December 2009, the week of New Years Eve specifically, I was sitting in a bright red, walk-up fruit stand turned fireworks stand in North Texas with temps in the low thirties, and the sky threatening to snow. The bitter wind was blowing straight through my jeans and winter boots. I couldn’t seem to move enough to warm up. No one was buying fireworks that year which made the four days I camped out long, gray, and miserable. Throughout the hours, we would go to the car, turn it on and warm up for a moment, but not long enough before someone pulled in and I’d have to step back into the freezing cold to put on a smile and shout happy new year. Everything was numb; my body, my mind, my heart.
Side note: I was in a fireworks stand because in my former life, my ex-wife and I owned a fireworks stand. I married into it (and have now left it). We sold fireworks twice a year at the time: eleven days in June and July, and four days every New Years.
2009 had been a rough year, filled with emotional rollercoasters, and I was already trying to dig out of the depression hole. I started my gratitude tree in November of that year to try and find any goodness that still existed in my mind. A slow, steady step forward. However, standing in the bitter cold on a December gray day, selling fireworks to a handful of customers tanked whatever mood I had left.
Sometime during the many trips back and forth to the car to warm up, my brain was alert enough to spark the idea to document the entire year. I wanted to go through my calendar and take stock of everything I had done. Why? I needed something to do.
Since childhood, I’ve been obsessed with writing. It started with diaries that had a lock and key, and I wore the key around my neck to keep my brother out of it. There was nothing written of any substance. Mostly what boys I liked and why, and what injustices had incurred by the social click.
That writing habit turned into page after page being filled throughout the years. After a particularly harsh breakup in college, writing is what got me through it: I have an entire journal about the horrible experience. As an adult, my journal has been read one too many times by people with bad intentions, so I stopped writing as much the past few years, but have kept a paper planner with all the specifics of my days documented: work, travel, meal plans, movies, exercise plans, how much money was spent, when I picked up groceries, had sex, or went to the doctor. Included were current events as well: who was elected as president, who won the Super Bowl, best movie award, etc. All on paper. I process life through writing.
On that cold day on the eve of a new year, I pulled out my planner and went through all 365 days and tallied it up. I broke it up in to categories and made list after list of all the movies seen, miles ran, places traveled, and money spent. It took an entire two days as I combed through the year in between people brave enough to stop and stand in the cold to buy a few fireworks.
It was satisfying to see all the those lists, but what I didn’t expect is how greatly it would shift my perspective. If you would have asked me before I started reflecting on the year if I’d done anything significant I would have told you, no, I’m standing in the same place. Everything on that page said otherwise. I had not only made significant changes that year, I unintentionally moved the needle more towards my wild (authentic) self. It wasn’t long after that I enrolled in coaching school. It became a defining moment in my life.
After that experience I was hooked on the year end reflection process. For a couple of years it was simply the same process of adding up all the events, but after a while, I wanted more. I wanted to know how I had grown as a human, not just what I did or accomplished. Then I discovered workbooks from other people to unpack the year behind until I was pulling from several resources to get the questions I wanted. Finally, I created my own year end reflection workbook (included at the end of this post as a gift for my paid subscribers) that encompasses the science behind reflection, emotional intelligence, and the mindset tools to empower you to see exactly where you are in order to move your life forward in the direction you want to go. A 25-page workbook fully integrating the year behind to prepare you for the year ahead.
For me, this process started organically because I wanted to write and document my thoughts and feelings, but now it’s turned into a powerhouse of a mindset tool and I want to share with you why reflection is one of the best practices to add into your life.