Six End-of-Year Reflection Ideas.

Everyone is talking about 2022 and the resolutions or goals they are going to slay in the new year. Good for them! I tend to move a little slower and am spending a little time over the first few days of 2022 reflecting on the hot crazy mess that was 2021. If you have not yet done a year-end review, here are six end-of-year reflection ideas to get you started!

While I am so ready for 2021 to be done, I think there are some lessons we can learn from it before we send it to the rearview mirror.  By taking the time to be curious about what happened during the year,  we can make some observations and learn from our year. 

This is not a time to be judgmental or critical of what happened in 2021 or how you responded to what happened in 2021. This was an incredibly hard year, and all of us are just trying to make it through the best we can. 

Give yourself massive amounts of self-compassion and kindness as you approach this exercise. 

The purpose of reflecting is to be curious and learn about ourselves. By taking a non-judgmental look, we can gather useful information to help us with setting future goals, making resolutions, or starting new habits in 2022. 

Here are some reflection starters I have used over the years. I don’t do all of them in a given year, usually, I just pick one or maybe two that speak to me. 

Six end-of-year reflection ideas

• Answer some year-end reflection questions.

By reflecting and pondering open-ended questions, you can really dig deep and find the underlying lessons within the things that happened during the year. Give yourself time to reflect on the year, and consider coming back to these questions a couple of times over the course of a few days to really give yourself time to think deeply about these ideas. 

• What is your biggest accomplishment from the year?
• List something that excited you the most from the year?
• What is your favorite moment from each of the 4 quarters of the year?
• What didn’t work for you this year?
• How did you see yourself grow as a person?
• Make a list of things you are grateful for this year
• What do you want to do differently in 2022?

If these questions are not enough for you, here are 35 more questions you can ask yourself that should get to the root of what happened in 2021!

• List your accomplishments or moments you are proud of.

It is so easy to gloss over the huge things you do in the course of the year. Often, you put so much effort into some of those accomplishments, that you are focused on what is next or catching up on things you neglected while you were working on these accomplishments. 

Take time to remember and revel in the accomplishment. They can be big or small write them all down! 

Once you have a list full of the amazingness you accomplished, hang it up somewhere you will see it daily. I prefer my bathroom mirror, and it reminds me daily that I can do big things! 

• If you set goals for 2021, evaluate how well you did meeting them.

Find your list of goals and write down how well you did meeting the goal. Expand further than yes or no on these. Consider if it was easy to meet, did you change the goal or your approach to the goal, and if you learned anything about yourself while working on this goal. 

If you didn’t meet the goal, identify if there was any progress made towards the goal (partially met the goal), and what obstacle kept you from meeting the goal. 

• Do an immersive journaling reflection exercise. 

There are times I am just not in the right mindset to reflect on my own and I need some support in doing so. Usually, I will grab a friend and we can do this end-of-year reflection verbally rather than on paper. 

If a friend isn’t available, doing a lead journaling exercise like this can be very helpful. The detailed instructions and guidance can help you evaluate the different questions in a positive way. A supportive journaling exercise can be really beneficial for someone who is new at end-of-year reflections and can be intimidated by the process. 

• Make a list of 100 things you did this year.

I call this my brain dump! List 100 things you did this year. Good, bad, neutral, fun, boring, anything is game! Write it all down in one big list!

Make sure you take time to include things that you did earlier in the year. I often find my evaluation is skewed towards the end of the year because it is fresh in my mind. What happened in early 2021 is still important to remember and document!

• List the ways you have changed in the past year. 

Hard times lead to growth. The past two years of pandemic times definitely qualify as hard times for us! 

Think back to the start of the year and note your growth in all areas of your life. 

Take it a step farther and think back to who you were 2 or 5 years ago and note those growth areas. Take some time to reflect on the changes and evaluate how they have benefited you. Once you have identified these areas of growth and change, celebrate yourself! Change and growth are challenging. Take a moment to pat yourself on the back for all these ways you have changed. 

What is the purpose of end-of-year reflection?

I tend to be a person who looks forward and plans things to do next. Evaluating what happened in the past is not my natural view. However, experts say (and I have experienced this to be true as well), that taking a brief look at the past can help you with planning and meeting goals in the future. 

By looking at how your year went, you can identify things that worked, didn’t work, or didn’t go as planned. We are not making judgments or taking a critical view. Approach this exercise with an open and curious mind to see what you can learn. 

Once we have identified this, we now have more useful information as we are setting goals and making plans for 2022.  This will increase the odds or chances that we meet or exceed our goals for 2022! Who doesn’t want to be more successful at their goals?

What have you learned from this end-of-year reflection process? I would love to hear your lessons or how you do your end-of-year reflections in the comments below or over on our Instagram page!

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