Why You Should Start the New Year with Reflection not Resolution

Happy New Year! New Year is a time where lots of us make resolutions. However, what often happens is that within a couple of months those New Year resolutions are forgotten. In this blog, I’m going to talk about why resolutions fail and why making time for New Year reflection, is a more productive way to start a year.

Why New Year Resolutions Often Fail

New Year resolutions often fail as they are usually abstract, large goals, with no clear intention or plan. Additionally, resolutions are often made in response to things we think we should be doing rather than things we genuinely want.

To make lasting changes and achieve our desires, we need to get in touch with who we are and what we want. Getting in touch with what we want, helps us to find our ‘why’. It is our ‘why’ that gives us the intention we need to drive us to set goals and achieve the changes we want in our lives.

How Do I Find My Why? – Using Reflection Tools

The way we get in touch with our ‘why’, our real catalyst for change is through using reflection. Reflection practice is a powerful tool that helps support good mental health and personal growth. There are a number of reflection tools, but my two favorites are the Year Compass and the Wheel of Life.

The Year Compass

The Year Compass is a detailed reflection workbook that is available for free download. I have used the year compass for a few years now and it’s my favorite way to end a year and start a new one.

The Year Compass booklet is split into two parts. The first part has several reflective questions, looking back at our achievements, challenges, and memorable moments, from the previous year. The second part looks at the year ahead, thinking about how we would like to feel, what we would like to achieve. This year the booklet also has a pandemic supplement, helping us to look at how we managed during the challenging year the coronavirus arrived.

The Wheel of Life

The wheel of life is a simple but powerful reflection tool. Covering key areas in our life, the wheel allows us to examine our level of satisfaction in each of those areas. We can then see where we have made progress and identify areas that we wish to work on in the year ahead.

I use these all the time with my coaching clients and it is always surprising the level of self-awareness that comes from completing a wheel. I’m going to be running workshops, guiding people through completing a wheel. If you would like to know when places become available, sign up for my mailing list to be notified.

Why Reflection is a Better Catalyst for Change Than New Year Resolutions

What both the Year Compass and The Wheel of Life have in common is that deep reflection comes first before any goal setting begins. This reflection helps us to take stock, to see what we want and why we want it. The result is that we make much more tangible goals rather than abstract resolutions.

For example, if you have a New Year resolution to lose weight, by engaging in reflection, you can get in touch with the why underneath this thought. Your why might be to be healthier or to feel more confident. These are far more powerful motivators and give you options to set more short-term achievable goals.

You can begin with smaller steps, perhaps to do one exercise class a week. In meeting these smaller goals, you get an instant sense of achievement which motivates you to continue.  

How Reflection Helps us To Practice More Self Kindness in Our Personal Growth

All too often we put pressure on ourselves in a New Year, to do things that are just not achievable in our current circumstances. This in turn leads to failure and feeling bad about ourselves. Alternatively, reflection helps us to be kinder to ourselves to acknowledge all the things we did achieve, and forgive ourselves for limitations that are beyond our control.

This is especially important right now in our current world situation as we live with the coronavirus pandemic. There is much we cannot do because of the situation we find ourselves in. Therefore, we need to be setting realistic goals and expectations for ourselves, rather than setting ourselves up for failure.

How Reflection Helps us to Shift our Perspective

Another reason New Year reflection is better than New Year resolution is that it helps us to get our life and situation into perspective. It’s easy to look back and say that 2020 was a terrible year and whilst there’s no denying that it was, there are always good things among the bad. Reflection helps us to look at our life differently and see all the positive aspects that we might otherwise not see.

For example, looking back on 2020, we can see all the moments where we adapted, how we coped, the people we connected with, and the friends and loved ones that gave us strength. From this perspective, it’s easier to shirt our view and start the new year from a place of gratitude and optimism.

An Invitation to Reflection Practice Instead of New Year Resolutions

I would like to invite you to spend some time in reflection over the next few days before you even begin to think about setting goals for the year ahead.

In this way, you are far more likely to be setting achievable goals that stick, rather than New Year resolutions that slip through your fingers.

Thanks for reading, I really hope this was helpful, do let me know in the comment section below. Also, if you feel up for sharing, l would love to hear one thing from 2020 that you achieved and are proud of, no matter how small you might think it is!

Hello! My name is Finn and I have a passion for creating honest content, that inspires personal growth and promotes well-being.

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