Why it serves you to slow down at the Beginning of a New Year

This past weekend, I led a workshop for 19 people called “Creating 2024 with Intention”. These 19 individuals made the conscious and brave choice to slow down, take stock of what had transpired in their lives in 2023, and really become intentional about who they want to become in 2024 and what experiences they would like to be having this year.

The New Year often evokes within most of us the need to set new year’s resolutions. It’s an invitation to start anew with a clean slate. And it’s been my experience that so often people are so eager to move forward, that they don’t take the time to slow down, turn around, and look back to where they had come from.

I have written about the value of celebrations and why I think it’s important to choose to celebrate our successes and milestones. My thoughts here are an extension of the discussion on celebrations because I also believe there is value in truly honouring completions. One of the key things I learnt from immigrating, is to find something to run towards instead of simply running away from something. Part of the process of finding the thing to run towards, is slowing down to really appreciate the chapter of your life that you are completing, and then within that context, the new chapter you want to start writing.

What is a completion? It could be anything really. The end of a full calendar year is the most obvious completion as it is often accompanied by a celebration of the New Year, and this sense of new beginnings and the opportunity to create something different. However, whether you have a child wrapping up the school year, are ending a vacation, going through a break-up, or taking your relationship to the next level, having a child, making a move, letting go of a job, or taking on a promotion — every new beginning starts from a completion. And completions don’t always coincide with the end of the year, as they can happen at any time.

Most people look toward their next chapter and don’t pause to look back at where they’ve been. Carving out space to honour the path you have traversed and who you’ve consequently become to arrive at this now, is empowering, life-affirming and wise. Honouring completions is an invitation for deep reflection of where you’ve been, what you’ve learnt, and how you’ve changed.

If we don’t learn from our experiences, we are destined to repeat them. So, I am committed to using every experience in my life as an opportunity for learning and growing. I’m determined to soak up every drop of wisdom and insight so I can evolve to higher levels of living and being, and not simply end up repeating the same experiences year after year with no new insights and no real growth. It’s when we turn around and look back, when we appreciate the road to here, and the lessons learned along the way, that we can begin to dream bigger and dare more greatly.

In 2022 I wrote about why it serves you to do a Year-End Review and I shared various approaches to completing a year-end review and different sets of questions to sit with that would serve you in reflecting on your year. I still believe it’s important to slow down to really consider your biggest accomplishments, failures, setbacks, and learnings from the past year. And, this year, just like at the start of 2023, I want to suggest a twist to the traditional Year-End Review, based on my own insights and learnings over the past two years.

A year-end review is most valuable when we get a little more granular first. What that looks like for me, is to review each month of the past year separately and to take note of who I was at the time, what was I doing personally and professionally at the time, and then to consider what “mistakes” I had made, or which experiences were most significant during that specific month of the year. My list doesn’t include everything, and yet, it is more than the general: “What were three wins from the year?”

The aim is to get more thorough and to really appreciate the small steps that led to big things last year. I use my calendar, journals and notes, social media, email, and anything else that I regularly us to document my day-to-day during the year. The focus is to capture anything that stands out – both in the ordinary and in the extraordinary. As I review each month, I sit with three questions:

1. What was happening personally in my life?
2. What was happening professionally?
3. What was my inner experience? Or another way to ask this question, how was I relating to everything that was happening in my life?

Only once I have spent the time reviewing each month of the year, do I zoom out to the bigger picture by answering the following questions:

1. What am I most proud of from the past year?
2. What were three of my biggest learnings from the year?
3. Who did I BECOME during the course of the year?

So, dear reader, before setting your goals for the New Year, I invite you to slow down and first honour the completion of 2023 and anything else that transpired as part of this year. My encouragement is to get granular. Slow down and review each month of the year. What was most valuable in each month? What were the most important lessons you learned? And when you look back over your whole year, what did you notice about how you changed as a person over the last twelve months? Who have you BECOME? Who were you at the start of this year? And who are you now as the start of this new year? What’s most important about that?