Year-End Reflections, not New Year’s Resolutions!

Here we stand at the beginning of another year. Last year, 2020, is behind us; and the future of 2021 is in front of us. That is, we all have a 365 blank-sheet to write down what our future will be. Or, for some, it will be just another trip around the Sun. For others, it is their tabula rasa (a slate that was once a list of debt, but it has been erased and is now clean).

However, before we take our first few steps into this new year of 2021 and make our New Year’s Resolutions, I would like to suggest that we first stop and look back on the year that just happened. Yes, my recommendation is that in our lives, there needs to be time to reflect. For me, the end of one event and the beginning of another is a great benchmark to use as a point of reflection. I once had a professor tell me, “Dave, experience doesn’t make you wiser.

Evaluated experience makes you wiser.”

I am guessing that many people are making Resolutions to start the New Year, and if that works for you, I am glad. For me, this particular ‘tipping-point’ has nothing to do with resolutions and everything to do with reflection. I propose that while preparing for the new year, we need to stop, take time, and look back on 2020. It is during these moments of careful reflection that we will find the correct perspective and the right balance which can help us to make positive changes and move forward in 2021. Too often, we do what we have always done without taking time to evaluate whether it is working. This new year can be different, and it can be different for all of us.

One way that it can be different is in how we view the 365 blank-sheets. Author John Maxwell says that success is decided by your daily agenda. If I understand him correctly, I think he is saying that to get the greatest return on our daily investment of time, each of us must figure out what habit or activity to stop and what new habit, or activity to start while we still are true to our gifts, passions, and priorities.

In conclusion, adding careful reflection, not new resolutions, will bring to the surface the specific changes we need to make. These changes may have much to do with the use of our time, talent, or treasure, and they may change the way we live. It is a reflection, not resolutions, that will yield the correct and dynamic insight we need to go forward and write our future on the new, clean 365 blank-sheets that make up each day in the new year.