At the start of a New Year, we often find ourselves thinking about all the things we didn't accomplish the prior year, and we vow to accomplish them this year.
Few of us take the time to reflect on the past year and look at our successes and the experiences that we have learned from.
It's actually right around this time (the second and third week of January) that many people begin to have difficulty keeping up with their resolutions. Naturally, disappointment, frustration, and low self-esteem are likely to follow from what we perceive as "failure."
So rather than beating yourself up for not being able to stick to a New Year's Resolution, try taking a different route.
I'd like to offer you a coaching exercise that will help you reflect on what's really important to you, and create meaningful intentions for 2009. It is this kind of self-awareness that ultimately leads to action in the areas of your life that are most important to you.
To do this coaching exercise, set aside 15-30 minutes to think about, write about, or talk about your answers to the following questions:
Looking back on 2008...
What were your successes?
What did you do or accomplish that you haven't given yourself credit for?
What unrealistic expectations did you hold yourself to?
What one thing would you do over, if given the opportunity?
What lessons did you learn from that experience?
Looking forward in 2009...
What one goal did you want to accomplish in 2008 that you weren't able to?
Why was this goal important to you?
What got in your way of achieving this goal?
What are you willing to do differently to accomplish this goal in the future?
Looking at yourself...
Who are the people that you are most grateful for?
Which of your strengths and skills are you most grateful for?
What is your best quality?
How will you use these strengths, skills, and qualities to help you move forward in life?
Would you like to share what comes up for you in this coaching exercise? If so, please feel free to post your thoughts and reflections in the comments!
I started this exercise with a very optimistic mindset. I thought this exercise would help me get clarity on what to focus on in the coming year and allow me to plan specific steps that would lead to greater success and satisfaction. That's something I would really like and I was looking forward to making some progress in that regard by doing this exercise.
However, in retrospect, overall this has been a very disconcerting exercise. It has brought me face to face with my cluelessness about what specific changes I need to make or things I need to do to improve my life. It has reminded me of the progressive deterioration of my financial situation, living situation, job situation and executive mental functions over the last 6+ years. It has made me acutely aware that not only do I not know what to do to turn things around, but the things that I thought would help in the past, and which I devoted so much effort to have actually been at best unsuccessful, and at worst counter productive.
This feeling of cluelessness is all the more disheartening when I consider the many professionals and advisors I have consulted to get some help in figuring out what I should do to improve my circumstances. Reviewing their suggestions show how frequently I receive conflicting advice and how few specific recommendations form advisors that I can operationalize. So not only am I feeling more disempowered than when I started the exercise, but I don't feel like there are others that I can turn to for help though this situation.
The one good skill I have in the face of the past years of increasing set-backs is that I've learned how to achieve peacefulness in any moment, by living one moment at a time, not dwelling on the painful past that can't be changed, nor fretting over an uncertain and threatening future that hasn't yet arrived. As long as I look only at this moment -- and just appreciate that I am alive in it -- I can be momentarily at peace. And I can string a number of these peaceful moments together. But they don't move forward toward anything.
To move forward I need to compare differences between moments in the past, and to imagine differences between now and moments in the future. And those examinations proved stressful, because they bring me face to face with many years of worsening circumstances despite years of intent and effort to make things better. In fact comparing circumstances over several years, it seems like things are getting worse at an accelerating rate. And that's something I didn't expect when I started the exercise.
Posted by: overwhelmed | Monday, January 19, 2009 at 06:30 AM