have to do, and plan my urgent tasks ahead.
8. Pat yourself on the back. And then some more. Be proud of what you did! You are designing your life how you like it. Treat yourself with a nice activity, such as night out with friends, a spa session or a lunch. And say “you did it” too!

You might want to take a look at free parts of my book Do What You Love that I blogged to know more about how to design goals in your life; in any case, good work and have brilliant success with your projects!