Category: resolutions

How to Evaluate Your Year

“Evaluating the year that has passed can be a valuable exercise for yourself to gain deeper insights, identify growth opportunities for the new year, and celebrate the accomplishments or successes you had.”

2024 is ending soon as I write this article and I do believe it is important to look back on the year that was to evaluate it holistically, such as whether it was good, bad, or a mixed bag. Evaluating the year that has passed can be a valuable exercise for yourself to gain deeper insights, identify growth opportunities for the new year, and celebrate the accomplishments or successes you had.

Reflecting on various aspects of your life, even areas that you can improve upon will help you to set meaningful goals for the year ahead. Here’s a guide I have created on how to evaluate your year comprehensively, focusing on the five major areas of friends, family, relationships, experiences, and work or business.

Friends

Friendships are an essential part of life and key to one’s mental health as a surefire way to stay truly connected and bond over shared activities or hobbies or even lend each other a helping hand. Think about reflecting on your relationships with friends from over the past year. Ask yourself the following questions when doing so:

  1. Giving or Getting Support: Were your friends there for you during challenging times? Were you there for them when they needed you when they were in a rut or needed help? Did they offer emotional or practical support when needed? Could you say the same?
  2. Showing Mutual Effort: Did you invest some effort into maintaining these friendships? Conversely, did your friends reciprocate to make the effort to reach out to you as well?
  3. Quality over Quantity: Did you prioritize meaningful, deep connections over superficial ones with your friends? Were your interactions enriching and positive with your friends?
  4. Encouraging Growth: Did your friendships encourage personal growth or help you broaden your perspective? Did you give each other advice on how to better yourselves?

Document the moments and memories that stood out to you, whether they were fun gatherings, heart-to-heart conversations, or instances where you and your friends supported each other through a difficult time. Evaluate if there were any friendships that became draining or unbalanced and consider whether to address these issues or set boundaries or even cut off the friendship if it isn’t working out.

Family

Family relationships can greatly influence your emotional well-being in both positive but also negative ways depending on your own situation with your family members. I encourage you to reflect on the past year’s interactions with your family members and consider these questions:

  1. Building Connection: Did you spend enough quality time with your family? Were you present and engaged during these moments or were you distracted by your phone or another device?
  2. Conflict Resolution: Were there any unresolved conflicts? How well did you communicate and handle disagreements? Why did those conflicts arise and how can they be avoided next year?
  3. Support System: Did your family serve as a source of strength or encouragement? Were you able to offer the same in return? Did you help each other out in a mutual manner?
  4. Milestones and Memories: Were there any significant events or milestones within your family? How did you contribute to these moments? Did they celebrate your wins this year and did you do the same for them when they had successes?

Think about whether you balanced your time and energy across the various family member dynamics that are constantly evolving each year along with the different personalities that you have in your family. Identify some ways to strengthen bonds with family members next year who may need more of your attention or love than you were able to give up until this point.

Relationships

If you’re in a romantic relationship currently, evaluating this aspect of your life is crucial to keeping it on the right track into next year. Even if you’re single, reflecting on your relationship with yourself or any potential romantic connections is just as important. Ask yourself these questions as you close out the year:

  1. Compatibility: Are you and your partner aligned in your values, goals, and vision for the future? Have you talked about how you felt about the relationships enough in terms of how it is going?
  2. Communication: How effectively did you communicate this year? Were you able to express your needs and listen to your partner’s? Did you handle disagreements respectfully and come to a positive resolution with each other?
  3. Growth: Did your relationship encourage mutual growth? Did you feel supported and loved? Did they support you when you needed it, and have you done the same for them?
  4. Quality Time: How much time did you spend together? Were those moments meaningful and fulfilling? Were you also able to spend time apart in a healthy manner?
  5. Self-Reflection: If you’re single, consider how you’ve nurtured your relationship with yourself. Did you take time to understand your needs, desires, and goals in a potential relationship for next year?

Identify areas where you’ve grown together as a couple or individually when you two were apart. If there were challenges this year, consider how you’ll address them moving forward in your relationship.

Experiences (Travel, Hobbies, Interests, Fun Activities)

Reflect on how you spent your free time outside of work, school, or business and how engaged with life outside of your daily obligations and weekly chores you were. Think about where you went, what you did, what you learned, and how much you enjoyed life beyond the office or the shop or the factory floor. Consider the following in your assessment of your experiences:

  1. Local and International Travel: Did you explore new places, whether locally or internationally? How did these experiences broaden your perspective? What did you learn from the places you traveled to? Would you travel in 2025 and how did you grow as a person in your travels?
  2. Hobbies and Interests: Did you pursue activities that bring you joy or help you grow? Did you try something new? Were you committed to these hobbies and spend enough time on them? What new hobby or interest would you like to try in the new year?
  3. Having Fun and Relaxation: Did you allocate time for leisure and enjoyment? Were you able to strike a balance between work and play? How often were you able to relax yourself?
  4. Making Memories: What were the highlights of your year? Did you attend events, celebrate milestones, or create special moments? Who did you share those memories with?

