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The What If Experience

Explore a new "What If..." question about life each week with some thoughts, some answers and some action steps. Share my journey of personal growth and living in possibility.
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Now displaying: Page 1
Jan 1, 2017

What if you examined your life?

What would you find? What would you learn? What would you gain? What would you have to face? How would you grow? And, why would you bother?

That one, why would you bother...that question I can help answer for you. The other questions are going to depend on you, but I can tell you about the why. Taking time to reflect is the way to turn experiences into learning and learning into an intentional life. It helps evaluate your experiences, learn from your mistakes, and repeat your successes. It allows you to gain perspective that you don't have when you're in the trenches of your day to day activity. In business it's like the difference between working on your business and working in it. In our personal lives its unusual to take the time to think about where we're going and how we're going to get there.

Six years ago, I started doing an intentional yearly review and it's changed how I live and love my life. I take a personal retreat and ask big questions, process the previous year and prepare for the new year. It's provided a rhythm of reflection in my year that I now find indispensable. Because my goals are well aligned with my values, my real priorities and probably because I'm fairly goal driven, I've managed to accomplish a lot of what I set out to do in those yearly retreats, without too much checking in on them.

But this year I began to wonder what I could do if I was more intentional about reflection periodically throughout the year as well? I'm guessing it will keep me more accountable, more organized and more intentional. So, here's what I'm going to try.

Daily

If this is going to work for me, it needs to be simple, quick, repeatable and useful. I'll do it with my son and each night take 5-10 minutes and start a one sentence journal. Either one sentence about the day, or one drawing. This was something I did for the first half of 2016 and it was great for considering and capturing the most important part of the day. This is less about reflection on my goals than an intentional highlighting of meaningful moments of life, those small ones that slip away in memory so easily.

I bought a sketchbook for each of us today that has small perforated square cards. Perfect for containing the small drawings and limiting the effort required. I post them to an instagram account and then print them in books when it reaches 60 images. I love that my son will have a visual record of our days from my own hand.

Weekly

There are all kinds of things I should do weekly...plan meals, check the upcoming week's calendar, laundry, grocery shop. You get the picture. I've been mostly haphazard about the way I've done them before and that's reflected in craziness during the week whenever I'm unprepared, which is far too often. This year, I'll be more intentional about setting aside Sunday evening for those tasks. The reflection portion should only take about 20 minutes and I'll ask:

  • What worked last week?
  • What didn't work?
  • What do I need to do about it?
  • Schedule weekly goal tasks (from the monthly list)

Monthly

I'm going to take myself out to dinner! Doesn't self-reflection and planning sound like a good excuse to eat out? I'm going to set aside one evening at the end of each month and go out to dinner by myself. I'll follow the weekly format, but spend a bit more time. I'm trying some new tools this year and I'll be using those to see how helpful they are in this time as well.

Quarterly

Quarterly is for big picture thinking, progress checks and adjusting direction. Am I still heading the direction I want to? Am I doing what really matters? Have I gotten off course? Do I need to change the course? Some of this will show up in my monthly sessions, but those will be more tactical than visionary. Quarterly reflections are visionary. Ideally, I'm going to go away for an overnight or weekend. Right now, I'm planning on two of these sessions. One at spring break and one mid-July. So, not quite quarterly, but when combined with my yearly version, it will come close.

Yearly

Well, this is my favorite...and the only one that I've actually done before consistently. It's become so valuable to me, so necessary to my life that I've decided to add the others to my repertoire. Each year (I've missed a few), a friend and I go to the beach between Christmas and New Years. We do vacation things, like visit favorite restaurants and take long walks by the ocean. But, we also spend a lot of time processing where we are and where we need to go. We talk. We read. We write. And we do it loosely, without much of an agenda. It's looked different each year, but has been exactly what we've needed each year. It's a time apart from daily life to find some clear mental space and the sound of the surf. It's coming away from the previous year with a chance to pause, rest, reflect, recharge and re-energize for the year ahead.

My annual trip is to the beach, but if that's not possible for you, don't let that stop you! Take a few hours away without distraction. Sleep in a friend's guest room overnight (make sure they know it's not a social call), or send your kids to sleep over at a friend's, turn off all distractions and make that your time. I promise you, the effort is worthwhile. it may feel foreign at first, it may be uncomfortable at times. It may require honesty and growth. But worthwhile? Yes. Definitely.

I'm nearing the end of that trip right now. My friend is in cancer treatments this year and so we're doing less, resting more. And mentally, I'm groggy. The ocean isn't clearing my head as quickly as it usually does. But, I do know this. This time to pause and reflect is precious. It's been key to my personal development, my divorce recovery, my business growth and the creation of an intentional life. I am so looking forward to what the addition of the other beats of that rhythm will add to my experience of 2017.

Here's how I see it working. During this yearly personal retreat, I make choices about where I want to be and what I want to do in the year or years ahead. I think about what's important to me and what I want to accomplish with my life. Each quarter I ask, "Is this still where I want to go? How am I doing getting there? And what are the keys this quarter to making those things  happen?" In the monthly "dinner with myself" sessions, I'll be really tactical about what it will take to get those things done. In my weekly and daily reviews...this is where the implementation happens. The everyday actions that lead to real results.

Episode Artwork

The art this week is about the patterns that the rhythm of the surf leaves on the shore. My hope is that the rhythm of reflection I will have in my life in 2017 will leave patterns that are just as visible on me.

Taking the time each year to examine my life has made the difference in my choosing my life intentionally rather than living in reaction to my circumstances. It's my life. I'm responsible for how I want to live it. I get to write my story and I want it to be a good one.

What if you examined your life?

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