A New Kind of Resolution

Well, it’s that time of year again.  It’s the time when many of us take stock of our accomplishments from the previous year and set goals for improvement for the upcoming year.

I think that it’s valuable to give yourself some quiet space to reflect on the past and envision your future in whatever form works for you. The magic is in being accountable, taking responsibility and raising our awareness about what we create in the world.  In our busy, hectic days it’s so easy to skim the top layer of existence just to survive from one moment to the next and any exercise that gives us an opportunity to go a bit deeper – is a good one. 

I tried something new this year that has been valuable for me and I wanted to share it with you.  The idea behind this “January Retrospective” as Martin Seligman calls it in his book Authentic Happiness, is to rate your satisfaction in the of areas of your life that are important to you. This exercise gives you an opportunity to evaluate how satisfied you are with each of the domains you value most in your life.

These are the domains I chose:

• Love
• Profession
• Finances
• Play
• Friends
• Family
• Health
• Creativity
• Overall

Rate your satisfaction with each of the areas of your life you have chosen on a scale from 1(abysmal) to 10 (perfect).  Then write a couple of sentences about each of them that sum it up.

I’ll share with you an interesting thing that happened with me when I did this last night.  I was doing what most people do – focusing on the area I knew I needed to and wanted to build upon this year – because I had not met my goals last year.  I had skipped straight to rating my “overall” domain quite low because I was evaluating my overall life satisfaction based primarily on that one area.  After I completed this exercise, I realized that I had rated my satisfaction with all but 2 of my domains at 8 and higher. So in review, it raised how I felt with my “overall” satisfaction. 

It’s so easy to evaluate ourselves on the one area of our lives that we feel we haven’t mastered and completely overlook all of the other important, valuable contributions we do make.  This exercise does a great job of placing value on all aspects of our lives.

I can say that after completing my first “January Retrospective” I already feel a little happier!