If you’ve been following along with this month’s blog content, you know that we’ve been working our way through some important “End of the Year” reflection exercises. We’ve considered:
- The strength and quality of our relationships.
- Our progress towards achieving our goals.
- Our success in living up to our personal ideals.
If you haven’t had a chance to give these exercises a try, I highly encourage you to take some time during these last two weeks of 2022 to pause and reflect on your year as a whole. You can use the guided reflections I’ve provided, or come up with your own!
Just do it!
Now, assuming you have, in fact, taken me up on my invitation and spent some time reflecting on these last 12 months, you’ve (hopefully) gained some valuable insights about yourself.
If you’re anything like me, some of these reflections were likely encouraging, perhaps they made you feel just a little bit better about yourself! (I certainly hope this was the case.)
And others…may have had the opposite effect.
The reality is, taking time to examine your life, choices, relationships, and habits will inevitably bring you face to face with both the positive and negative aspects of yourself. Acknowledging the areas of life in which you didn’t quite hit the mark or weren’t the person you’d hoped to be is hard for everyone.
This is a crossroads moment and you have two options:
- Option 1: Allow the frustration and/or discouragement that comes with facing the less favorable aspects of your year to overwhelm you.
- Option 2: Choose to end your year with gratitude.
I, for one, will be choosing option 2. I hope you’ll join me!
You see, even in the hardest years or toughest circumstances, there are always moments of light. Moments in which we did do incredible things. Relationships that blessed and enriched us. Goals that we actually accomplished. Memories that we’ll cherish forever.
These moments are worth savoring. So, I invite you, friend, to join me in setting aside these final days of 2022 to spend some time reflecting in gratitude for all the good we experienced. Let’s acknowledge and celebrate all that went WELL this past year!
Here are a few questions to consider:
- What were some personal accomplishments you achieved?
- What were some professional accomplishments you achieved?
- What was one meaningful life lesson you learned this year?
- What habits did you maintain this year?
- What relationships had the greatest positive impact?
- What meaningful memories did you make? (Ex: family weddings, vacations, etc.)
- Did you accomplish any “bucket list” items? Which ones? (Ex: swimming with sharks, writing a book, etc.)
It is my sincerest hope that the time you spend pondering these questions and sitting with gratitude will leave you feeling edified and encouraged as you close out your year.
If you’d like to share a little bit of goodness, I’d love to hear it! Drop a comment below and let me know one thing you are feeling especially grateful for today.
Happy Holidays!
Article was contributed by: Maria Lees, Team Writer with Sarah Boxx
