New Year, New Opportunities: Learn Deeply from Last Year!
Use the following categories and prompts to complete a full circle year in review of yourself, your experiences, and your personal growth during the course of the 2023 calendar year. Please use as much writing space as you may need to fully complete these prompts. This exercise is intended to be a tool to document your growth and change, and to help you become more conscious of your own development, patterns, and learning. Like life itself sometimes, it may feel like a roller coaster while you review these categories and make yourself these lists. However, you are in complete control over this process and the purpose for following it is to give you a more grounded, authentic, centered, and solid place to begin your NEW year!
Like a Virgin – New Experiences
What COMPLETELY NEW experiences did you have during the year? What did you do? Who were you with? What was new about the experience? Was it challenging? Exciting? Terrifying? Soul stealing? Gut wrenching? Awful? The best. thing. EVER.?
(I always include travels to new places, different combinations of people, and there’s often some grief to deal with here as well. Most of us don’t ONLY have wonderful experiences in our lives.)
The School of (hard) Knocks – Things You Learned
What lessons did your life teach you this year? What new insights have you gained about yourself? What lessons do you *suspect* you had been struggling with for years and finally broke through to a new level of understanding this year? (HINT: often, these lessons come from really painful experiences)
You’re a Rock Star - Things You Achieved
It’s always worthwhile to reflect on your own achievements and accomplishments. Think in terms of mind, body, and spirit realms. Career accomplishments? Family progress? Setting and reaching goals in any realm of life? Surprise achievements or rewards? The more we acknowledge, celebrate, and savor our achievements, the more gratitude we can feel for our lives! And gratitude is one of the highest frequencies we can resonate, which helps us attract more for which to be grateful!
Everybody Hurts – Losses, grief, and painful experiences
This section is for somber reflection about any loss, grief, and pain you have experienced, dear one. Have compassion and love for yourself as you remember any and all grief or loss this year has brought, from the death of a loved one to the loss of a partner or business. Loss comes in many forms and grief takes on many guises in our lives.
Taking the time to acknowledge and reflect on feeling grief is one of the ways we can honor our experiences and turn them into meaningful parts of our lives. Grief is not for nothing! Grief helps us know what’s truly important to us, and can help us re-focus on ideas and prospects to generate more connections that, if lost, would threaten to tear us apart.
Change is the ONLY Constant – What were this year’s BIG CHANGES?
Everything from job changes to major life events to moves across the country or even just moves around to the corner office sometimes cause BIG, BIG change in our lives. List at least (3) big changes in your life that have come about over the past 12 months.
ÜBER-YOU – What obstacles did you overcome this year? How did you overcome them?
Please take stock of your abilities to leap tall buildings with a single bound… or at least identify problems and find solutions that work to move you forward. As you reflect on major hurdles from the year, ask yourself what “superpowers” you possessed in order to keep going in spite of them.
Knowledge is Power – What “shadow” parts of yourself did you become consciously aware of this year? We all have aspects of ourselves to which we are blind, or not aware of consciously. Life has a way of holding up mirrors to help us see our way around our own corners. Are there any aspects of yourself you discovered this year that you were not aware of beforehand? Or perhaps you’ve discovered some causes for some of the shadow parts you had already begun to be conscious of… sometimes it takes a while for a shadow to reveal itself completely to you.
The Dark Side of the Moon – Dark Aspects of Your Self You Learned to Accept
Part of being human is being imperfect. We all have parts of ourselves of which we are not proud. However, whatever they are, those parts are still part of us and we are divinely imperfect and therefore must learn peace with ourselves to feel at peace in our lives. What darkness have you now faced and fully accepted as part of your experience in this life?
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Light Aspects of Your Self You Learned to Accept
Another part of being human is our amazing ability to love, to shine light on the darkness, and to bring light and love to others. When we shine our light, we feel more open and oftentimes more vulnerable, so many of us shy away from our light out of fear or embarrassment or self-doubt. What lightness have you discovered and accepted within yourself this year?
YOU’RE YOUR INSPIRATION – What BIG ideas did you have this year that (still) really inspire you to act?
Is there anything you need to complete or gain closure on or clarity about in order to step confidently into your NEW YEAR?
RELATIONSHIP REVIEW – Who? What? WHY?
Part 1: Existing Relationships that flourished or developed positively or that you’re even happier with now than you were at the turn of the last new year. (think friends, intimates, family, community members, etc.)
Part 2: Existing relationships that lapsed, hurt, failed, stopped, or developed negatively this year so that you’re less happy (or completely miserable or whatever you are that’s not happy or happier) now than you were at the turn of the last new year.
Part 3: Based on what you now know about your existing relationships, what new, better, or different relationships do you desire to nurture, develop, enhance, or create during the new year?
By taking the time to go through this exercise, you will learn a lot about yourself and what might be there perfect starting place towards making solid plans to make 2024 your best year yet!
