Year-end reflection tools/frameworks

16 min readDec 30, 2018

For the past several years during the last weeks of December, I have been reviewing my past year and planning the approaching year.

The process of reflection is evolving every year. I am putting together all the tools and frameworks together for you to see.

How do I review my year?

I do that by simply filling out a list of questions all alone. There are many tools that propose a set of questions but a fixed set of questions don’t apply to me. I pick my own questions because eventually the questions should be meaningful to you. So, feel free to keep the set of questions flexible.

Here are the list of questions:

What did I accomplish?

Force yourself to think about your achievements and times when you were proud of yourself, did something well or put a problem behind you. Make a note. Bragging is allowed. Awareness brings its own reward. Shifting your attention to what you have accomplished in the past year awakens your “Can Do!” attitude and gets you back in touch with your ability to make things happen. Remembering and writing your accomplishments is a great way to end the year.

What were my biggest disappointments?

So, what were your disappointments in the past year? Pick up your pen and write them all down. Remember when you disappointed yourself and didn’t do what you hoped to do. Recall the instances when others didn’t do what you wanted them to do. There’s more value than you can imagine in just writing these disappointments down. While it seems like something to avoid — who wants to think about all this? — I’ve always felt a great weight lift from me when I gave myself time to think about what happened rather than pretending it didn’t hurt so much. Telling the truth to yourself provides a great release, and doing it inside the Best Year Yet context shows you the way ahead. Watch out for a pitfall: I’ve listed ve accomplishments, but there are 18 disappointments on my list. See! I am a failure. It doesn’t matter in the least. Think about it. Who do you know who achieves everything on their list? Have you heard of anyone who lived without failure or disappointment? No, but you think you should or you’re trailing in the human race. And then there are regrets — things you wish you hadn’t done and things you wish you had. Let them go — except where you want to add them to your goals for next year. For now, remember, their only real value is in their lessons.

What did I learn?

Look back over your answers to the first two Best Year Yet questions to see what you’ve learned. In reviewing Question One, what you accomplished, what possible lessons do you see? Take a minute to answer the following questions:

What was the secret of my success?
What worked?
Why was I able to achieve what I did?

Now, take time to read over what you saw as your disappointments and failures.

What didn’t work, and why?
What would have worked better?
What’s the lesson?
Have I learned it yet?
Is there evidence to prove that I’ve learned it? What is it?

By the way, don’t be too hard on yourself. If you think you’ve learned the lesson, you have. There are also potential lessons. If only you’d done it differently. If only you’d done it not at all. What advice do you have for yourself? Answering Question Three gives you a big opportunity to learn, to change, to take on the challenges and make the moves you’ve been wanting to make. What would you have to do differently next time in order to have a better chance of success? Some of our lessons are things we’ve been saying to ourselves many times over the years. Why don’t you…? What did you say that for? Wouldn’t it have been better to…? What annoys us most is when we hear friends giving us the advice that’s the same as we’ve been telling ourselves for years — but haven’t heeded.

How do I limit myself and how can I stop?

The following questions are designed to help you discover your limiting beliefs. 1. How do I limit myself? As you begin to answer this question, you may come up with all kinds of answers. Write them all down. Here are a few answers given by others: • I don’t take time to think about what’s really important to me. • I’m lazy. • I don’t stand up for myself. • I spend more money than I make. 2. What has this cost me? Take time to confront the true costs. Doing so begins to loosen the grip of your past and how you think of yourself and what’s possible. Write these down. Here are a few answers given by others: • A lot of money • Relationships with people who matter to me • My health • Ful llment and contentment

What are my personal values?

Your values are your personal principles or standards — your judgment of what’s important or valuable in your life. What really gets you out of bed in the morning? Why do you work so hard? What drives you to do what you do? Your automatic response may be that you have no choice — that you are a victim of circumstances. But it’s time to go beyond that. One way of thinking about what’s important in the grand scheme of things is to think about the end of your life. How do you want to be remembered? What do you wish others to say about you as they stand around at your funeral? Above all, what do you want to be admired for? If you remember instances when you weren’t true to your values, think of them as times when you weren’t being yourself. We all make mistakes — but we can learn from them and move on. That’s life.

