Episode 94: 4 Things I Do at the End of Every Year for Self-Reflection
Do you have a practice to slow down at the end of the year before you transition into the next one? Over the past few years I've done 4 things consistently and today I'm sharing all of them with you in detail.
Stay tuned to learn more about:
The new tradition my husband and I have started for New Years Eve
Ways that I use my journals throughout the year to memory keep and keep track of my life progress
The questions and prompts I ask myself at the end of every year to reflect back
The resource from another creative I download every single year
Make sure to tag me if you tune in and let me know what you'll be doing this year to reflect on 2019!
Resources mentioned during the show:
Transcript:
You're listening to episode 94 of the Mindful Productivity podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Steckler, and today I'm going to be talking about four things that I like to do at the end of every year for self reflection. Now this is a time of year where it's really chaotic and really busy, but there's something really special about making intentional time to slow down. And I don't know about you, but kind of when some of the holidays hit, like once they happen, it's kind of like there's this stillness, like all the chaos has settled. And I really love to take this time kind of like the last week of the year, especially to really calm my nerves, calm my mind, and do some deep reflection. So we're going to be talking about all of the things that I do that I've done the past couple of years. And I'm also going to be sharing with you some of my favorite resources, some that I've created, but also some that someone other people have created that really helped me do this and dig deeper. Another thing I'm really excited about is that this is going to be the second year in a row and I'm thinking this might become a tradition where my husband and I are actually going to a cabin in the woods for New Year's.
Last year we went out to a state park on New Year's Eve and it was so amazing. We were like the only ones there. We brought our bulldog Bella and we brought beers and candles and a little bit of snack food and we just totally relaxed. We made a fire and ended up raining a little bit. It was so incredible. And I actually did a bunch of journaling last year when I was at the cabin and found so much like amazing inner wisdom and kind of like some self healing things that I really needed to tap into. And so when I was talking to my husband this year and I was like, can we do that again? But this time, can we go for two nights? He was totally on board. So I'm actually going to be bringing my journal with me again to the cabin. We're going to the same one and I'm going to be doing some journaling there as well. So if this is something that you're like, oh, I love that idea, or if you do something that's a little bit different on New Year's or New Year's Eve instead of going out, I would love to hear what that is.
I always think it's really interesting to hear how people kind of celebrate the end of the year and move into the next one. So without further ado, let's go ahead and jump in and I'm going to walk you through all these things. Now if you're at home and you happen to be sitting down and super cozy, grab a journal because chances are that you're going to want to take notes on all of these different ideas and prompts that I have for you.
Welcome to the mindful productivity podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Steckler, and this is the place to be, to live a more mindful and productive life. If you're ready to turn daily chaos into calm and start your days with intention, then get ready to join me as we dive deep into mindful living and personal productivity, it's time to connect with your true self so you can live the life you want to live. And it all starts now.
All right, you guys, before we jump into today's episode, I just want to remind you that there are tons of resources for you to go check out over on my website@mindfulproductivityblog.com. Seriously, if you haven't went over there to check out past podcast episodes or the blog, you're missing out on tons of amazing resources that you can opt into and download. I don't even know how many worksheets and freebies I've created over the years that really help you live a more mindful, intentional, and productive life. So if you haven't gone over to the website, what's stopping you? There's tons of stuff there for you to check out. Also, please come say hi to me on Instagram. I'm at my full productivity blog and I cannot tell you how much it makes my day to have conversations with you guys in the DM. So don't be shy. Come on over. Follow me there. And I'm always super active in my stories. And check out the highlight reel too. I actually update those all the time. There's tons of stuff on there and I'm always really, really active on Instagram. So if you're listening to the podcast and you haven't went to either of those two places, go do it right now because I'd love to find out that you're a listener, right?
I have no idea that you're listening unless you come tell me. And I'd love to give you a high five and get to know you better. All right, let's dive into these. So when it comes to the four main things that I do at the end of every year for selfreflection number one, and this may sound obvious, is that I schedule a cozy evening to reflect on the year, right? So I actually put it on my calendar, I schedule it, I make that time for myself. And then I light some candles, some holiday candles. I make a cup of peppermint tea, I put on a scarf cause those really help me stay warm. And I grab a cozy blanket from my lap and I round up all of my journals and my planners, which is kind of an obscene amount at this point, but I just really want to hit it home that it may sound obvious to schedule something right? Like, to get something done. But just like I teach my students in my latest course organizer overwhelm. Put it on your Google Calendar. Right. Like actually schedule a time. So one of the things that we talk about in that course is it's not only important to figure out what your focus projects are and what your target tasks are, but it's also really, really important to actually schedule time to actually do it.