Take note of the activities, hobbies, interests, etc. that brought you the most happiness and fulfillment. If your year felt monotonous and a bit too routine, think about incorporating more variety or adventure into your life next year. Plan the destinations, places, or cities with regards to travel ahead of time that you hope to visit in the new year.

Work or Business

Your professional or business life is another crucial area to evaluate at the end of any year as it makes up about 80% of our time throughout the year. Reflect on your career or business journey over the past year by asking yourself these questions:

  1. Major Accomplishments: What were your major achievements? Did you meet or exceed your professional goals? What was the process you used to achieve your goals?
  2. Overcoming Challenges: What obstacles did you face, and how did you overcome them? Were there any failures, and what lessons did you learn from them? Who helped you overcome these challenges in your professional or business pursuits?
  3. Professional Growth: Did you acquire new skills, take on new responsibilities, or achieve personal growth in your role? How will these new skills help you next year and beyond?
  4. Managing Work-Life Balance: Were you able to maintain a healthy boundary between work and personal life? Did work leave you feeling fulfilled or drained? Did you take enough time off for vacation or for staying healthy? How did you spend your time outside of work or business?
  5. Establishing Future Goals: Are you satisfied with your current trajectory, or do you feel the need for a change? Did you take steps toward your long-term career aspirations? Will you find a new job next year? Do you plan to launch a new business or company? Will you ask for a raise or promotion and how will you ask this question to your supervisor?

Reflect on whether your work or business aligns with your personal values and passions. If there are gaps in that assessment, start thinking about how to address them in the coming year with regards to making your work or business more personally fulfilling Once you’ve reviewed these areas and answered as many questions in these five major areas as possible, combine your thoughts to identify patterns, strengths, and areas for improvement.

Lastly, think about the following ways generally on how you could make next year the best one yet:

  1. Showing Your Gratitude: What are you most grateful for this year? Acknowledge the people and experiences that enriched your life and made it the year that it was.
  2. Compile Lessons Learned: What did the failures, challenges, and successes of this year teach you? How will these lessons shape your approach to the new year and beyond?
  3. Having Goals for Improvement: What areas need more focus or change from you? How will you set realistic and actionable goals to address these aspects next year?

Evaluating your year holistically gives you a clearer perspective on where you stand in your life and how to move forward in a positive manner. Use this article, the questions I’ve posed and to write a yearly reflection about these five major areas as a substantive foundation for setting meaningful goals and resolutions for the year ahead.

Mind Your Surroundings

In an era of nearly unlimited distractions, the best way to make yourself stand out is to mind your surroundings. Ironically, this should not be that hard to do yet so many people struggle today with keeping their eyes and ears clear of distractions. One of the main reasons for this phenomenon is the fact that technology has rendered us with the ability to avert the need to use our eyes actively in sizing up our environment by focusing instead on flashy advertisements, fluorescent smartphones, and glittering video board. Our eyes are being constantly assaulted by so many visual cues from inanimate objects that we have an increasing amount of trouble focusing on what’s real and what’s in front of us. Not only are our eyes being affected by this distracted kind of living but our ears as well. If you want to see the extent of this, go to any street corner, subway / bus stop, or any public park, instead of listening to nature with the sound of birds chirping and leaves falling, we instead close ourselves off from the natural world with our earphones, headphones, and even earplugs.

Now I’m as guilty as listening to loud music through my earphones and also focusing on my smartphone or a cheesy advertisement as much as the next person, however, I try to be as self-aware as possible in limiting the amount of time I devote my eyesight to screens and my hearing to artificial sounds. What I worry about and what I would encourage you, dear reader, to do is to know the time(s) and the place(s) to put the distractions away for good and to focus on the world around you. You may not think it is important now until something unfortunate or unseemly happens to you because you were not in touch with the immediate environment. Anything can happen in a split second and if you are not prepared for that to occur, especially in public, you may end up regretting your decision to look at your phone or to listen to music when you should have put the ear-pods away. ‘Mind your surroundings’ is a simple wish I have for everyone especially when you are not at home or in a private domicile. When you are in an unfamiliar environment, you have to be much more aware of your surroundings than you would otherwise because it could even mean the difference between life and death.

Unfortunately, it’s become well documented especially in recent years with the rise of mobile technology how a few folks have met an early end to their lives because they simply were not paying enough attention to their environment. These terrible accidents and freak of nature incidents could be avoided if people put down their phones, their headphones, and their smart watches to listen and look carefully at where they were going. Unless you have an important call, are lost in an unfamiliar area, or have to look at you watch for the time, it can wait. Minding your surroundings is especially true in public places. You need to be watching out for where you are going, or it could cost you. This is especially true when you are not familiar with the local environment or may not speak the language if you are traveling to a new country. Being able to hear the sound of cars / buses going by, of what pedestrians are doing or saying, and to orient yourself to find out which neighborhood or part of town you’re in, this is absolutely critical to do, and you do not need modern technology in order to do this.

