3 Things To Reflect On As You Come To The End Of A Year

Would I be wrong to assume that the number of people who set New Year’s resolutions in January, is much higher than the number of people who review them in December? And by review, I don’t mean just asking yourself whether or not you achieved your goals. You also need to ask yourself why you got the results you got.

Well, my guess is that many don’t even know if there is such a thing as “reviewing the resolutions you set”.

But there are great advantages to reviewing your goals at the end of the year.

If you managed to achieve them, then you might have the formula for what works. If you didn’t achieve them, then you obviously have the formula for what doesn’t work.

Is it important that you achieve your goals every year?

Professional football teams analyze every game they play regardless of the outcome of the matches. If they win, they identify their key strengths. If they lose, they identify their obvious weaknesses.

And if you are interested in understanding a bit of the process of reviewing your yearly progress in life, then keep reading. Here are 3 things to reflect on as you come to the end of the year.

1. Are you achieving your goals?

If you are serious about accomplishing goals, then you are serious about tracking the progress you are making towards them.

You have to be your toughest critic.

It shouldn’t be normal for you to allow yourself to go year after year having not accomplished many of the goals you have… that you think are important.

It shouldn’t be normal for you to NOT point out an obvious weakness or an obvious strength in your process of pursuing goals.

We should cut habits and decisions that prevent us from realizing our goals. We should encourage habits and decisions that move us closer to them.

2. Are you learning and developing?

Or simply put… are you growing? Growth is an important part of your evolution in life. The transition from teenage to adulthood involves learning a lot about yourself and your surroundings. It also involves gaining new skills or abilities that you will need to tackle that stage in life.

The same applies to our transition from who we are now to who we desire to be. We can guide our own growing process. We can align our growth to what we want most. By what we consume in our minds and the actions we take, we can definitely influence positive growth.

What is positive growth?

The kind of growth that helps you develop skills or abilities that best serve what you are trying to accomplish with your life.

It can be extremely challenging to get the life you want if you do not grow yearly… in the direction of your desires.

3. Are you happier than you were last year?

Now, this can depend on a lot of things going on in your life. However, we are most concerned with the happiness surrounding your pursuit of the life you want.

Do you think about happiness as you pursue your goals?

You should… because your happiness is greatly affected by how you chose to live. It’s harder to see this for some, but it is a fact nonetheless.

This doesn’t apply to every single person, but for many… at a younger age, the tendency to explore is great. But as those people grow older, the tendency to reflect on what they explored grows as well. At one point, the desire to explore is surpassed and even suppressed by the growing tendency to reflect on how they lived.

Consider spending time with senior citizens. Those who became as successful as you hope to one day be. And those who led lives that you are trying to avoid. There is valuable insight to be taken from those that were once in your shoes. They might reveal a truth that could change how you live now.

That said… you must take an objective analysis of yourself at the end of every year if you are determined to be one who always accomplishes the goals you set.

If you do not like where your life is headed, that is a signal that you should stop and re-evaluate whatever is going on with you.

If you do not like the fact that you aren’t achieving your goals, then there exists a reason or problem you must deal with.

If you are not growing, then there is an obstacle you should pinpoint before you can overcome it.

If you are not happy with what you are doing… then why are you doing it? What positive benefit are you gaining? Why are you not putting in even more effort in looking for what could make you happier? Are you convinced that your life plan is set in stone and cannot be changed by you who lives it?

I believe you have dreams you wish to see accomplished. I also believe that you have a clear vision of how the life around that dream should be.

We were not born just to pay bills or just to make money. Address this issue so that the greatest return of investment that you ever made in your life… was that you lived a life you would gladly live over again and again without regret.

An in closing...

Not all of us are aware of just how impactful the years of conditioning have been on how we look at life and ourselves. While there are those that believe that success and great achievement are meant for a selected few… there truly exist people who don’t believe in limitations.

We are brought into this world not with beliefs that we create at birth… but by beliefs and ideas that are passed on to us by the people around us.

And as we grow older, we let those beliefs firmly cement themselves in our minds… till they become our own. We use them to navigate life and make important decisions. If those ideas suggest that we were not meant to dream big… then chances are… we will not dream big.

It will take a great deal of conscious effort to break free from ideas that make us believe that WE CAN’T SUCCEED… to adopt ones that make us believe that WE CAN BE WHATEVER WE WANT TO BE.

This is why many successful people advise younger dreamers to develop open minds and gain exposure. There are people who do not live as you live or believe as you believe. Your limitations are not their limitations.

The more you accept, apply and surround yourself with success… the more success will open up to you.

The more you accept, apply and surround yourself with limitations and failure… the more limitations will hold you back.

Practice makes permanent. You are what you repeatedly do.

#makeProgressNotExcuses