Because if it's just sitting on a Todo list somewhere or it's sitting in your mind like, yeah, I'm going to totally do that, it's not going to happen. So put it on your Google Calendar and set a reminder. And if you want tips on how to set that all up, then definitely come join me and organize your overwhelm because we go indepth into Google Calendar training, time blocking, and so much more. So now that I have my time scheduled and I'm ready to go with the actual review process and by the way, I like to give myself at least 2 hours, but a lot of times this turns into a two or three hour block. And I know that getting that time can be difficult and it's going to look different for everybody. But in today's podcast, I'm really just sharing what I'm doing. So that's what I personally like to do is having about two to 3 hours to really go through all of this. So number two is that I take all of my journals, right, and I review my journals from the past year. And I'm going to walk you through some specifics around this so you can get some ideas for yourself.
So at the end of each let me backtrack a little bit. At the end of each quarter or season, I will often write down a recap of major highlights, both positive and difficult, and I do this to honor what I learned and experienced. So I was actually going through some of my journals before I recorded recording this podcast to be like, man, I've been looking through my journals for the past year, but I haven't went back like farther than that in a minute, right? Because at the time of this recording, it's 2019. We're coming up on a new decade. So I actually grabbed a journal back from 2015. I was still working on my Masters in Health and Wellness Coaching and was newly married to my husband, and I have a summer recap. So I'm actually going to just share briefly a couple of these things and you'll see that there's both positive and negative. So one thing is that I wrote that I went vegan on August 28 in 2015. I had totally forgotten that exact date, so I'm glad that I have that. And then I also wrote down that I finished up a really crazy term with the college.
I was at Maryland University of Integrative Health. So I wrote down that I did a cooking lab, a whole class on macronutrients, the fundamentals of behavior change, and the fundamentals of coaching. So it was four classes and it was like the most ton of credits and it was all over the summer. And I remember being very difficult because all I wanted to do was go hang outside and everything and I had so much coursework, I remember too, even just thinking about this right now. I remember that cooking lab was so fun, but it was so much work. We had to develop these recipes and it was so fun, but it was like, wow, it was really draining. So it's really neat that I created this summer recap because I totally forgot that I was immersed doing those things. And then another thing I wrote down was that we bought my husband his dream Mustang and it was like so, I mean, it was just such a serendipitous way that it happened. We found it, we just sold one car, so we were looking for another one. And anyway, we got him his dream Mustang. And then I think not even four months later, he's totally fine, by the way, but it was total case.
He was in an accident and the whole car was completely totaled. And I remember it was devastating to him. But it was also so frustrating because I ended up being on the phone for like I'm not even kidding, probably at least 10 hours a week just trying to get everything sorted out and it was so infuriating. But anyway, I wrote down both these positive and negative, so to speak, experiences, because I think it's really important to write down both. And obviously it depends on the lens that you're looking in things. But when I look back on my life, I don't want to look back at my journals and see that I've only written down the good. I want to also look down and see what I experienced because even the difficult things, or maybe the things that at the time when you're writing it, you feel like you're super complainy, you'll look back on it and you'll honor yourself. You'll know that at that point in your life, it was difficult, right? You were complaining that much for a reason. And so it's really nice to look back and be like, wow, I really grew from that.
I forgot that I was having a hard time. I forgot that all those things were happening all at the same time during that season of my life. So consider doing that. Consider making a kind of quarterly or seasonal recap if you're a journalist, and obviously I'm speaking about journals right now, but you could definitely use something like Notion or a Google Doc. You definitely don't have to write things down. But I just love to be able to physically open a journal and see what kind of was going on. So I take time to review those quarterly recaps. And again, if I've made them right, I'm not perfect, I'm not always consistent, but that's really helpful. And then I also like to look back and review, kind of like remembering all that I accomplished. And there's a couple of ways that I'm doing this specifically this year. And in step four I'm going to be talking about some specific prompts that I ask myself. But one thing I'm doing this year, and it's fun because this is actually the first year that I'm getting to do this with these two journals because I literally published and created them a year ago.
