How to Do a Reflection and Intention Process for the End of the Year

How to Do a Reflection and Intention Process

I’ve split the process into two parts, and suggest that you allow yourself at least a day or two between the two parts. Just like a good cup of tea, the insights you begin to harvest in Part 1 need time to steep inside you. That also takes the pressure off to “figure everything out” or make plans during the first part. They really are two different kinds of energies, and for me it works best to do them at separate times.

Part 1: Reflection

If possible, give yourself a whole morning or afternoon to dive into this first part of the process. Go to a place where you can be assured of solitude and quiet. Bring a journal and your favorite pen, and you may want to have art supplies on hand if you want to create a vision board (optional). You may also want to bring your calendar from the past year as well as any journals you’ve kept to help remind you what’s unfolded during this time.

If you have a spiritual/contemplative practice that helps you connect with yourself like meditation or yoga, begin your day with that.

Then allow yourself time to reflect and write on the following questions:

What am I celebrating? What am I grateful for? What has been wonderful and magical about this past year?
What is one aspect about myself that I have especially loved this year? What am I proud of?
What would I have done differently this year?
What do I want to let go of?
What do I want to call in for the coming year?

Creating space to allow this process to unfold is crucial. Give yourself at least 30 minutes to reflect and journal on each question. Take a break between questions, return to your yoga or meditation practice for a while, or take a walk. Switching gears like this is balm for the creative and reflective self.

If you think you’ve come to the end of your writing after a short time, wait a few moments more and see what comes. If you need prompts to get you further, you might want considering the questions from the perspective of each of these categories:

Spirit
Creativity
Relationships
Livelihood/Finances
Physical wellbeing

Explore each of those areas of your life in relation to the above questions.

What the questions are designed to do…

The first three questions are the reflective ones, questions that should evoke enough memories and thoughts to paint a meaningful picture of your life over the past year, and also to exercise your gratitude muscle. It’s fine to list some of the things that you’ve accomplished this year, but make sure to dig a level deeper to notice why those things are important to you, and how you got there. Did you have to break some old habits or patterns to do these things?
The fourth question begins to open the door for intentions for the new year. It recognizes the truth that we often have to let go of old beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in order to make space for new ones to take root in our lives.
The fifth question is similar to goals and planning for the new year, but allow yourself to paint in fairly broad strokes here. This is all about vision and intention at this stage — I would encourage you not try to set goals here. Instead, focus on connecting to your most heartfelt aspiration, both for your life and for the state of the planet right now. It really is okay to be as general as saying that you want to live in more abundance in the coming year, and that you envision peace on earth. You’ll get more specific in Part 2.
As part of this fifth question, it can be helpful to create a Vision Board (also known as a Dream Board) to give your intentions a visual dimension. You can do this the old-school way by tearing out images and words from old magazines and calendars, or check out this free digital vision board tool from Canva. But you might also want to wait on creating this kind of visual representation until Part 2.

Part 2: Intention

After you’ve completed your reflection and journaling, let everything sit for a couple of days. Then set aside two or three hours, return to what you’ve written, and start filling in more details in response to question #5: What do I want to call in for the coming year?

This is when goals and objectives take their place, if this is important to you. Goals are an explicit manifestation of your intentions. But in this process they aren’t the starting point. I’ve found that my goals are much more powerful if I back myself up one step and first connect with my deepest intentions, as we did in Part 1.

Once we’ve identified an intention and a goal related to it, objectives give us tangible ways to measure if we are moving toward our goals.

Here’s how that might look. Let’s say I discern that my intention is to have vibrant good health, because that’s how I am best able to contribute to the world — and making a contribution is one of my core values. A goal I could set would be to exercise more consistently. An objective for that goal might be: go to the gym three mornings a week and do a cardio workout for at least 30 minutes. But again, it should all tie back to your root intention so that you feel connected to your big “why” for doing this.

You might want to use a templatelike the one that Chris Guillebeau provides. Chris has been sharing his Annual Review process since 2005, and it’s fun to check out the ways we have similar and different approaches to it.

If you’ve gone through the process described above, your goals and objectives will be firmly rooted in your deepest intentions, and that will provide you with an amazing spark throughout the year.

As you go through this practice, please be gentle with yourself, both in the way that you reflect on your life — honesty, yes, but please, no harshness! — and also how you carry your intentions and goals into the new year. This is all about living from a place of love and intention, not willpower and grit.

I’m planning to do this process over the next couple of weeks. I look forward to sharing what I discover in my new moon message, and invite you to let me know what comes up for you as well.