2020, Not Quite Done Yet
For most of us, the last few weeks of a calendar year are very busy. We are wrapping up any work left to complete before year-end. While many companies have already planned for the new calendar year, we spend the last few weeks of the year finalizing plans for the year to come, both professionally and personally. Many take vacation time at the end of December. And of course, we all prepare for and move into the holiday season, filled with faith, tradition, family, and celebration, whatever that may be for you.
However, most of us don’t take time to reflect and take stock of the past year. We move on to the new year as though we are running a marathon with no end. That’s a poor strategy.
You see, we humans have incredible memories. Unfortunately, we frequently don’t use our memories for good. We tend to undervalue our accomplishments and overvalue or highlight our failures and disappointments. The problem with this is that by failing to unemotionally reflect on the past year we tend to remember our failures and carry them forward with us into the future like a ball and chain that we unconsciously drag around, limiting our future.
Regardless of where a marathon runner finishes they always stop and take stock of what happened. They learn from their successes, failures, disappointments, and regrets. If you would like to begin 2021 with a clean slate, unencumbered by a ball and chain of your past failures and disappointments, you first need to deal with the year past. By dealing with the year past, I mean to reflect on the year and take stock.
Reflection is nothing more than asking yourself a series of questions to help you come to terms with the past year. I hope that by me reflecting here in this blog I will empower you to do the same.
In 2020, I accomplished the following: I rehabbed my frozen shoulder. I went backcountry skiing. My sisters and I reorganized our parents’ financial situation to ensure they get the care they need. I have grown significantly spiritually and as a human being. I generated more new business and revenue than I had imagined.
I’m most proud of two things. The work we did to support our parents. And helping one client upgrade his business processing and support team by sourcing two new team members.
I did not accomplish a higher degree of clarification for my business. Although this was my first full year for my company, I didn’t do all the things that business schools teach, which is to say I didn’t have specific goals for clients, services offered, and revenue. In the end, I embraced the notion of emergence, allowing my business to emerge rather than be orchestrated or planned. I know this is counter to what all conventional wisdom suggests, but I did produce terrific results, so maybe there is something to this emergence thing.
My expectations for the year were modest. I wanted to get and be able to pay for an office. I accomplished this but only worked there for 5 days before we went into lockdown from Covid.
My biggest regret, I pissed away too much time. You see, I have a history of procrastination. While there were times that I didn’t, I can see too many times that I did. That said, I believe I have gotten to the source of this and more recently have been at times more focused and intentional.
My biggest frustration this year was feeling like I wasn’t doing enough for my parents. My father is in a nursing home, and we were not allowed to see him for much of the year due to Covid, which was frustrating.
I learned a lot this year. I have learned about Emergence, Clarity of Intent, Perseverance, Belief in Myself, and Being at Peace. Covid taught me a whole new level of being at service to others which was returned back to me, as when I was being of service, my worries and concerns receded to the background.
I am generally a good communicator, but I do lack self-awareness as to my feelings or how a situation impacts me emotionally. This year, I have had a few difficult conversations with important people in my life. One conversation was not initiated by me, but I was glad we had the conversations and we could be honest with each other about how we were feeling.
Having conversations that I may not ordinarily have and expressing my feelings has certainly freed me up, and I am imagining it has for the other persons as well.
So that’s it, a snapshot into my reflections for 2020. I can tell you from my past experience that taking the time to answer key questions about one’s year allows me to be at peace with all that I did and didn’t accomplish and enables me to powerfully move into the new year unencumbered by that ball and chain.
Here’s my invitation to you, like the marathon runner, reflect on your last race. Schedule 60-75 minutes to reflect on 2020. Pull out your calendar and go through it week by week to remind you of what you did and didn’t do and accomplish. Write it all down. Use the highlighted words here to trigger your thoughts of the year. If you identify something that is incomplete, ask yourself: What do I need to do to be ok with it being incomplete?
As I’m sure is the case with all of us, we have a long list of uncompleted items in our lives. It’s not about finishing them, but rather acknowledging and being complete with the way it is and the way it isn’t. Doing so is liberating.