So it's been a year that I've been using them and it's the first time I get to like, look at them and look at everything that I wrote in them. So one thing I'm doing specifically is inside the Mindful Productivity Planner, there's something I call success lists and I talk in depth about how to use these and get the most out of these in episode 50 of the podcast, but it's really going to be fun too. So, like, at the time of this podcast, I haven't done all this yet, right? These are things I do, but I haven't done this yet. So I'm excited to go through the Mindful Productivity Planner and go through all these success lists and see if you're not familiar with how this works and see kind of like there's basically a success list in every single month of the Planner and it's undated so you can start at any time. But there's a success list that asks you like, what are the things they're basically it's like wins, right? What are the things that are happening for me, like, that I have more or less not had control over and they're just like, happening for me and then what are the things that I'm doing right, that I invested my energy in and like made happen?
So there's like two different ways there. So it's going to be really fun to look back on those because I've been writing down things both small wins and bigger wins throughout the year. So it'll just be fun to look at that. The other thing I'm actually really excited about doing and I was actually going to make this a task or like a focus project that I work on regardless, but I'm going to go through all of my pages inside the Daily Productivity and Brain Dump Book. If you guys have been following my Instagram stories lately, you know, I've been talking about this a lot and it's because I use it like nearly every day right now. I'm kind of obsessed with going to this local coffee shop and getting avocado toast and they give you endless cups of black coffee. So I leave there totally wired and ready to go, but I've really been enjoying before I start taking action on stuff. I love going to this coffee shopper or wherever. The library is amazing too and doing a brain dump and there's structured templates in here that really help me and I take time to go through there and declutter my mind and really kind of like organize my thoughts.
And then the daily productivity page helps you map out two main focus projects for the day and then your target tasks within those, right. That all kind of line up. And I'm just like I'm getting overwhelmed thinking about it because it's been so, so helpful. And so anyway, I'm going to go back through all of those pages because there's a lot of ideas that I generated in those brain dump sections that I haven't taken action on. Right. And one thing I did this year, this past year, was my word was focused. I want to do another episode on that one as well. But I really focused on moving the needle in my business. So if it wasn't something that I felt really passionate about or that my audience was begging for or that was going to move the needle in my business or make my business more profitable, then I wasn't going to. Take action on it, because that was a big mistake I made. The first couple of years of my business is that I was just kind of like whatever I feel like without any regard for strategy. And it really made it kind of hard to kind of get stuff off the ground.
So anyway, I'm going to go back through those brain dump pages and write down and kind of highlight some of the ideas that didn't happen and kind of cross out the ones that I think are like, oh, no, I totally don't want to do that, and essentially kind of create a bank of some of these ideas. And a lot of them are like podcast episode ideas. Some of them are I have a ton of ideas in there for like, other journals and planners because that's like, now my new addiction. And if you want to learn how to do the same thing I do, run a course called Publish with Purpose, where I walk you through how to self publish and create and format your own journal or planner in less than 60 days on Amazon. But it's been so fun to come up with all these different ideas. So I'm going to do that, and then I'm going to actually take all those things and put them into my template that I have. It's like a Google Sheet template that I have. Again, this is something I teach and organize or overwhelm, and it helps you kind of outline all of your ideas and categorize them.
So that's going to be something I do. And regardless of that whole project, I'm also just excited to review those pages because I don't even remember all the ideas I came up with. So that's going to be a huge undertaking to go through that. But I'm really excited to do that. So to recap, so far we talked about step one, which is to schedule time and put it on your calendar to reflect on your year and step two is to review all of your journals. Again, these are just things that I'm doing, so your steps might look a little bit different. Okay, here's the third thing I do every year. I think this is only the third year I'm doing this, but this is amazing. And this is an amazing, free resource. And I think I actually heard about this through Catherine over at the Blissful Mind. Love her blog. And I remember one year she actually sent out an email talking about this resource. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Anything she recommends, I'm like, okay, it's going to be good. And so Susannah Conway actually creates something every year. You may have heard of it.
It's called unravel your year. And it's this super amazing, comprehensive I mean, I think it's like 660 plus pages, PDF download that you can download and print. And it helps you do just that. Unravel your year. It's completely free, which I would literally pay for this every year. Like, I would pay good money to have this every year. Like, Susannah, if you're listening, I would totally pay for this every year. I really also selfishly want her to turn this into, like, a physical journal I could buy, because I just love the idea of doing that. So, Susanna, if you're listening to this, come talk to me. Let's talk about publish with purpose, and let's turn this into a journal. But anyway, it's an amazing resource, and I want you to go check it out. I think you can always go to it. Yeah, I have the link here. It's Susannaconway. Comunravel. And her name is Susannah Conway.com. Unravel. Go download it. She's amazing. She's an amazing human. And I really, really enjoy this resource so much. And it's seriously pure magic. Like, I don't say that about a lot of things, but she has these amazing prompts that are so simple, but, like, they just trigger these amazing responses from you, from, like, your higher self.
