Just like a mirror, reflection on the year allows you to see things that might simply go unnoticed…the black pepper in between your front teeth or that you look absolutely smashing in purple. Our reflection shows us the good and the bad. If we choose to look close enough we can learn from both.
The same goes for reflecting on your year. It provides the opportunity to see the good and the bad; to celebrate the successes and reflect on the failures. Yes, the f-word. If you are doing anything more than standing still in your life and business, you are going to experience failure. Often times we would just like to forget about those experiences; the ones that didn’t quite work out and the ones where we fell flat on our face. Yet our brain has a unique capacity for replaying those occurrences over and over. In order to progress and move forward (and stop the replay tape!) we must reflect on that failure, note what could have been done differently and learn from the experience.
On the other side, we all too often dismiss our successes. A couple of things contribute to this. First, if we have done a really good job of setting goals the end result, the success, can sometimes be anticlimactic. Second, for the achiever in many of us success becomes “done”, a box checked. Now, what is next?
Without reflection on our successes we miss out on the learning. What contributed to the success? Was it the design of the action plan? Was it advance preparation for an opportunity we could not have seen coming? What does our success teach us so that we can replicate it?
How about the celebration of the success? So many dismiss it and I have been guilty of that as well! I hear it time and time again from my clients. They are so eager to share the news of their success with me, a part of celebration, yet they are suddenly quiet when I ask how they celebrated that success. How long will we keep reaching for bigger and better goals if we don’t acknowledge what we have accomplished?
As Arthur Ashe said “Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” If that is true then reflection becomes even more important for our journey. We may not recognize that we have succeeded unless we look back on how far we have come.
Join me on November 25th to learn more about review and reflection in the strategic planning process. Click here to learn more and to register.