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10 key questions to fuel your reflection of 2018

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It’s so easy to get caught up in the consumerism of Christmas but I have a challenge for you! Instead of December passing you by in a blur, let’s make it a time of review and reflection, meaning-making and connection! Isn’t that what the festive season is really supposed to be about?

Connection and Reflection

Rather than making December a month of overindulgence of food and drink, gather an intimate group of your friends and colleagues together to make time for personal reflection and then share your reflections with each other. You could couple this with an early morning walk along the beach, an evening yoga session or a fun game of tennis! I’ve made it simple for you and created a list of questions you can send to your friends below. Or better yet, make up your own list of questions to explore!

A Magic Carpet Ride

Think of it as a magic carpet ride through the events, activities and experiences that occurred in 2018. Fly through your year from January to now, think about the moments of pure joy as well as the challenges. Step back and reflect. What did these moments mean for you? What have you learnt? By standing back and looking at it from a distance, you can elicit the learning and the meaning. There has been multiple research studies that have shown the benefits of regular reflection. It helps our performance and also makes us happier. Think of it as the debrief after the game, consider each move made, think about how strategies panned out, reflect on winning moves and ones to improve on next time.

As Peter Drucker said: “Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection, will come even more effective action.”

Top 10 Reflection Questions

1. What has made you proud this year?

Tap into the experiences and achievements that made you feel happy, satisfied and alive. What activities can you credit to your hard work, initiative or creativity? Sink into these feelings – perhaps it was something you achieved or something someone close to you achieved. Perhaps it was something you overcome this year or a lesson you learned. It could be anything – relationships, goals, hard work or your attitude.
Is it time to cue the M People classic, Proud?

2. What inspired you this year?

inspiration: the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.

What were your sources of inspiration this year? People, environments, conferences or videos (like TED videos), movies, events, books – anything! See if you can pin point it – what or who inspired you to be your best? What were the catalysts to enhance your knowledge, confidence, skills or work? Was it a new podcast, a key event or an important mentor? You could collate a list with your friend of their top 3 inspirations.

3. What are your 3 key learnings from this year?

What’s been your major learning curves this year? This is an important question. Instead of sailing into the new year without fully gaining the benefit of all your experiences this year, consider the three main things that you’ve learnt. Where have you grown the most as a person, leader, family member or friend? Were these intended learning curves or not? What did you set out to learn and improve on and what were some of the learning that popped up along the way?

4. What habits have served you well?

Aristotle said we are what we repeatedly do. It’s quite enlightening to realise that what you do day in, day out makes you the person you are! Maybe it’s a little scary too! So simple, but it can also mean the discipline of constructing your day to be the person you want to be. What habits did you intentionally practice this year and which ones have slipped in – good or bad? Which habits have you added this year? Which ones did you drop? How did it make a difference to your year?

5. What were your key relationships this year and how have they affected you?

Family and friends, business colleagues and community – relationships can play a key part of your happiness and also your success. Which relationships made you feel strong and empowered? How did you intentionally foster the relationships in your life? Are you hanging around the right people? Are they lifting you up to be your best? How has your presence positively impacted on the people around you too?

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6. How did you utilise your strengths this year?

Do you know what your key strengths are? If not, perhaps it’s time to get clear about the strengths that you are or can contribute to the world. How did you put them to work this year? Are you using your strengths on a daily, weekly and monthly basis? How does it make you feel when you can work in your zone of genius, as Gay Hendricks would call it.

7. How did you focus on what’s fundamentally important to you this year?

It is so easy to get caught up in what everyone else wants you to do. Your family, friends, work or even society in general can dictate what gets done. Think about when you get into work everyday, do you reflect on your key priorities and set in for some deep, deliberative work or do you check your email and focus on what others want of you? Did you get to focus on what was important to you this year or did you get pulled in different directions?

8. What are you grateful for this year?

Time to evoke a little gratitude. Yes it’s a great habit to cultivate to consider and reflect on everything you are grateful for. From the huge big things to the tiniest little things. What are you grateful for? If it involved people around you, this might be a nice way to reconnect with people during December and tell them!

9. What have been the obstacles, hard times or challenges you’ve experienced and how have you grown from the experiences?

Yes there are going to be ups and downs in the year. Times where it didn’t always go to plan. What were your biggest challenges this year? Revisit these tough times and bring some reframing to it – how has it made you a better person, how did you grow and what did you learn?

10. How would I summarise the year that I’ve had?

Have some fun with this last one. Use your creative juices to summarise the year in a creative way. What would be it’s theme, mantra or symbol? How would you draw a picture to reflect on the past year? Time to get out of your head and instead into your heart and body. What colours would you use? What shapes or images represent this year?

Take some time this December…

Why not grab your favourite drink, put on some encouraging music and sit in your favourite chair or go outside into nature and answer these questions for yourself!? Then come together with friends and share your reflections from the year. Look out the blog in the coming weeks for 10 questions to plan for the new year.

Now over to you: Will you be spending some time on reflecting this season? What other questions did you come up with?

10 questions to plan for 2018

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January! A fresh new year to dream, visualise and plan.   Journalling is a great tool to develop our insight, connect with our inner voice and start to develop clarity about the life you want to lead.

I think we can under-estimate what can be achieved in a year. What do you want to be different in a year’s time?