So this is something I definitely will be bringing when I go to my cabin with all of my candles, and I'm super excited about it. And it's also the resource that really got me into choosing my word of the year. So she walks you through that whole process as well. I think she even has another course that helps you walk, that walks you through how to choose your word. It's just she's got some amazing resources, so please go check her out because you won't regret it. And it's something you're going to be going through every year. I think every, like, around Thanksgiving, I'm always, like, stalking her website. Like, is it ready? Is it ready yet? It's so awesome, and I'm so grateful that she's been doing this every single year. Okay, here's number four. So the fourth thing I do at the end of the year is I surprise journal my way through the past year and my discoveries, and I want to share with you some of the prompts that I ask myself and some of the lists that I make that help me through this. And these are simple things, but I'm telling you, journaling and self reflection and like goal setting, it doesn't have to be super complicated.
Sometimes it's the most simple questions that help you the most. So I'm going to go through some of these and I'll put these in the show notes as well, but these are super helpful. So I reflect back on what I made as priorities. So I look back and this can be helpful to look back at kind of my master task lists and my projects and kind of like what happened in my business, but also my personal life. I reflect back on what I made a priority in the past year, and in doing so, I also see what I neglected, right. I see the things that I didn't make a priority and it helps me kind of figure out, okay, where does the pendulum need to swing in which direction this year so that I can kind of start to bring it back to the middle, right? So I can kind of try to start creating a little bit more balance in my life, if that exists. It also really helps bring some accountability to yourself, right? Because sometimes we'll think, oh my gosh, the whole year went by and I didn't get a chance to blah, blah, blah, when really I didn't make it a priority, right.
I chose not to invest my time in that. Other things may have gotten in the way, but I still made other things happen, but not this. Just an interesting observation, right? I also reflect on habit changes, good and bad, and I have something coming out that I'm really excited to implement in the new year, and that's my energy driver and habit tracker. It's a digital Google Sheet spreadsheet that helps you identify the four pillars of your energy drivers, what those are, and what you need to be doing, the action steps you need to be doing on a daily basis. And it helps you track them daily like a habit tracker. But then it auto populates with tons of data and information that really will, like, open your eyes. So stay tuned for that. There's going to be a whole podcast episode on that coming up as well. I also write down I make a list of what I'm proud of, what I'm proud of myself for not only just what I did and what I accomplished, what I created, but who I was. What were some of the trying moments that I went through, what were some of the difficult conversations I had, what were some of the boundaries that I had to set and then make a list of what I'm proud of.
I also write down what was difficult, right. What are the lessons that I learned, what are some of the things that I had to go through that seriously just sucked in the moment that I really didn't want to do or that happened and I somehow got through them but they were really, really hard. I want to write those things down because again, there's lessons within them and I want to come back and explore it if needed, right? Not everything. Some things have happened. You move forward, you let them go. It was what it was. But there's other places where I'm like, there's something there for me, there's like a silver lining and there's a little nugget that I want to go back and check out. I also write down what I need to be patient with myself for. So this can be a reflection on the past year, but it also helps me think about as I moving ahead into the new year, what do I need to keep in mind? One thing I'm telling myself right now is that the past couple of months, like starting in, I think it was in September of this past year, it was like the first time that I really was aware of that, like virgo energy and I just went nuts.
I mean, I created published with purpose and all the course content. I had 14 amazing students in the first round. Students created all these amazing journals. We did a lot of crazy amazing stuff. And then I created Organizer Overwhelming and I was like working with clients and there were so many amazing things that were happening. But because of all those things, because I'm human, I'm also being like, girl, you got to slow down. You need to be patient with yourself as you enter into the new year because you're going to need some breaks, right? That is not sustainable, right? Like you put in a lot of hard work and it felt good and it felt like the right time, but that was a season and it's okay now to slow it down. Also I write down what I must forgive myself for. So maybe there's something that you felt like you failed at this past year and it's really important to not only forgive yourself for maybe letting yourself down, but also forgive yourself for judging yourself. Another question I ask myself is where did I spend my time this past year? Now if I really want to get super meta, if I've taken time to like actually do some time management tracking, right, and something like Clockify or something, then I can actually go look at that.