What roles do I play in my life?

As you de ne your roles, remember that this is your list just for now. It’s often necessary to drop old roles, add new ones or change some as circumstances change. To clarify all the roles you play, think about these questions. What are my current responsibilities? What am I accountable for in my life? What do I do during the day? The weekends? What would I call the role I’m playing as I’m doing each of these activities? Take a look at your full list of roles. If there are more than seven or eight, I strongly recommend that you consolidate several roles to narrow your focus. Give up feeling overwhelmed. Set yourself up to win. Now think about how you would like to be seen carrying out each of your roles. As you begin to direct yourself to live your roles with more awareness, what guidelines or advice do you have for yourself?

Which role is my major focus for the next year?

The purpose of seventh step in the Best Year Yet process is to create a breakthrough in your life by selecting one of your roles as your major focus of attention. Other roles will have goals as well, but there will be one area where you’ll want or need to make the most improvement or biggest change right now. To help yourself select your major focus, ask yourself these questions: • If I could put one problem behind me, once and for all, what would it be? • In which role do I want to have a breakthrough? • Which role do I most want to feel a sense of mastery in?

What are my goals for each role?

In my experience, the goal factor is the most important distinguishing characteristic of truly e ective people. It is far more important, for example, than a person’s education or intelligence. But goals alone are not nearly enough. People whose goals are aligned with their values achieve more satisfaction and ful llment. Value-driven goals lead to behavior and performance that express who we are. The more speci c your goal, the more quickly you’ll see what to do and be able to nd the resources to achieve it. Nonspeci c goal: Reduce my stress level and increase my peace of mind. Speci c goal: Meditate at least 15 minutes each morning. Goals must have deadlines, and you may want to set milestones throughout the year, too. Annual goal: Write my rst book and nd an agent and publisher. Three-month milestone: Write chapter outline and contact three potential agents. To set your goals, begin by selecting one of your roles and writing down all the related areas of your life, then jot down the goals you have for yourself for the next year, remembering the guidelines for setting powerful goals. The guidelines for powerful goals are:

Be specific
Be measurable
Be time-framed
Start with a verb
Be appropriate: a result or process goal
Remember to place your list of personal values beside you as you review your goals.
Catch goals that could lead you away from those values.
What are my top ten goals for the next year?

While I’m not suggesting that you need to eliminate all but 10 of the goals you’ve set, I strongly recommend that you select the 10 that are most important to you. You can certainly work on the rest of your goals and achieve them. But a list of your top 10 goals for the next year gives you a map with which to plan your journey. Return to the list of goals you’ve set for each of your roles. Highlight the “musts.” Next, consider them. Are there any con icting goals? Can you achieve them without sacri cing your values, or perhaps, your health? You may have to select a di erent goal for a particular role. Once you have the right 10, look at the words and the way each goal is written. Revise, rewrite and reword until you’re completely satis ed. Next, looking over these 10, which goal will give the greatest return on your investment of time and energy? Place that goal in the №1 position. Then, review the remaining goals, again selecting the goal with the greatest return. Repeat this process until you have a prioritized list of the 10.

How can I make sure I achieve my top 10 goals?

The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do, but the absence of doing it. The E-S-P model for achieving goals is helpful.

E = External.

When we’re aware of the external factors, or what we need to do in order to move toward our goal, we’re on our way.

S = Support.

Using a coach, a colleague or a friend — any form of support — helps us identify what we need to do, and supports us to shift to our empowering paradigm.

P = Paradigm.

Our paradigm, or the way we see a problem, leads to success or failure. Removing internal obstacles makes the greatest di erence to our success. Focus on your new paradigm as much as you do your goals. Then use the E-S-P solution to get yourself moving again anytime you feel stuck.

Here’s the E-S-P solution:

E — What’s the next step?

S — Who can provide the support I need?

P — Does the way I see the problem lead to success? Disappointments will come, but it’s possible to avoid many of them by becoming aware of some of the pitfalls and the damage they can cause to your enthusiasm. Then you can see them coming and sidestep them rather than falling into them.

