Every December I pause and gather the threads of my year.
It’s a lovely ritual, and I’m noticing I start earlier and earlier - maybe because the rush of Christmas can quickly give way to ‘back to work’, or because it feels so dark so early, or simply because it’s a nice thing to do.
It’s absolutely not about looking ahead yet, or creating goals or resolutions - it’s about looking back to see the journey.
In previous years I’ve focused a lot on finding the story of it - looking fully at the ups, the downs, the learning, the insights, the implications.
This year I’m appreciating how powerful it is to simply look back and see what happened, from the start to right now.
So much happens each day, but it’s easy to lose track of how it all adds up when we’re in it.
So I scrolled back to January in my calendar, and spent 20 minutes looking at how it unfolded week by week.
So, so much!
Of course none of it was new news - I lived through and experienced it at the time!
Yet revisiting it in one sitting helped me appreciate the scale of what’s happened - it was like watching a time lapsed video, but of my life.
It helped me remember things I had forgotten and gave me more context for where I am now.
I could acknowledge the time and energy it took to get here - the ups and downs, the things I expected and the things that came out of nowhere.
I could give myself credit for the effort, the learning, the process and the progress.
It’s incredible how much can happen in a year, but unless we stop and look back we can forget so much of it.
And forget to give ourselves credit - for what we’ve done, where we struggled, what we achieved, the energy it took to navigate the journey, the learning we gained - and so much more!
So, as we head towards the end of the year, take a moment to look back at where you started, and the journey to get here.
And then remember give yourself some credit for all of it.
You’ve come a long way.
Wishing you all a week of appreciating what’s happened, and how far you’ve come,