And I do that for projects, but not necessarily other time stuff. But I can actually ask myself like, where do I spend the majority of my time now? One thing, one great place to find out some of this information is where we're spending your time on your phone, right? So if you have an iPhone, that's what I use. You can go on there and it'll tell you your screen time. What you've been doing. Instagram now has that feature too, which I love and I love that it will send me a little reminder once I've hit about an hour a day on there, which I've actually been pretty good at sticking to the past couple of months. Yay me. But I love taking a look at where I've been spending my time. And one thing I've noticed is that I spent a lot of time watching YouTube videos the past couple of months and watching The Crown and a ton of other shows and I really had a lot of fun doing that. But as I move into the new year, I really want to get back into reading and a lot of other things. I'm going to be talking about something I call content fasting in a couple of episodes.
Here we'll go more into like what that is and what I mean by that. But I really want to get clear on not only how I've spent my time in the past year, but what I'm going to be spending on my time on in the future. So leading into that, I also write down lists, like shows I was obsessed with, books I read. And if you go back actually to episode ten, way back into 2018, there's an amazing episode with my friend Dana where we talk about the power of list making and we just spend the whole episode basically like listing lists of lists and like all these different lists that you can make. And so that's something that you can do throughout the year, but that's something that's fun to do at the end of the year as well. And then the last thing I do that I guess is kind of like a bonus number five is that I love to write a letter to my future self. Now, if you go listen to episode 96, which is coming up, that is where I'm going to be talking about the I'm going to be sharing with you my closing ceremony and annual review workshop.
And in there I have a whole template for how to structure out the letter that you write to your future self. But I actually use a website. It's called future me.org. I tell everyone about this website. I've been telling my clients about it for years. Every time someone works with me, I'm like, don't write a letter to your future self. But I do this and I recap kind of what I've been journaling about, what my realizations were, how I want to spend my time. And I don't so much predict the future because one thing I've learned is that it can really suck to get a letter from your past self being like, you're going to be just like the most fit and amazing, like, super rich person ever. And then you get there and you're like, well that sucks. I let myself down. But instead I think it's fun to. Report what's been going on now, right? So, like clockwork, if you're doing this every year, one thing that's really cool is if you set time, like, let's say on December 30 every year, you're going to make time to do this little ritual for yourself.
And you also send a letter to yourself in the future on December 30. Then guess what? How cool is that going to be? You're going to get a letter from your future self and you're going to be able to reflect on the past year and have your past self be telling you about that year, right? Oh my God, it's so mad at amazing. So I love doing that so, so much. Okay. I also want to dive into telling you about another resource that you can use that's going to be available, like I mentioned on episode 96 of the podcast. So on episode 96, I'm going to be sharing with you my annual review and closing ceremony workshop. So this is actually a workshop I did live. I've repurposed the audio and I'm going to be helping you reflect on the past year and set both boundaries and intentions for the year ahead. This is the perfect way to wrap up the year slowly and adapt to the new one. And it can also be done at any time or during any life transition or new chapter that you're going through. So in episode 96, there's going to be a guided workbook that you can also download and I've also included in the show notes page the video presentation of the actual workshop.
So if you're one of those people that loves to watch a video and see the slides go by and me talking about it, then you'll be able to watch that as well. Again, that's going to be coming out on episode 96. And if you want to get there quickly, you'll be able to go mindful Productivity Podcast Closing Ceremony and it will bring you to all of that, the downloadable PDF workbook that accompanies. This is freaking beautiful. I'm really proud of it. I think you're going to get a lot out of it and I'd love to hear if you participate in that. So make sure to tag me on Instagram once that goes live. Okay, you guys, thank you so much for listening and as always, I want to remind you that you can find more resources, journals, courses, and information about working with me one on one by visiting Mindful Productivity Podcast. You've enjoyed listening to this episode or any of the others, please head on over to itunes and leave a written review. This helps me out so much. Next week on the podcast, I have Wendy Neal joining the show. She's truly an expert in productivity and time management and she's one of the students in my course published with purpose.
And so we're going to be talking all about the journal that she created in less than 60 days and selfpublished it on Amazon. The journal is called Organize your Mind. It's a priority planner. And if you're listening to this, go check it out on Amazon. You can search for an Amazon. You can search a Wendy meal on Amazon. It will pop up. It is seriously so helpful. I've already been using it for a couple of weeks now and it's really, really helped my brain map out. Kind of like what I'm doing every day and when I have scheduling stuff and I'm not going to spoil any more of the amazing stuff that we're going to be talking about on the podcast. But if you're interested in learning more about the Get Things Done method and incorporating some of that into with Bullet journaling, then definitely listen. Stay tuned because Wendy talks about it in depth on episode 95. Alright you guys, I will see you next week. So glad that you are here and I hope you have an amazing week ahead.
