It was March...then it was December. This year feels like a complete blur! But, I am sure I accomplished something, right?

This year brought us all a fair share of personal and professional change. Now we sit at the end of the year looking back and ready to piece it all together. Taking the time to consciously reflect and narrate our year is a way that we can take control and make positive progress.

“Reflection is one of the most underused yet powerful tools for success.” Richard Carlson

Taking time to reflect allows us to understand and give a framework to our past. In an article by Jennifer Porter, from the Harvard Business Review, she highlights the research and benefits of reflection.

For many of us in hospitality, thinking about this year can be triggering. A lot happened in hotels and restaurants this year! To make things even more complicated, we had no control over some of it.

Let’s take the time to review the year, reclaim the narrative, highlight what went well, and guide our next steps.

I invite you to take some time to create a year end reflection for yourself using these 5 categories.

1. Get It Out

2. Highlights

3. Speed bumps

4. Seeds

5. Stoplight

Get It Out

Before you get deep into this, start by writing. Begin with “This year was...” and then let it flow. Allow yourself to get everything out of your head. Freely write all of your feelings and thoughts about about the year. If your mind wanders and you start thinking about your to do list, you can write that too. The stream of consciousness process will help you to clear your head so that you can show up for your reflection.

Cap this at 10 minutes.

Highlights

“In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision.” Dalai Lama.

When thinking about this year it is easy to see everything we lost. However, the narrative I want to surface is: "What did I gain?" If we take the time, we can always find events that were positive.

Identify those moments when you were successful. Remember, that success is defined by you! There is no fixed or outside definition of what success is. This section should be unique to your (evolving) definition.

As you identify these moments, list them out. You can include a name, a date, or anything else you want.

Speed bumps

Now, it's time to face some of the obstacles we had. So far we have cleared our mind (Get it Out) and then searched for our positive moments/successes in the year (Highlights). Now let’s get real about the tougher parts: what bumps did you roll over this year?

I like to use two columns when listing these: “In” and “Out”.

"In" - obstacles that were in my control

"Out" - obstacles that were out of my control

I don’t want to ignore either but they both need their own perspective. For example, you couldn’t control the impact COVID had on your business, so that would fall into the “Out” column. The “In” column would be “struggling to stay motivated to complete goals.”

As you identify and categorize these speed bumps, what can you learn from them? Is there a theme? Have you put any systems into place to prevent them from reoccurring?

Note: It’s not the listing that’s important here, it’s this review afterwards. When we find themes we can be proactive about next steps.

Seeds

What do you want to plant next year? We all have these seeds inside of us; pieces that we want to explore or cultivate. These could be a hobby, a professional goal, learning something new, or anything that is inside of you and is ready to come to the surface.

Start to list these out. You can include broad topics or narrow ones, just start to highlight the pieces inside you that are ready to be developed. For example, are you looking to learn something new? Start a new project?

Stoplight

Everything leading up to this is a sort of venting. The goal was to get it all out of you so that you can make some clear decisions on next steps. This is where the stoplight comes in.

Take some time to review everything you have listed in the other categories. We are now transitioning into a decision phase of the reflection. Here you will create three lists:

Red: Things I do not want to bring with me into the next year. These are actions or feelings that you are consciously choosing to release.

Yellow: Things that I already began and want to continue. Think of this as the good habits section. What did you already start that you are looking to continue?

Green: New things I want to do. These are the fresh desires you have for the new year.

For example:

Red: Waking up later than 7a

Yellow: Reading more books

Green: Starting a language course

One caveat, the goal of this exercise is not to create measurable goals from all of this, that’s a different process. The idea here is that you need time to think about your life in general.

You deserve space to think and be present for your life.

As you take time to reflect let me know what worked for you! I would love to learn how you reflect on your year and what twists you have to this process.