Monday Motivation, so it’s now the last Monday of 2021! Let’s get that last serving of motivation in. I’m sure we’ve all been getting our wrap up reviews from the various sites and applications that we use. I’ve had messages come from the popular in Spotify, but also Experian and Moneybox, with the end of the year comes that time to reflect and take stock on what has happened. So, for this week, I’ll be focusing on my 2021, and I hope that this can act as prompt for you to take some time to reflect on yours, the good and the bad. For now, I’ll focus on the last week, Christmas came! The food did not disappoint, I’ve still been able to tuck into some leftovers this afternoon. Ahead of Christmas I went to watch the a new Christmas movie, Boxing day, which was good, and I did take away one quote from it:
It’ll be alright in the end
If it’s not alright, it’s not the end
Instagram added a new feature recently, where it prompts users to posts which I’ve found great for encouraging user engagement. In the picture above you can see four first time things for me from this year, one of which is this blog. To reflect on my 2021 I’ll be doing it an agile driven way, through a retrospective, splitting my 2021 into three parts; What Went Well, Challenges and Even Better Ifs.
2021, What Went Well:
My first image gave a few of these away. This year I’ve been able to work through several my resolutions, I finally passed my driving test, and bought my first car. I skydived from 15,000ft in the air, lockdown gave me the opportunity to grow my hair. This allowed me to experiment with some new hairstyles such as coil twist, plaits, cornrows, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how they’ve come out. I’ve reconnected with a few old friends, met interesting new people, and tried out more new things this year. Professionally this has been my most momentous year with not one but two promotions. All these things have really helped pushed me on to continue to grow and develop
What’s gone well for you this year? (Professionally/Personally/Relationships)
2021 Challenges
This has been one hectic year, and in those successes, there have been a lot of gruelling setbacks too. Some of which I don’t love to remember but are helpful to reflect on so that I can avoid or better navigate them next year. The one that comes to mind straight away was the failures of the driving tests. I was able to secure two promotions but prior to securing them there were also a few rejections that came, which are normal but still at the time disheartening. I’ve also found myself so focused and driven on the future at points which means I’m not as present as I can be. You’ve seen me mention it in several blogs, but time is flying and sometimes simply being present can really help manage that. It has also been another year of COVID, even as this is written we’re experiencing a peak of infections in the UK. So, navigating the new normal during that has presented different kinds of challenges. I feel like burnout has been one for not just myself but most people as with changing restrictions comes a need to readjust socially, professionally, and personally, work life balance and finding that time to socialise more has been tricky for me
What were some challenges for you this year? (Professionally/Personally/Relationships)
What Would’ve Made 2021 Even Better
Whenever I mention this aspect of retrospectives to people it tends to be received with some confusion. It essentially means, what do you think could’ve made this year even better, be that in the navigation of your challenges or doing more of the things that what went well for you this year. I think going back to basics would’ve made my year better, and by that, I mean staying disciplined in my routines of sleeping early, writing my monthly, weekly, and daily to do lists and reflecting consistently, it’s a lot easier to reflect week on week as opposed to quarter by quarter. I also think reading more would’ve helped improve my year, there’s a lot of interesting things out there that I miss out on without that. Whilst it may sound repeated, being present would’ve made my year that much better, and just appreciate certain moments for what they were.
What would’ve made 2021 even better for you? (Professionally/Personally/Relationships)
There are still a few more days left of 2021 so you can reflect on your year still. Set some actual time to yourself to do it, as it’s a worthwhile exercise, yes you could still do it in 2022 but it’ll be more difficult to clearly recall what happened in the first half of the year when we’re in the first half of the next. These exercises don’t need to be done alone, work through them with an accountability partner and you can work off each other in filling in the blanks from your last year. What are you looking forward to in 2022? I’ll be looking forward to the continued growth, some new readers and taking my extreme activities from skydiving to bungee jumping.
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Temis2Pence