Finding the Gold in a Muddy 2020
“This year has been a total dumpster fire.” I paused when I heard the words come out of my mouth…
I was on a Zoom call with friends and joining in on the pile-on of terrible things that have happened this year. From the global level, down to the personal; we spent about 30 minutes cataloging all of the crap we have either experienced or witnessed and when the call ended I felt worse than when we started.
Maybe you’ve had one of those calls too?
It’s easy to pick up the mud in life. It’s harder to sift through it to find the gold.
I don’t want to miss out on the gold and I don’t want you to either.
Which is why I want to share a set of tools I use to conduct an end of year review because If you use these tools:
- You’ll have a richer, fuller view of your experience of 2020
- You’ll know where you’ve been, the good things you’ve forgotten, the lessons you’ve gained
- What you want to experience more of in 2021
Pretty great, huh?
“You Can’t know Where You’re Going If You Don’t Take Time to Reflect on Where You’ve Been.“
Deanna Moffitt
How’s Your Life Right Now?
My life has gotten so out of balance lately that it feels like I have one round wheel and three square ones. Which makes for a very inefficient drive.
I’ve been so focused on my business and that everything else has taken a back seat.
Hey, let’s be honest…some areas of my life aren’t even in the car anymore!!
Duh, Deanna….come back to the things that help your clients.
So, to help me identify where I’m out of balance I use a Life Assessment form that helps me rate ten different areas of my life. Where am I nailing it?…And where am I failing it?
When I recently did this, I realized the area of play in my life was almost non-existent. For someone who used to spend her life performing improv comedy for a living this feels like a HUGE deficit.
Clearly, it gives me a direction on where I want to go to become more balanced.
You may never be able to reach a 10/10 in all ten areas…but if you have one area that you rate lower and you recognize it’s a point of frustration, you can put a game plan together to start improving your experience in that area.
Growth Requires Reflection
Have your dinner conversations dried up? Are you all just sitting around watching reruns of The Great British Baking Show while mindlessly eating dinner? Are you thinking there was NOTHING good about 2020?
Well, imagine having a month-long conversation at the dinner table with your partner, your kids, or if you’re like me…your dog and each night is centered around one question that helps you reflect on the past year?
Either talking through these questions or journaling on them solo gives you the opportunity to reflect on the past year focusing on more than its dumpster fire qualities.
Questions like:
- What did you learn about yourself this year?
- What was a mistake you don’t want to make again?
- What’s was your favorite TV show?
I hope you find these questions fun to engage with and make you more aware of the fullness of your experience in the last year.
Life’s Three Big Questions
I had never heard the term ‘mis-wanting” before. It was introduced to me by Laurie Santos the Yale professor who was teaching a certificate program called The Science of Well-Being; though, I hadn’t heard of it…I was certainly doing it.
Mis-wanting is a term applied to those things we want in our lives that we think will bring us happiness that in-fact won’t. At least that’s what the research tells us.
And I do believe in science.
We think THINGS will make us happy. The truth is we’re terrible at predicting what will bring us happiness.
We think it will be the big house, the new car, or the million dollars, when in fact due to the hedonistic principle they actually don’t bring us long term happiness.
We get used to these things and eventually our happiness goes back to its set point.
What we should be wanting instead are EXPERIENCES. And they don’t have to be big. We anticipate experiences vs having anxiety waiting for things.
So, the final tool is simply three questions:
- What do you want to experience?
- What do you want to learn?
- How do you want to contribute to the world?
Three big questions that help you create a blue-print for a life rich with experiences instead of burdened by things.
So, what’s next?
I invite you to use these tools to gain a richer, fuller view of your year; gain clarity on the 10 key areas of your life right now and create a blueprint for the experiences you want in the coming year.
And I’m not going to leave you hanging…you can download this entire toolkit by clicking on the button below.
