The contemplation of the Christmas season with its quiet moments is an occasion for many people to pause and review the year. What have I achieved professionally and what has changed in my private life? Am I satisfied with these changes, what can be improved and what am I striving for in the new year? These can all be questions for a personal review of the year. A Japanese proverb says: "Go slowly when you are in a hurry". With this in mind, it is worthwhile to linger briefly and take time to look back and reflect on yourself.
In business, but also in your private life, you are always in contact with other people. You intuitively judge colleagues, acquaintances and friends on the basis of their appearance, facial expressions and gestures, and their actions. In doing so, you often fail to ask yourself how you yourself affect others and how your own thoughts and actions influence your private and professional life. What role do you take within the social construct in which you live and what inner attitude do you have to the things that happen around you or that are actively influenced by you?
With all the Instagram and Facebook messages popping up, but also within the team and the family, expectations arise. Often, we are intuitively driven by the expectations of others and strive to fulfill them to everyone's satisfaction. In the process, we very quickly lose touch with yourself, with your own feelings and needs. Without moments of pause, you may only shape your life the way others expect you to.
To-do lists quickly grow immeasurably if you don't make a cut in between. Deadlines, e-mails and the "to do" paper mountain on your desk are getting bigger and bigger. You have to master the balancing act between your private and professional life, and you simply have to take a personal breather. Pausing for a moment and self-reflection are important in order to regain focus. What is it really worth spending time on, which appointments can I cancel and which tasks can I delegate?
Whether at work or at home, there is always something that can be changed for the better. Behavioral patterns often creep in during everyday life that have an impact on others. An example: You notice that the motivation in your team is decreasing without recognizing concrete causes for it. Self-reflection leads you to ask yourself how motivated you are and to what extent you also exemplify this motivation. Self-reflection gives you the opportunity to learn more about your own strengths and weaknesses, about your wishes, preferences and idiosyncrasies. Thereby you create the best conditions to actively change certain attitudes or behavior patterns.
In the midst of a busy daily routine, many people fail to recognize their full potential. Many talents lie idle because there is simply no time to recognize and fully exploit them. Self-reflection is often the trigger for leaving one's comfort zone and taking risks.
Even short moments of self-reflection can be a significant enrichment in our lives. You create the opportunity to become aware of things that quickly fall behind in everyday life.
So that you don't get the wrong impression: self-reflection is not an appointment that you can clock into your planner like a meeting and work through. It is a process that is actually never finished. The time before the new year is often a wonderful opportunity to take more time for this process. At some point, the last business partner will have left for their Christmas vacation, the mailbox will have been closed, and all the presents will have been wrapped.
If you now use the quiet moments in the time before the turn of the year to reflect on yourself and your own actions in your private and professional life, you can learn from your own experiences and avoid mistakes in the future. You can take on new perspectives and look at past situations from multiple angles.
You benefit from your personal year in review in many ways:
This often requires courage, because it means admitting mistakes to yourself, putting your finger in the wound and identifying weak points. Ultimately, however, these insights can lead to you making better decisions in the future, dealing with problems differently and also changing your communication with others. This can lead to a more conscious interaction with your fellow human beings - with colleagues in the office as well as with friends and in relationships.
It has become a tradition for many people to start the new year with good resolutions. But before you tackle these resolutions full of drive, you should take a step back and reflect on the past year. But how can you actually do that?
With these questions you can reflect yourself and your behavior
With these questions you can make new resolutions for the coming year
This is only a small selection of the questions that will help you to take stock of the past year. On this basis, you can then look ahead and make new resolutions for your professional and private advancement.
There are no to-do instructions for inner contemplation and self-reflection that you can simply work through. Nevertheless, we would like to give you some impulses on how you can actively shape the time for self-reflection.
Self-reflection is, as already mentioned, a process that should not only take place once a year. You can consciously integrate this into your everyday life. In particular, in situations in which you were annoyed by your reaction and behavior, you should reflect on this in a timely manner. The US-American teacher Terry Burton has developed the easy-to-use "Burton's Model of Reflection", which can help you to critically question your actions.
You can use this model specifically after a particular incident that you want to reflect on afterwards.
What?
In this part of the self-reflection process, you remind yourself of exactly what happened. Reflect on your role and behavior in the event and also how others reacted to it. How did the others behave and why? Also think about why this situation is bothering you so much.
So what?
In this step you analyze what happened and what you could have done better. Ask yourself what impact your behavior had, how you felt about the situation, and what responsibility you have for the circumstances and outcome of the situation.
Now what?
In the last phase of the reflection process, you think about what you will do next and what consequences your actions will have. The goal is to better manage similar situations in the future and to adjust your behavior based on the findings of self-reflection. This way you can avoid mistakes in similar situations and learn from the situation.
Use the upcoming turn of the year to review the past year and start the new year with a positive mindset. Our coaches will be happy to assist you in this process.