To Plan A Year

END OF YEAR REVIEW CHECKLIST

Set the mood

Decide where you’re going to review your goals. If you stay home, you could light your favorite candle and drink your favorite tea. You could check into a small inn and work in the sitting room. Or you could take a hike and journal along the way. It doesn’t matter. Do what works best for you. 

Reflect on the last year

This can be as simple as mentally reviewing your memories. Or you could journal about the year. Whichever you do, make sure to include the things you accomplished as well as those you didn’t. We have a tendency to focus on our failures instead of our successes, but in this exercise we want to focus on both. For work, review your business income, sales, and other specific goals. For personal, think about your relationships and other situations you worked on or are concerned about. This is a time to tie up loose ends, reflect on what went well, and feel good without putting pressure on yourself. One of the keys to success with this exercise is to tamp down the inner critic. Sometimes I bribe her (me) with a treat after the ritual is done like lunch with a friend or going to my favorite thrift shop.

Here are some questions to get you started:

• What went well this year in business and in life?
• What moments in my life do I want to remember from this year?
• What lessons did I learn this year that I can carry into next year?
• What do I want to see change in the next year?
• What do I want to keep from the last year?
• What am I grateful for right now? 
• What will I be grateful for this time next year?
• What were some of the highlights of the past year?
• What were some of the challenges from the past year?
• What things did I have no control over? (I’m looking at you, pandemic!)

Write a future letter to yourself

I used to think this was a silly idea… until I started doing it. Now I realize it’s a powerful tool for positive self-reflection. If you wrote a letter to yourself last year, now is the time to read and reflect on it. Then write yourself a letter for next year. In this letter, I like to write down my dreams and hopes and visions for the year ahead. I also write down my intentions, as if I’m writing them into future existence. I end my letter with gratitude, usually a list of all I’m grateful for. Then I seal it in an envelope and put it away until next year’s ritual day. 

Set intentions

Instead of resolutions, I prefer to set intentions. Intentions are purposeful. Intentions are about alignment with my future vision and goals as well as about discipline. I spend time in prayer and meditation in order to intuit the intentions I set for the next year. They are very personal and yours will look nothing like anyone else’s. In fact, I suggest you not share them with others. Keep them in your journal so you can review them throughout the year. I like to set one intention for each area of my life, and I write them in my journal. These are the areas I tend to focus on, but you can add your own and change mine. I like to have at least one intention per area, but sometimes I’ll have more in an area I need to work on.

Here is a list I use, in no particular order, to set my intentions. 

• Career/Business
• Love Life/Marriage
• Finances/Wealth
• Family
• Friends
• Physical Environment
• Fun/Recreation
• Health & Fitness
• Personal Development
• Spiritual Development
• Travel

Vision Board

I love working on my vision board throughout the year, but I especially love rebuilding it at the end of each year. While my bigger dreams still seem so far away, I’m always amazed at what smaller dreams did come true. Even those that came true in a different way than I expected. I used to build my vision board on poster board with magazine cutouts and tons of glue sticks, but now I choose and edit my photos on Canva and build myself a vision board presentation with PowerPoint. That way I can have different slides, one for each area of my life listed above. Working with a vision board helps align your intentions. And don’t be surprised if you change your intentions after doing vision board work. Sometime what you think you want or need is different than what you truly want or need. (I hope that makes sense!) When I sit down to do this, the first thing I do is review the past year’s board and journal about it. Then I build the next year’s board, also journaling about my choices. That way, as the years pass, I can read about and remember my previous intentions, and hopes, and dreams. It’s a great exercise in being flexible. While so many things on my boards have happened, many have not–and that’s okay. Building a vision board helps you visualize your future but also helps you let go of the things in your past that weren’t working for you. And it’s all okay! 

Goal Setting Planners

I use two goal setting planners/sheets to help me decide what I should focus on for the next year. The first is the HB90 Goal Setting Planner. Sarra Cannon, the owner of HeartBreathings who designs these planners, uses these planners in conjunction with her HB90 Goal Setting Course. But the pages are easy to use without taking the course (although I highly recommend it!) and she also has some free videos on her YouTube channel to help you work through the pages. These pages will give you a high-level view of the dreams in your heart to help you choose your goals.

Hilary Rushford’s Elegant Excellence Journal also offers high-level goal planning but in a way that helps you break down the projects into weekly tasks. HB90 does this as well, but there’s a portrait section in Hilary’s journal that asks different questions and forces you to look at your goals with a different perspective.

I use both of these goal planners in tandem, and I can’t imagine planning my year without them both. And I will give photos of how I use my journals in a post later this month.

Daily/Weekly Planners

This year I’m simplifying my planner choices. I use an A5 Rings binder for my daily work with the HB90 Undated Planner. It’s holds everything I need to run my business and helps me keep track of everything from expenses to word sprints and daily word counts. I prefer the undated pages because my schedule can be erratic and I hate to throw away dated pages.

I’m also using a Hobonichi Weeks Sneaker Mega Planner for my everyday carry planner. This is a smaller planner/calendar that fits directly into my wallet so I can keep track of expenses and take notes on those few days when I leave the house and enter the world.

I also use a daily Emily Ley Simplified Planner that sits on my kitchen counter and keeps track of everything the family has to do from doctor appointments to bills due to haircuts and birthdays. I also have a lot of this data in a family google calendar, but sometimes it’s easier to grab this journal on the counter and check who is doing what and when.

This year I’m also using a Sterling Ink Common Journal as my everyday diary, and I am still using my Five-Year Hobonichi journal for my nighttime before-bed musings and memories.

Clean the House & Contact Loved Ones

My grandmother used to say that how you end the old year and begin a new year sets the tone for all the months in between. (Maybe it stems from the ancient Scottish New Year’s tradition of Hogmanay and First Footing. In Scotland, on New Year’s Day, people clean their houses to ward off bad luck. At midnight, people stand outside their homes in a circle, holding hands, and sing Auld Lang Syne. Then, after midnight, they invite neighbors to enter their clean home. The First Footer is the person who enters the home first on New Years Day who is supposed to be harbinger of good fortune.)

Anyway, one of the things I was taught is to clean your house around the New Year. I know it’s hard with all the holidays (decorations, company, cooking, etc) but I love to spend the days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve cleaning up as much as I can (although I leave my Christmas decorations up until the Epiphany). Then, come New Year’s Day, I feel like I’m starting the year with clean house and clearer head.

Once the house is clean, I light a candle and say a blessing over our home. The other thing I include in this section is making sure I connect with those I love. This is a good time of year to revise your contact lists birthday calendars and, if you send cards out, to buy them in advance. In January, I will set aside a day to purchase and address cards I know I’m going to send out all year long. Then, a week before the event, I’ll write out the card and mail it. (Yes, I still love to mail and receive cards!). I may also make a note in my planner of when I’m going to call certain people, or make lunch dates with my friends. If it’s on my calendar, I’m much more likely to remember.

End of the Year Rituals set you up for success. 

They give you permission to set aside time to help you reflect on the past, offer gratitude for the present, and dream about the future. And I don’t know of any better way to both end one year and begin a new one. But the most important thing to remember is that your ritual is private and personal and you can make it all your own. The above suggestions are just that–ideas to help you build your own rituals so you can meet your own goals and fulfill your own, beautiful dreams. I wish you all a healthy and happy New Year.