While it’s definitely true that most people have good intentions, this is not always the case. Do not let yourself become an easy target especially when it would only take a few precautionary steps to keep yourself aware of your environment. Multiple people have died from texting while driving, looking at their smartphone as they crossed a busy intersection, or have fallen off a cliff from a ‘selfie’ gone wrong. While we live in an era of technological abundance, let us not also live in a time that is bereft of common sense. You owe it not only to yourself but to your friends and your family to make wise decisions in terms of managing your interactions with the immediate environment. The steps you can take are quite simple, but they take serious discipline which may not be easy.

A few tips that I personally think would make a big difference involve some measure of personal responsibility but are really not that strenuous in terms of total effort. Sitting yourself in a restaurant facing the entrance and exit of a restaurant is key if something unfortunate were to happen or if you would like to have a good idea of what’s going on throughout the place, especially if you’re seated further into the room than right by the entrance. I find this tip to be really underrated when you are with close friends or family members who you want to look out for when they are sitting across from you and facing away from the entrance and/or exit.

Another tip of mine is to put your phone on airplane mode or simply turn it off when you are on the go. If you are walking for a little while, driving in a car (all the time!), or are involved in an activity, which requires serious concentration, you should not tempt yourself to be on your phone, smartwatch, etc. because it may lead to deadly consequences if you are not careful. A public service campaign that I fully support is titled, “It can wait”, which shows how 99% of texts or phone calls can wait a half an hour or even more when you’re busy doing other actions such as driving. Having the discipline to use a hands-free method or to contact the person(s) before you operate a vehicle or other machinery is common sense and saves lives.

Above all, the advice of ‘mind your surroundings’ is also appropriate in terms of being able to assess your environment quickly and accurately. You cannot do this if you are listening to music, texting, or have your eyes peeled to the ground. Maintain your awareness, be vigilant, and be sure to maintain eye contact that is dead ahead. You may not think that these tips are important now, but you do not want to regret being distracted if it comes to backfiring on you in the future. Whether you are at a movie theater, the beach, in your car, hiking a mountain, kayaking in the lake, you need to be able to be aware of who and what is around you at all times. If you’re lying in bed or relaxing on the couch, then I would say it’s not bad to let your guard down. However, in public, especially when you’re traveling to a new area, city, country, etc., you need to put the distractions away, mind your surroundings, and pay careful attention to what is going on around you. Unfortunately, this needs to be said in today’s world where every minute, our senses are absorbed all of the time especially in urban environments.

Nobody’s perfect but you really have to adapt yourself to the various locales that you put yourself into. A seasoned traveler, explorer, or observer can tell you that being aware and mindful is a key trait to have that will keep you moving forward. Please do your best to follow some of the tips I have laid out and some of the cautions that I have listed. Keep the texting, calling, and Tweeting to a minimum when you’re on the go and you should be fine. Always mind your surroundings to the best of your ability.

New Year’s Resolutions

LFP-Resolutions
“It’s that time of year again…”

When the clock strikes midnight in a few hours from now, I will be very happy to see the end of 2015 and to look forward to beginning of 2016. Overall, 2015 was a very challenging yet rewarding year for me with many new experiences, new perspectives on life, and changes to my lifestyle.

I immersed myself in traveling to different cities and countries, becoming better at being a teacher, and developing my abilities as a writer through this blog that I’ve been experimenting with for the last few months. I think that I have grown as a person into someone more mature, wise, and knowledgeable.

2016 is going to be another big, life-changing year for me and over the next few weeks, I will be divulging about how my life will be different soon and what changes will be made to this burgeoning blog of mine as well.

I have never really been that big on New Year’s Resolutions but I think that it is an admirable concept to try your best to set goals and make improvements for the coming year. As human beings, we must always try to improve and better ourselves in any way that we can. Without further ado, here are my personal resolutions in 2016:

1) Continue to improve my Spanish language skills and reach an advanced level of proficiency.

2) Develop the layout, style, and substance of my blog and develop a stricter and more refined posting schedule.

3) Improve and become better as an English as a Second Language Teacher so that my students can continue to benefit from my knowledge and expertise.

4) Working out at the gym, running, and other forms of exercise are important to do for myself three to four times per week. This also goes along with maintaining a good diet and nutrition in order to stay healthy.

5) Make an effort to stay in touch with my family and my close friends around the world wherever they are.

6) Learn how to dance Salsa and develop some moves. I’m really serious about this one in particular.

7) Keep traveling, exploring new places, and gaining a better appreciation for different cultures and ways of life. This will prove to be key for me in 2016.

To all of my readership and those who support my blog, Thank you very much and I want to wish everyone a very happy and healthy new year. Here’s to a great 2016!