How do you define a successful year?
How are you evaluating your year? Take our successful year assessment to find out!
It’s that time of year again. Did you have a successful year in 2021?
There is a sharp crisp feeling in the air (especially first thing in the morning). The leaves have fallen off the trees. Heck, even the radio is starting to play holiday music 24-7 now!
We’re almost in the last month of this year and we’re about to begin the futuristic year of 2022! But first, how was your 2021? Would you consider it a successful year? How do you measure success?
At this time of year, we find so many of us are looking forward to what a successful year we will have next year, and don’t spend enough time reflecting on the year passed. Of course, we encourage our clients to have a good plan for the coming year, but it’s also important to take stock of what you accomplished and learned in the past 12 months.
This isn’t an exercise to focus on our flaws or perceived shortcomings. It’s a time to grab what we need from the past that will help us to move forward in our lives and business.
So today we’re going to look at how you can evaluate your success in 2021 and how to use it in your 2022 planning to have a successful year.
What does “success” mean?
This is a loaded word! The meaning of success is very personal. For some, they only feel successful when they have a 6-figure year. For others, success is just making a home cooked meal and having the strength to avoid the McDonalds for dinner tonight.
Take a moment right now and look at the areas of life that you highly value. Then define what you need in each of these areas to feel successful or accomplished.
For example, if your career or business is a value for you, what do you need to do or accomplish to make you feel happy in your business? Maybe you want to close 50% more sales every quarter. Do you want to be recognized for your hard work with a promotion or raise? Do you want to finally get your new business launched and get your first client?
Success is very individual and you need to define what it means to you.
Doing a 2021 successful year assessment.
Here’s a great exercise we often recommend to our clients to help them evaluate the past year with a bit more structure. This is an exercise you can do yearly or even seasonally to evaluate and track your progress.
You can do this assessment for different areas of your life too, not just business. Just tailor the questions to the area you are assessing.
Grab a piece of paper (or open a new Word doc) and write down your thoughts about the following questions:
1. Did you achieve your business goals? Firstly, what were your goals (did you write them down)? Cross off any goals that you achieved and any progress you made towards the others.
2. Did you achieve personal goals? Do the same for any personal goals you had.
3. Did you learn? Whether you achieved these goals or not, chances are there is some lesson to be learned. Write down any lessons you learned next to each one.
4. Did you grow? Chances are you have, but may not have realized it. Think about at least one thing in each area of your life or business where you grew. Perhaps you had a perspective shift or learned something new.
5. Did you stay true to what lights you up, what creates flow? Think back to your core life and business values. Were you true to them or did you make concessions to please someone else?
6. Did you create lasting value either in your personal or business worlds? This can be hard to see because you are so close to yourself. If you made even the smallest impact on someone else, you’ve created value. You don’t have to find the solution to global warming to have created value in the world!
What wins your “Accomplishment of the Year” award?
Next, make a list of all your accomplishments in 2021. It helps if you take a few minutes every day or week to write down your accomplishments for that time, then at the end of the year, you can review them all at once.
Then pick your top 3-5 accomplishments. Share them on social media over a couple of days so others can celebrate with you.
Now we want you to pick the one accomplishment that wins the trophy. The one you are most proud of! Maybe this was your biggest goal, or maybe something smaller that you had to step outside of your comfort zone to achieve.
Pick the winning accomplishment and write it on a sticky note (or create yourself a little award certificate) and hang it somewhere you can see it every day. It’ll act as a reminder of what you’re capable of and can help motivate you for your 2020 goals.
Planning successful goals for 2022
Now that you know how far you’ve come and what you accomplished in 2021, let’s look ahead to 2022. December and January are often when we create our big yearly goals and visualize what the year ahead might look like.
At myCEO we find this reflection and retrospective so worthwhile and important. 365 Days is a long time and a lot can happen. How can we know where we are going next, if we can’t harness objective insights from where we’ve been?
In these early days, we decide what actions and decisions we need to make our new year a success. As business coaches, we do this exercise with our clients to help set-up expectations and a plan for the coming year.
You’ve probably heard of SMART goals, right? Pick a few big goals for 2022 and define them as:
Specific: Be as specific as possible for what you want to achieve.
Measurable: Define how you can measure your progress or success of this goal so it can be tracked.
Attainable: Your goal can be grandiose, but not unrealistic.
Realistic: You know what you are capable of and your limitations so make sure this goal doesn’t force you to stray from your values or integrity.
Time-based: give your goal a deadline (as specific as the exact day you want to accomplish it by).
Contact us for a free assessment
If you’d like some support to make the year 2022 your most successful year yet, schedule a free 30-minute coaching conversation with us to see how we can help you.
