Reflecting on 2021, Mapping 2022 → A Blueprint
Every year for the past 5 years, I’ve followed the same format for taking account of the year that was. I started this practice in 2017, cause I could feel that something had gone awry professionally, and I needed to better understand what.
I opened up my iCal, and I went thru it, week by week, month by month.
I made a page for each month. On that page, I’d write out:
- What went well: what worked, victories, accomplishments, stuff that happened that I was proud of
- What didn’t go well: events that didn’t go as I’d wished, experiences that didn’t meet expectations, projects that went sideways, relationships that’d hit a tough moment
- Key takeaways // lessons learned
Once I had 12 months complete, I went thru and circled the takeaways // lessons learned, month-by-month.
From this list, I journalled.
- What lessons were recurring?
- What adjustments did I want to make, based on this information?
- What was I most proud of?
- What was I struggling with? // what felt like it’d ‘failed’?
Then it was time to do upcoming year planning + intention setting.
My planning process has me go quarter by quarter — and list out what I want to ‘achieve’. Intention setting asks me to look in, and decide who I want to be.
Phase I: Planning
- I begin by asking myself, ‘where do I want to be by the end of the year, aka on the last day of Q4?’
- The list ranges across all areas of my life: ‘I want to be making $XX, I want to be pregnant, I want to be in a great partnership w my person, I want my business to be doing [x, y, z]
- From there, I go quarter by quarter, and map what needs to happen in those 3 months, to hit my goals for the year.
Phase II: Intention Setting
- Here I get to ask, ‘who do I want to be?’
- I divide across categories: Body, Spirituality, $$, Creativity, Love. (Feel free to make your own categories).
- I begin each statement in present tense, first person: “I am exploring tantra’ or ‘I am challenging my body in new ways by learning to surf’ or, ‘I am devoting 20 minutes a day to dating apps’
- If you want another approach, here’s a guide based on Zen Habits that leads w exploring habits
Other Resources
My friend Dan MacCombie is a great coach + therapist, and he shared this Reflection Worksheet, which asks a lot of great questions about the year that was.
My friends Court and Irwin are creative polymaths, they got together and created a really great workshop called Prophetic Visions; you can watch the video from their last session here.
If you end up trying any of this, and have any questions or wanna talk about your experience, email me directly — allie@equanimityequation.com
