No, I don’t mean the stuff sitting around the house that needs to get thrown out. Or the bills. I mean you.
Each year at this time, I sit down and do an accounting of the year. What worked? What didn’t? What am I creating for next year?
I am utterly prone to look at what didn’t get done, what’s missing — where I’ve “failed”. (This is also in part why I have a chronic illness, because I stress myself out with such things.) So I’ve recognized how important it is for me to acknowledge the things I did accomplish, and give them their proper due, before creating what I want to accomplish in the new year.
Let’s create this report together, shall we? I’ll go first.
While this year was difficult for me both health-wise and financially (due to said health), I’ve done things that weren’t even in the realm of thought last January:
- I was flown to Vienna to give my first international keynote.
- I spoke at Harvard.
- I built a whole team around Zenfully Delicious and my other projects so I’m not doing it all by myself.
- I’ve created ways to have a huge financial shift in 2012.
- My mom, siblings, nieces and nephews know, concretely, that I love them more than anything on earth, because I’ve told them. To their faces.
- I committed to my health and fitness in a way that took me from trouble walking around to a state of health I haven’t known since my 20s.
These are all equally huge things.
We set ourselves traps by defining what is success and what is not, or what is worthy of acknowledgment or not. It might not look how you thought it would, but don’t short-change yourself. Recognize what you did do — and where you surpassed your expectations — and for those things that fell short, create something to make them a reality for the coming year. Dreaming about it isn’t enough — you need action.
P.S. Those New Year’s resolutions are a great way to fail at the action part. Rather than create them (they’ll disappear in a few weeks), why not create a real plan of things to accomplish, and find someone to hold you accountable for it? Dr. Alex has some tips on ways to turn your resolutions into reality.
Before action comes looking at the big picture, so I request you take a moment and share below what you accomplished this year, and what you’d like to be acknowledged for. Whether it seems big or small to you is irrelevant — let’s celebrate the life we lived in 2011.
