Have you ever noticed that any exercise related to growth requires you to reflect? Reflection is the process of looking back at past actions. Journal the findings of that process and you’ve got growth. This month we will be reflecting on this year and what it’s meant to us.
Subject: What is Reflection?
I don’t know about you, but reflection (through journaling) has been one of the best things for me. It’s so easy to remember all of the hot messes that occurred this year. But when you really catalog the things that happened, you start to see that we’ve really had some big wins. They may not have been exactly what we imagined at the beginning of the year, but they still count and are worth celebrating.
Simply digging deeper into our experiences this year will help us recognize the areas of our life that we’ve grown in. From day to day, the growth isn’t evident, but when we look at the year as a whole, we begin to see it. Wise people say hindsight is 20/20.
Objective: Journaling Your Daily Reflection
Since we’ve already created our template for what we are going to do each month, the task of copying prompts and setting up this month should be fairly easy. If you are finding this page first, check out my post on how to start journaling here, then pop back over to get the prompts.
Here are a few of ideas for the end of the month recap:
- Take a walk with no technology and think about your year
- Make time to talk to your family about some of your favorite memories
- Look through the photos on your phone from this year and try to recall how you felt at that time
- Spend time with your family going through old scrapbooks and yearbooks.
Actionable Item: Look Back and Assess
Look closely at the things you set out to do this year and really assess whether you accomplished those things. If you did, what caused those things to happen and how can you duplicate that?
How about if you didn’t hit your goal. Was it something that you needed to accomplish or pursue? If yes, what things can you put in place to make it happen?
Taking inventory of your progress (or regression) can only make you better. We aren’t robots that do the same thing day in and day out. We’re humans that continuously learn from the collective experiences we have.
Some of you are probably saying, “But Ryce, that this year was a hot mess.” I heard Bishop Dale Bronner say the other day that “all is well in the end and if it’s not well, then it’s not the end.” So to you I say, “It’s not the end. Consider the mess what it was and move on.”
Point of it all: Reflection is Worth Doing
Reflection is a tool that we can use to assess our past triumphs and failures and truly learn from our life experiences. If we never look back, we’ll never see how far we’ve come or how much we’ve grown. Even in the worst of times, there is always something to reflect on and be grateful for.
If you’ve made it this far, you’ve hit on every fruit of the spirit and have learned more about you and your faith. The best part of this exercise is that we get to do it again in the coming years and see who we have become. How cool is that?
It’s my hope that as we round out this year, we take time to truly appreciate every experience (whether good or bad) and take from it what we can to be a better version of ourselves on the next orbit of the sun.
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