Congratulations! You made it! We are 6 months into 2023 – we’re half way through!
How do you feel about that?
What thoughts, feelings and emotions come up for you?
Perhaps a part of you is excited.
Perhaps a part of you is berating yourself for not working harder.
Perhaps a part of you can’t understand where the time has gone.
Whatever is coming up for you, take a moment to acknowledge it.
Where did you want to be by now?
Do you know?
This is not a blog about giving yourself a hard time, this is an opportunity to pause and to acknowledge where you are – that’s powerful. The opportunity to reflect and reset allows you to check back in with what you truly want and identify if you are going in the right direction for you. Sometimes life and business can throw us a curve ball and we can get off track or we can discover something else that is far more important. If we don’t take the time to reflect we don’t allow ourselves to change.
Reflection is a powerful tool in your toolkit but the ego doesn’t like you to use it too much and certainly not in the way I’m writing about.
Your ego doesn’t like change; it doesn’t care if you’re on the wrong track. As long as you;re surviving then it’s happy – why do you need to change? It would rather steer you back to loyal familiar habits where it feels comfortable.
As human beings we want to evolve/grow, to reach our full potential, to thrive, to be happy and reflection is part of that. Reflection is that opportunity to check in and change course if needs be.
The majority of people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in five years. Taking time to reflect allows you to notice how far you have come and how much further you can go and/or want to go. Imagine getting to the end of the year and releasing you haven’t even achieved half of what you wanted…how demoralising is that? However if you regularly take time to reflect, you can adjust your metaphorical goal posts so you set yourself up for success rather than soul crushing underachievement.
Reflection will ultimately save you time because you “nip in the bud” anything that you may be doing that is distracting you from where you want to go. Many a time fitness or wellbeing business owner has told me that they don’t have time to waste reflecting; they need to keep their head down and keep working. My reply is always along the lines of…”How do you know you’re going the right way?”
In my groups, we reflect every 3 months to make sure we are on track and to acknowledge how long certain projects are taking. We also take the opportunity to reflect on what has gone well and what we want to celebrate. There have to be rewards along the way otherwise why do we work so hard. We also consider what the lessons are and what we would change so we don’t repeat the same mistakes again.
Reflection is a powerful tool and I highly recommend you start incorporating it into your business to improve your productivity, save you time and ultimately get where you want to go faster.