Need for Balance for a Successful Life.

In our lives, we play many roles — employee, boss, father/mother, son/daughter, and many more. For your life to be successful, you need to be great at all these roles. Getting the right balance between your different roles is a universal need. You may succeed or you may not, but its worth striving for achieving that balance.

My things that matter:

I’ve six things that matter:

Be a great husband.
Be a great son’/in-law.
Look after my family, stay deeply connected to my parents and siblings.
Be a great friend.
Have a great relationship with myself — emotional, spiritual and physical.
Be a great colleague, excel at work.
To the world — a responsible and sensitive citizen

That’s me in the middle. You can imagine the grey lines represent energy I put into each of the six things and the green hexagon represents me having balance across all six things that matter.

Wheel of Life

Wheel of Life is a powerful process that you can start applying right away to become your own coach.

The Wheel of Life life process is powerful in its simplicity. It will get you clear, balanced and focused on the right things.

Coach Yourself To Success

Life is going to keep pulling you in different directions. One day your family will demand all your energy. Another day your career will be all-encompassing. Still others will be occupied by your focus on getting finances under control. As the days go by, life will continue to pull you here and there, unless you decide to live life differently and in a more balanced and planful way.

You have the power to be your own coach, and the Wheel of Life is a powerful tool for doing just that. Through spending less than 30 minutes charting out the areas of your life and identifying the right set of goals, you can stand calmly in the center of the storm of life, knowing that you are focused on the right things.

This doesn’t mean that you will never get yanked around in different directions; it just means that you will be able to get centered and refocused more easily when the inevitable curveballs of life get thrown your way. A teacher of mine, Tony Robbins, is fond of saying “Without a vision, people perish.” But how do we create a vision? How do we navigate ourselves out of a tricky situation life has thrown at us? The wheel of life is the starting point for getting clear on what matters most to you in your life, where there is anything out of balance and coming clean about what needs to be done to close the gap between your current situation and your ideal state of being.

The Step By Step Wheel Of Life Process

The Wheel of Life process is used by coaches and psychologists around the world. It is startlingly effective and takes just minutes to do. Follow the steps below to create your Wheel of Life today. Set aside about 30 minutes for this exercise. If you can spare a full hour, that is even better. Take your time and put serious thought into each step.

Step 1. Create your Wheel of Life

Make a large circle on your blank sheet of paper. Divide this circle into eight slices like a pizza. This circle represents your entire life (or if you are doing this for your business, all the different aspects of your business).

Step 2. Identify your areas of focus

There are many interconnected parts to our lives. They each are critical to our success and happiness, but the way we each think about them is unique for each person. In this step, you will label each slice of your Wheel of Life to represent a part of life that is important to you. Use language that is comfortable to you.

To get you started, I’ve listed below a laundry list of different areas of life that I hear clients mention when I work with them on creating life wheels. Use these areas as though starters for you.

There are eight primary categories that most people start with when building a Wheel of Life:

Health
Career
Finances
Relationships
Giving/Contribution
Personal Growth
Fun
Spirituality

In addition to the categories above, some people prefer to be more specific with their categories. Here some other areas to consider:

Fitness
Family
Friendship
Home
Hobbies
Learning
Travel
Food/Diet
Business

What areas of your life are worth you time and attention and focus?

Go ahead and label the outside of each slice of your Wheel of Life with those areas of your life.

If you run out of slices to label, just subdivide one of the areas into two. Keep doing that until you have as many areas as needed. If you Wheel of Life gets messy or cramped, just redraw it on a fresh sheet of paper.

Step 3. Get clear on your current situation

We can all grow and improve, and my guess is if you are reading this blog you are committed to this notion of personal growth. To grow, we first need to get clear on where we are right now in each part of our life, and where we want to be in the future.

Imagine that each slice on your Wheel of Life can be measured regarding your satisfaction with that particular area of your life today compared with where you want to be in the future. How far in the future? You get to decide!

