3 effortless ways for reflecting on your career year

As a Change Manager and a Coach, I love reflecting on my lessons learned and ideas for improvement. I do this on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and of course, yearly basis. And just like with a Change Post Implementation Review (PIR for short) and how easy, simple and short that is with just 3 simple questions (we cover this in my Leading Successful Change program in Module 5 - Measuring Success & Embed), the way I reflect each year and step my LSC students through their annual reflections in our December Coaching Call is the same.

Reflection Question #1: What are the top 3 things you did each month?

So quite literally, map out each month of the year and reflect on 3 things that you did or completed or achieved or remembered from each month. You don’t even have to do it in order like January, February, March etc. Just think about anything that pops up into your head. What was something major that happened in that month? And jot that down and then you can almost fill it in like a puzzle. It can be personal stuff. It can be career stuff. It can be leadership stuff, stuff to do with your projects, whatever pops up for you. And it's really nice, because it's almost like a wrap reel, or how they do those recap or memory reels in romantic movies. And it's like you're remembering all of the memories. Just feel whatever comes up for you, because they're the things that were meaningful. You're probably not going to remember the things that weren't so meaningful! Write down one or two things or words related to a memory, fill in your annual month-by-month puzzle, then if you want you can go and journal deeper on any that stand out.

Reflection Question #2: What were your top 3 wins this year and why?

The Month-by-Month Review is just to get the juices flowing for you so that when we go into the Success Reflections and the Growth Reflections, you've got a little bit more behind you. It'll probably trigger some other memories or events, or wins or challenges. And what we always say in NLP is: "The unconscious mind has the answer." The first thing that pops up, you might see, hear, feel a word or an event or a memory or a person or a face or a thing. And that's the right thing to pop down. Just pop down whatever comes up for you. If you've ever done anything like free writing, or free journalling, where you just put a pen to paper and you just literally write whatever comes out, that could be really fun. You could set a timer of five minutes and just write, whereas this one is more prompted. 

Reflection Question #3: What were your top 3 biggest learnings this year and why? 

And then that brings us to the Growth Reflections. Me being a high achiever, I'm very good at this! It's one of the reasons why I start with the Success Reflections. Let's focus on what went well and build up our armour a bit. I think I attract in LSC a lot of people who are high achievers, a lot of people who do want more for themselves, for their life, from their career. Or want flexibility and freedom, or to potentially go down a path that might not be the obvious or regular or well-trodden path. Given that, we can also be super hard on ourselves. And we can also focus, sometimes, a little bit too much on what can be improved or where we went wrong, mistakes, challenges, issues, etc and forget to celebrate the wins, which is why we went through the Success Reflections first. Because what happens is, you've then built that internal energy. You've built that internal confidence and that self-worth to then be able to do the Growth Reflections from a strong place rather than from a place of lack or low self worth.

A final question that is really nice to end with is: Why did this year have to happen? What does it set you up for next year? Because then you start opening up your energy, mindset and heart for the year ahead. In January, we always focus on Vision Setting in our January LSC Coaching Call because the power and momentum of coming together as a supportive group helps our dreams and goals feel real and amplifies our belief that we can achieve them.

Just these 3 questions can help you reflect in an authentic and powerful way, but if you’d like to go deeper, I provide more context and many more reflection questions to guide your journalling in my free 2023 Reflection Journal:

CLICK HERE to download my free 2023 Reflection Journal

Download your free copy of my 2023 Reflection Journal today and embrace the year that has passed so you can set yourself up for success for the year ahead. 

CLICK HERE to download my free 2023 Reflection Journal

All my belief, 

Lata xx