Reflect, Celebrate & Embrace The Year Gone By

Dr Monika M Dass advises, this De-cember: de-clutter, de-tach, de-lete

Reflecting on the past year involves looking back at your experiences, accomplishments, and challenges to gain a better understanding of your journey and set intentions for the future. To do this, find a quiet space to journal your thoughts, acknowledge both highs and lows, and identify areas of growth. It is also helpful to practice gratitude and to consider the people who have been important to you over the year. 

Steps for reflection:

1. Create a safe and quiet space: Find a calm place where you can be undisturbed to focus on your thoughts.
2. Document your experiences: Journaling is a great way to capture your thoughts, feelings, and memories from the year. You can also use other methods like creating a memory box or voice memos.

Analyse your year:

1. List your accomplishments: Acknowledge what you have achieved, no matter how small.
2. Review challenges: Look at the difficulties you faced and what you learned from them.
3. Assess your relationships: Think about how your connections with others have evolved and what you want to cultivate in the coming year.
4. Practice gratitude: Make a list of things you are thankful for from the past year. Gratitude is an important exercise; the more grateful you are, the happier you are… and things unfold the way it should… so practice this regularly… you will find many happy changes coming through in your life.
5. What am I most and least proud of? Often, we feel proud when something is important to us and we have worked hard at it; whether it be spending quality time with our children and grandchildren, finishing an important project or taking our fitness to a new level. Writing down your biggest achievement is a good indicator of your values and what matters to you. The opposite can also be true. Our least proud moments can shine a light on the areas in which we do not feel we have lived true to our values. While uncomfortable, reflecting on these moments can uncover some great clues on how you want to be in the coming year.
6. How did I surprise myself this year? Life has a habit of showing us just how capable we are. Whether it be need or desire that is driving us, often we can surprise ourselves when we dig deep. In what way did you step up this year, to overcome a challenge, support someone or achieve a goal you set out for? Perhaps your experiences this year helped you discover something new and interesting about yourself. Write it all down.
7. Where did I waste the most time? For many of us, time is a rare and precious commodity. Whittling away hours each week on something fruitless may have taken you away from achieving more this year. It may have distracted you from your goals or left you with less energy to direct towards the people you care about. Take a step back and acknowledge the precious hours you lost doing something that did not serve you this year.
8. Who should I have spent more time/less time with? Is there someone in your life that lights you up? Could you have set more time aside to spend with your nearest and dearest? Or perhaps there is someone in your life that tends to have a negative influence on you. Doing an ‘audit’ of the people you have spent time with can help you set your intentions for the year ahead and make plans to spend more (or less) time with those around you.
9. What was the best and worst use of my money? As humans, often we do not like to admit when we have made bad money choices. No matter how careful we are with the purchases we make, some just were not worth the money. Did you make a large purchase that you regret, or did you dip into savings when you should not have? On the flipside, is there something you invested in that was beneficial? Perhaps you hired a cleaner and it gave you back your Saturday mornings? Maybe you directed some surplus cash into super, or maybe buying a coffee machine saved you countless café-bought coffees. Large or small, often we make money choices that really make a difference.

Future Intentions:

1. What is the single most important thing I want to accomplish next year? Reflecting on your answers above, and your own desires for the coming year, reflect on the one thing that you believe will make a real, tangible difference to your life. Write down your number one goal, and brainstorm all the things that you can do to get closer and closer to it throughout the year.
2. If I had the time again, what do I wish I had done differently? A brand new year can be a time to reset. To wipe the slate clean and start afresh. If you are harbouring any regrets from the past twelve months, call them out and make a commitment to do things differently next year. 
3. Set future intentions: Based on your reflections, set goals or guiding principles for the new year, which can be more flexible and less daunting than rigid resolutions. 

To sum up, 

DE-CEMBER,

DE-CLUTTER, DE-TACH, DE-LETE.

ANYTHING THAT DEVALUES YOUR LIFE,

DON NOT BRING IT INTO 2026!