Reflections before Resolutions

One of the primary reasons why I eagerly await for year end is because the year end provides unique opportunities for reflection.

We often tend to comprehend the world around us through our experiences, however it’s only through the process of reflection that we develop our understanding more deeply.

In fact the absence of reflection makes us live our life in an auto pilot mode. Where we tend to execute every actions out of our automated memory. Not a great way to live our life…

Never ever forget:

“What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create.” — Buddha

Therefore it becomes paramount that you should at least be aware of your own thought patterns, your automatic behavioural response to events in your life, your deep rooted fears and apprehensions bottled deep inside you.

Where do you start?

Right here, Right now…Eleven questions that should help you in unraveling the mystery:

1. If you had to describe past twelve months, in a sentence, what would that be?

2. What were the three things that you were grateful for?

There is no hard and fast rule here, you can always choose to be grateful to more than three things, persons or events.

3. What one event, big or small; is something that you think has potential to make you nostalgic even after a span of ten years?

You need to dig really deep to come up with honest answer.

4. What accomplishments, successes, wins, great news and compliments happened this year?

Can you recall the associated feelings in detail?

5. Did you witness any paradigm shift in your perspective?

Could you identify the reasons for that shift?

6. What single achievement are you most proud of? And why?

7. What wasn’t so great this year? What ideas, aspirations and goals did you have that did not materialise? And Why?

8. What were the three biggest challenges you faced, both in personal, and professional life?

9. Who was your number one go-to person that you could always rely on?

10. What are the most important lessons learned in 2016? How did it make you grow? How did it make you wiser? How did it help in pursuing your long term Goals?

11. Which of your personal virtues, or characteristic turned out to be the most helpful this year?

The primary reason behind deliberating on these queries is to identify the underlying patterns and signals of your life that you have lived in past twelve months.

And this exercise should be treated as an imperative prerequisite before committing yourself for any New Year Resolutions.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” — Viktor E. Frankl

Call to Action:

It’s my humble request that for at least couple of days please do deliberate on digging the answers so that they can be internalised unequivocally.

Please feel free to share your experiences.