How to Capture Your Most Important 2017 Life Lessons (with Free Workbook)
Each year I share a series of compelling questions to help you capture your year-end life lessons and confidently move into the new year. This simple practice of year-end reflection and integration can be a powerful way to become more aligned with your true self each and every year.
While it might seem early to start on your personal year-end reflection, I personally like to plant the questions like seeds in the back of my mind and let them naturally germinate for awhile before I start journaling about them.
You can use these questions as writing or journaling prompts and dig deeply. Or you can work with them lightly to paint an impressionistic picture of your year. There isn’t one right way. One word answers are fine if that’s what suits you, or you can pour your heart out if that will help you make the most of the year.
There’s no need to respond to every question unless you wish to do so. In fact, some of the questions look at similar themes from a slightly different angle. You can select just the ones that call to you.
These questions will help you see the tricky parts of your life, but they can also help you highlight the positive. Resist the temptation to focus solely on the negative or the difficult. Be sure to balance it with the good bits, and always be kind and gentle with yourself.
When you feel ready, get cozy. Find a quiet corner or inspiring natural environment and reflect on these questions for awhile. Sign up to download the FREE Your Year In Review 2017 Workbook to record your answers. Set the questions aside if you begin to feel tired or like it’s too much. Let them sit for for awhile in the back of your mind. Then come back to them again when you feel ready to explore more.
Ready to explore the questions?
18 Questions to Help You End the Year Well
- Describe your year in a single word, sentence, or paragraph. Capture your first impressions. Then revisit your response at the end of your reflections and see if you’re initial impressions have changed.
- Who/what were the significant people, events, and places in your life during the past 12 months?
- What were the highlights of your year? The low points?
- What did you feel passionate about this year?
- What distracted you this year?
- Did you have spiritual aspirations for 2017? If you did, which ones did you accomplish? Which ones are incomplete?
- What would you like to forget about this year, if anything? Do you have any regrets? Anything you would like to have done differently?
- What was the emotional tone of the year? What were the dominating emotional patterns? Don’t forget the good ones.
- Capture your year as a color, a taste, a feeling, a visual or a smell.
- Look through your photos and choose the ones that best represent the year. Write an evocative headline for each one of your favorites. Create a photo collage that represents the essence of your year.
- Is there anyone to forgive, including yourself? What needs to be forgiven.
- List your accomplishments for the year. Be generous with yourself!
- What challenged you this year?
- List your most important insights about your body, emotions, mind, spirit, work, finances, relationships, and anything else important to you. If you wrote in a journal, you could go through your entries to help you remember.
- Did you choose a single word as your guiding star this year? If so, how did it go with your word? Did you remember it? Did you bring it alive?
- Which lessons, insights, perspectives, and new behaviors would you like to carry forward into the new year? What would you like more of in 2018? What would you like less of in 2018?
- Is there anything you would like to complete before the start of the new year?
- Create your own questions about the past year.
Reminder: Look back at question 1 to see if your initial impressions have changed. If they have, add any new thoughts to that section.
I made a 24-page workbook for you with these questions and ample space for your responses. You can download it FREE when you sign up for the Always Well Within Library and my e-letter.
The process of gathering my insights at the end of the year helps me to gain clarity, let go of the past, and get a fresh start for the new year. I hope you enjoy the process too.
What are some of your most important life lessons from 2017? I would love to hear.
Thank you for your presence, I know your time is precious! Don’t forget to sign up for Wild Arisings, my twice monthly letters from the heart filled with insights, inspiration, and ideas to help you connect with and live from your truest self. May you be happy, well, and safe – always. With love, Sandra
