Out with the Old, In with the New: An Uncertain Situation or an Opportunity to Grow?

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This is the time of year to review and reset everything that you do to get back on track to your success.

Unless you look at this time of year as your opportunity to grow, both personally and professionally, reviewing the year just past can be nerve wracking for many people. You do this to stay on track, if you’re having a good year, or to reset your plans if you’ve strayed far from, or didn’t reach any of, your goals.

Did you complete everything you planned last January? Did you reach all your milestones? Did you find it necessary to reset some goals throughout the year, and did these resets help you realize them?

By now you should be developing your plan for next year, using this year’s progress, or retreat, as a guideline. Think of what you set out to complete this year, but failed to do. Do you take these items into your coming years plan, or do you re-evaluate them and possibly discard some? Might it be better to just rewrite your whole plan?

On December 31, you have the opportunity to close out the past year; remember all the good and forget all the bad. Not so quick though. What lessons were learned from each and how did you learn from them?

Never let the knowledge gained from a failure be forgotten. Remember, the one who never makes mistakes, never learns.

January 1 gives you the opportunity to start with a clean slate. Were your goals, or resolutions, from the past year set at the wrong level? If you easily reached every milestone, you set your expectations to low. If you struggled and didn’t reach, or even come close, you might have set your expectations too high. If you completed some, but not all, you might be on the right track.

Just be careful. Sometimes we confuse the goal with the task. If at the end of the year all the tasks are completed, but you haven’t advanced your business, you are confusing tasks and goals. And again, if nothing was written down and reviewed periodically throughout the year, you could not have advanced your business. (See my previous post)

This is all to remind you to do an assessment to date as to where you are and where you are headed; a Report Card of sorts. Did you get all A+’s or all D-‘s?

If you’re not getting all A+’s, will you find the time to get with your team of trusted advisers to get some help and increase your grades? Or will 2011 be just another scurry through the maze?

Merry Christmas! Happy Chanukkah! Happy New Year!