This Sunday I decided to dedicate my afternoon to conducting a personal Annual Review. I derived the idea from my friend Chris at the Art of Nonconformity. He is a self-employed creative and spends about week every December reviewing his year and planning for the next one. I don’t happen to have a free week between now and then end of the year (surprise), so I decided a Sunday afternoon would have to do. It is a great exercise and I highly recommend it, though! See Chris’s outline here: http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/how-to-conduct-your-own-annual-review/.
I hadn’t done anything like this since the beginning of 2011, so I decided to do a 2-year review. For those of you that don’t know about my last couple of years, a lot has happened. As I worked my way through my old journals, reviewing past goals and defining new ones, there were a few lessons that kept popping up. This isn’t in Chris’s outline, but I found it really helpful to write them down. And I wanted to share them. Some may be paraphrased version of something you have already heard, but I learned them nonetheless. So here they are:
Goals need to be measurable and actionable, otherwise it is hard to know your progress.
Even so, even when goals are vague, it is amazing what happens when you write down a goal = your subconscious does the rest, even if you aren’t consciously tracking the goal.
Most (or all) difficult decisions mean saying no or letting go of something so that you can say yes to something else, something new.
The courage to take risks doesn’t mean not being afraid, but being afraid and doing it anyways.
Taking risks or trying something new doesn’t always work out, but that doesn’t mean you’ll ever regret it. (And btw, taking risks often does work out.)
Success is not a measure of how much you’ve done, but of how happy you are with what you’ve done. (Credit: A wise friend told me this.)
Fear is a waste of Gods grace.
Fear and guilt are never productive… or pleasant, for that matter.
Value and recognize what about your life is epic and wonderful. Do that more. Don’t hide from it.
Then take time to notice the small, beautiful, every-day moments in your life, for that is what life is made of.
sunrise ruby 