Late last year I posted 10 Questions to Fuel Your Reflection of 2017.  This is integral to reflect back over the whole year, visual what you did with your time (consider the projects you worked on and what you achieved) and really focus on the key learnings you have taken from the year.   Most often, we sleep walk through life without taking the time to reflect, grow and stretch into the future.  Just as useful as it is to look back, now it’s time to look forward.

Here are 10 questions to help your planning for 2018.

1. How will you step into the highest version of yourself this year?

If you practiced all the habits you wanted, lived your core strengths and you were totally aligned with values –  this would be your highest version of you.  The game is – how do you edge closer and closer to this person every moment.  Think small steps.

2. Describe your ideal day, week and year?

How you live your days is how you live your life!  It’s a big statement but it’s true.  Our daily habits form the foundations for how you live your life.   What is one habit you want to focus on this year and one habit you want to let go of?

3. How will you best utilise your strengths?

Professor Martin Seligman, Director of the University of Penn Positive Psychology Centre found that a key part of flourishing in life and work is using your strengths.   To use our strengths, you need to be able to identify them and work on ways to use them more everyday and commit to getting better at them.

4. How will you take care of yourself? What’s your health and wellbeing plan?

Without your health it’s very hard to achieve anything of significance. This means you have to actively plan for sleep, rest, nutrition, movement, mental clarity and fun!  How could you step up in terms of your health?  What could be a key goal you could achieve that could help motivate you to take care of yourself?

5. What is holding you back? 

Otto Scharmer, author of the books Theory U and Leading from the Emerging Future talks about the three voices that hold you back – the voice of judgement (shutting down your open mind instead of being inquiring and curious), the voice of cynicism (shutting down your open heart instead of connecting and relating) and the voice of fear (shutting down your open will instead of letting go).   What do you need to leave behind and to tap into the great courage you have?

6. How will you give back to community?  How can you be of service to others? 

How can you focus on giving to others this year?  Often this can provide great energy in our lives.  If you were to focus on one area to give back in, what’s it going to be this year?  Commit as deeply to this as the other areas in your life.  Maybe it could be to join a Not-For-Profit board?

7. What’s your learning plan?

Where do you want to grow, stretch and learn this year?  What books can you read?  What courses can you take? What conferences can you learn from?   What are the key skills you want to learn and foster this year?

8. What relationships do you want to foster?

Who is in your community? Family, friends, networks, work colleagues and neighbours. Be focused on the key relationships you would like to develop this year.  Who can help you be the person you want to be?  Will you reach out to a new mentor, create a mastermind group, attend a new conference to expand your networks or foster your friendships?

9. How will you be inspired?

What are the inspiration sources that help you stay energised and refreshed for the ups and downs for the year.  How can you systemise the inspiration sources so you can perform at an optimal level?

10.  What amazing life adventures do you want to do this year?

Ok –  now it’s time for a bit of fun.  Forget work, think about what is going to bring you joy and fun into your life.  What life adventures could you have this year?  Think about learning a new skill, visiting a new place or enjoying something with the people you love.

3 things I learnt at TEDxPerth

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W hat comes to mind when you hear the word philanthropy? Who do you think of? Bill Gates, Oprah or even Andrew Forrest? What do all these people have in common? Yes they are all very wealthy, very well known business leaders. Without a doubt, their giving is inspiring…but it can also make you feel that only certain people can be a philanthropist. What if I told you that you didn’t have to be rich and famous to be a philanthropist?

 

Thanks to Carol Cole Photography

This was the beginning of my TEDxPerth talk on the 11th November in front of 1500 people at the Perth Concert Hall.  I spoke about the power that everyone has to be a philanthropist.  If you want to hear more about philanthropy, network with some exceptional leaders and enjoy a fabulous night, I really encourage you to attend the 100 Women Gala night on this Wednesday.  Come discover a different way to be a philanthropist!

The process of presenting at TEDxPerth reminded me of three very important ideas about leadership.

 

1. Feel the fear and do it anyway

Everyone feels fear, nerves and anxiety and it takes courage to put yourself out there and try new things. How often do we truly put ourselves in the position to stretch, be challenged and grow?  Get comfort with the uncomfortable and watch your learning skyrocket.  What unfamiliar situations can you put yourself in to broaden your knowledge and skills?  For me it’s about moving out of my own ego about what others might think of me and into a mindset of service – how can I serve this audience in the best way possible.

Situations: What are you challenging yourself to do next?

 

2. It takes a village

Leadership is not an individual sport. The support I received from a whole range of people to help me present for 11 – 12 minutes was massive.  Quite simply, I couldn’t have done it without them.  From the TEDxPerth team to my own family, friends and colleagues, the people you surround yourself with make a huge difference.  It makes me utterly grateful for the support networks that I have and a reminder to keep fostering the relationships around you.

Support: Who is your support network?

 

3. Ideas and Action

The process of distilling an idea into 11 – 12 minutes is a challenging yet rewarding journey.  What is the essence of this idea? How will I communicate this? What are my strengths in communicating this? What is absolutely necessary to the message and what can I cut?  Communication of ideas is a key part of the role of a leader.

For me personally, it’s not just about the ideas but the action too.  An idea is just a dream until you put it into action.  The revolutionaries are those who put ideas into action.

Significance: How are you acting on your ideas?

Thank you for all your support!