I like to set goals for the year. However, you may choose a difference measure of time that works for you. In this case, imagine the center of the Wheel of Life is a rating of “0 — completely unsatisfied” and the outer edge of each slice is a rating of “10 — completely satisfied.”

Rate each area on your wheel based on how satisfied you are right now (scale of 0–10). Draw a little line across the slice and shade it in (see my image below for an example).

If you are having trouble rating your satisfaction with the categories you have identified, try asking yourself the following questions:

Health
Do you have enough energy pursue your goals every day?
Are you able to maintain a healthy weight?
Are their people who you admire as being full of health and vitality?

Career
Are you excited to go to work?
Are you learning and growing in your career?
Is your career rewarding (financially and otherwise)?

Finances
Do you feel financially secure?
Are you able to do what you want to do without constraints?
Are there things you would do if you have bigger financial resources?

Relationships
Do you have people you care about (and who care about you) in your life?
Do you have meaningful experiences with others?
Do you feel loved?

Giving/Contribution
Do you give (time, money, etc.) to others freely?
Do you feel like you are contributing to making the world a better place?
Is there a good cause you would like to support in a bigger way?

Personal Growth
Are you learning new skills?
Are you maturing?
Do you have clear and highly motivating goals for your life?

Fun
Do you laugh a lot?
Do you have fun experiences on a regular basis?
Do you make time to relax and rest?

Spirituality
Do you know what you stand for as a human being?
Do you have a deep meaning or motivation for your life?
Do you feel connected to the environment/planet/others in a real way?

Step 4. Identify your goals

Next, rate each area on your wheel based on how satisfied you want to be in the future (in 12 months or whatever time you decide on). Draw a dashed line across the slice. If you can use a different color that works too.

The difference between your shaded section and the dashed line is your growth gap! Write the difference between the two numbers outside each slice and circle it.

Congratulations, you have identified clear opportunities to improve in the most critical areas of your life!

Step 5. Create action plan for each area

Now that you have identified a clear growth gap for each area of your Wheel of Life, the next step is to come up with an action plan for each area. This is an area where a lot of people struggle. The way to come up with an action plan is to write a few things down without worrying about getting it perfect.

Ask yourself the following questions for each area in your life wheel:

What is the smallest thing I could do to make progress in this area of life TODAY?
If I was living like a “rating of 10 out of 10” for this area of my life, what would I have done to get to a 10 from where I am today?
What is one big thing that I know I need to do in this area of my life to make progress, but am scared or hesitant to do it?

Write down the answers to these three questions. They are the starting point to your action plan!

No doubt there will be other actions that you could take, but these are the first few things to get the ball rolling. Over time, continue to review your Wheel of Life (or Wheel of Business) and actions. Continue to come up with other regular actions you can take to move towards your desired goals.

Example of action plan for “Career” area of focus:
1. Complete LinkedIn profile and recommendations (Today).
3. Meet with my boss to discuss my desire to move up in my job (Next week).
3. Take presentation skills workshop (This month).

Step 6. Take immediate action.

Procrastination is the bane of existence for me. I know the clients I work with struggle with it too. Intelligence has nothing to do with it either. In fact, I find that people who are smarter tend to be especially adept at coming up with reasons for delaying things!

Statistics show an alarming prevalence of procrastination, reaching over 70% among college students and starting at 20% in the general adult population.(*) These statistics come from studies that focus on menial tasks (like studying or paying bills). I’m curious what procrastination rates are like for important stuff, like calling that tough customer or having a difficult conversation with your boss or family member. I’d imagine the rates would be even higher. It’s a big deal.

The final step in your Wheel of Life process is to take immediate action against the most important areas for you. Pick the top 3 (at least!) areas of you Wheel of Life that require immediate action and just do it!

By the time you hit this step in the process you have already written down some small actions you can take for each area. Now all you need to do is not delay and make it happen. Don’t leave the site of you Wheel of Life activity without taking action!

Call to Action

The Wheel of Life technique is a way to zero in on the most important areas that are worthy of your attention. Set aside at least half and hour to go through this exercise.

What areas show up as needing more work? What ideas do you have for making progress today against those areas?