Your Growth This Year

It’s a perfect time for reflection as this year comes to an end.  Reflect over what you’ve gone through, who you’ve become, and what you’ve had to do.  More importantly, you can reflect over just how much you’ve grown.  This is a time to celebrate your success, lessons learned, and your growth this year.

Growth Areas

You’ve lived through a whole entire year through all the ups and downs.  Since the start of the year, you’ve learned and grown a lot.  Take inventory of the areas you’ve grown in. One particular area of your life may have been a huge focal point this year.  But, usually you’ve grown in more areas than one.  These are the areas that challenged you, forced you to think, be creative, stay strong, and level up.  This has helped you become who you are now, which is smarter, wiser, and ready for the next challenge.  Growth can be hard to measure but it’s through the challenges in life that can really show you how much you’ve grown.

Before You

In order to reflect over how much you’ve grown this year, you must first start by remembering who you were at the beginning of the year.  Think about what life events you’ve experienced this year.  Start in January and recount each month.  Refer to your planner to help you reflect over what’s transpired.  If you have a notebook or journal where you keep your thoughts, reference that to help you jog your memory.  Tap into how you were feeling, what you were doing, who you were with, and where you were.  Remember who you were at the beginning of the year.

Challenges

Next, recall what challenges you faced and had to overcome this year.  Think about the tough times and difficult moments.  The level and intensity of each challenge varies.  But, each one was meant to teach you something.  This is how you learn and grow.  Your obstacles could have been something small you encountered one day or it could have been something that stretched out for months.  In fact, you may be still going through it.  In any case, you’re a warrior and can conquer any obstacle or challenge to win the battle.  Half of the battle is just showing up anyway.  The other half is what you learn and take from each challenge in order to grow.

Lessons Learned

It is said that if you don’t get the lesson the first time, you will continue to experience bigger and bigger challenges until you learn the lesson.  Examine the small pebbles and the bigger boulders that you’ve had to endure this year.  Look for any patterns that maybe you should have listened to your intuition earlier or trusted your gut rather than continuing to put yourself on the wrong path.  Consider if you missed any signs and how you can use this information to do better in the new year.  Think about the lessons you’ve learned and your biggest takeaways from this year.

Current You

Now, think about who you are today and what you had to let go of this year.  Contemplate what new thoughts and beliefs you have.  Perhaps you’re more in tune with how you think and feel.  In any given situation, you’re still going to continue to encounter challenges and obstacles.  The challenges that you are currently facing are ones that you would have struggled with and not have been able to handle at the beginning of the year.  But, because of your past experience and level of growth, you can more easily overcome these challenges today.  You are more equipped now to handle future obstacles because of what you’ve been through.  These challenges and obstacles have helped shape who you are today.

You have learned and grown a lot this past year.  Honor yourself and what you’ve been through.  All of the good, bad, ugly, positives, and negatives.  Each one has brought you to this point.  Take time to reflect over this year so that you can open yourself up to recognizing more of your growth in the new year.