It’s an annual tradition of mine – to celebrate, reflect and capture the meaningful bits of the past year and to reflect and focus on the year ahead. I encourage you to make some time for a year-end/new year reflection. Questions are useful to guide this reflection and each year, I offer 12 questions to consider.
Here are this year’s 12 Questions (some are brand new and some you may have seen from past year’s list):
THE YEAR PAST:
1) What went well? Consider all dimensions of your life experience and think small and big…it all counts!
2) In what ways did you grow and evolve in the ‘evolution of you’? This is an important question in all our life stages — and especially for anyone in the so-called ‘retirement’ years. For those who may have ‘retired’ past careers, it doesn’t mean you retire the need to grow and evolve. In fact, this area is most salient for folks in this stage of life. Gotta y’a thinking??
3) What were some key lessons for you personally in 2011? For those of you exploring options for your post-career lifestage – what have you learned? This stage of life sometimes calls for trial and error…what lessons did those trials and errors offer?
4) What do you need to clean-out or let go of right now to be ready to start fresh in 2012? Old outdated retirement myths?? Limiting beliefs about aging that get in the way of you creating a lifestage filled with meaning, growth and adventure? Toss ’em out before they bring y’a down!
5) What personal accomplishments are you most proud of from the past year? For many people, their accomplishments were associated with their careers. If you’ve retired that career – it’s all the more important for your retirement life planning to include stuff that you can feel good about. Accomplishments come in many forms…think beyond career…think all dimensions of life!
6) If there was a theme for 2011 for you personally, what would it be? i.e. “This was the year of ____.”
THE YEAR AHEAD:
7) What do you want for yourself in the year ahead and in what ways can you take responsibility for making that happen?
8 ) What strengths (name at least 3) will you deliberately use more of in the year ahead to realize your goals?
9) In what ways will you take care of yourself to maintain your “Mojo” – resilience, energy, inspiration and sense of wellbeing?
10) What are your learning goals this year? If you had a ‘learning agenda’ what might be on that list? If you thought you’d learned all there is to know and retirement is the time to rest and stop learning then you’re in trouble….this is the attitude that leads to a very unfufulfilling (and for some, downright ‘depressing’ ) retirement. Gotta have that grey matter pumping…and the mojo working…learning is a big part of that. Get cracking!
11) In what ways will you contribute something to the ‘greater good’ of _____ (choose a community or communities of choice)?
12) If the year ahead is to have a personal theme for you, what would that be? i.e. “This will be the year of ____”
To a season of joy and celebration – may you complete the year in good health and spirits. And my you look forward to a shiny new year with fresh eyes, energy and empowerment to create the year you want!
Eileen
