Category: successes

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.

Get Used to Rejection

“Rather than hide from a rejection, be ready to embrace and learn from it. Rejections should serve to motivate you to be better, do better, and keep striving forwards to reaching your goals and not letting rejection stop you in your tracks. Get used to rejection because it’s a part of life, but it’s not our whole life.”

Rejection is never enjoyable nor is it pleasant. It is something you always want to forget immediately and to bury it in the recesses of your brain, never to be thought of or remembered again. However, like death and taxes, I truly believe rejection is an inevitable part of life and it happens to everyone. We can never go through life being accepted for everything or being accepted by everyone. Because rejection is so much a part of our life, it is better to face it head on rather than try to hide from it or ignore it completely.

We never really like to address rejection or talk about when they happen. We often feel that reflects who we are rather than what the other person or job or opportunity is looking for. Sure, there are times where maybe we didn’t put the best foot forward or ace the interview or be able to show the best of ourselves to the person(s) considering us, but often, the rejection itself may be a factor of other circumstances beyond what kind of effort you put in or who you are as a person. Even if you get rejected, it’s not a wholesale rejection of who you are but rather there is incompatibility there to begin with or it just wasn’t going to work out in the long run.

It is very hard for us to predict what we will be accepted or rejected for. That fact makes it even more important for us to put ourselves out there even more because the more no’s you get, the likelier it is you’ll eventually get to the ‘yes.’ As the popular expression goes, “Practice makes perfect,” and I do believe it is necessary to face your rejections head on rather than to just get rejected once and then call it quits, never to go through it again. Giving up entirely should not be an option if you want it that badly and you should not be afraid to try again. Yes, rejection hurts and it stings for a while, but it is better for you to build your self-confidence up and shore up your self-esteem by trying than to go through life being afraid of it.

Getting used to rejection does not mean give up after getting the rejection. No, it means you must understand that rejections will happen but the more you try, the likelier it is you’ll find that job, that relationship, that big sale, etc. that you can be proud of after getting to that ‘yes.’ Being rejected is good for one’s ego in that it both keeps it in check and keeps you humble. Maybe you need to do things differently to get that acceptance or maybe work a bit harder or try something new after getting rejected.

You don’t give up, but you keep working at it, getting better, trying again, or even asking the person(s) who rejected you politely why the rejection happened. Asking about the rejection can be a bit sensitive but it doesn’t hurt to see why it wasn’t the right fit or place for you but if an answer isn’t forthcoming, you should just move on and try your efforts elsewhere.

I’m a New York Jets American football fan but I can’t help but think of the story about former New England Patriots quarterback, Tom Brady, when it comes to a story about rejection. Multiple NFL teams chose other quarterbacks ahead of this Hall of Fame player and 198 players went ahead of him in the draft. They essentially rejected him as a quarterback and didn’t think he had it in him to lead their team to a Super Bowl. I’m sure this would have hurt Tom Brady quite a bit waiting for his name to be called. Expecting to be drafted and waiting through 198 players before you in a draft would have that effect on anyone. I’m sure Tom was discouraged but eventually, the New England Patriots took a chance on him and drafted him 199th in the sixth round.

This kind of rejection likely lit a fire under young Tom Brady especially when New England did not consider him at the time to be the kind of NFL quarterback and legend, he turned out to be. Tom did not let the rejection get to him from the other teams, but it motivated him even more to turn those rejections against those teams who did not think he was worth drafting. He worked harder than any other player on the roster, kept his body in better shape than any other quarterback, and put more time in the film room than many NFL veteran players.

The results speak for themselves today as Tom Brady is widely considered the greatest quarterback of all-time and won seven Super Bowl championships and multiple Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards during his 22-year career. Again, I wish the New York Jets had drafted him in the 1st round so we would be talking about how great of a Jets quarterback he was but rejection by my team led to the Patriots getting him later in the sixth round.

I hope that anecdote about Tom Brady, the Patriots former quarterback, will be a lesson for us all on how rejection, while painful and disappointing, can spur us to still be successful and achieve our goals elsewhere. We all are going to get rejected for something whether it’s a job opportunity, making a sale for our company, asking that cute girl or guy for a date with you, or even not being picked to go on a work trip or getting chosen last for the local kickball team. The key is to take it in stride, move on to another opportunity, continue to work hard, improve, and prove the doubters wrong, and to never, ever give up.

Rather than hide from a rejection, be ready to embrace and learn from it. As a child, we don’t know any better when it comes to rejection because it’s so new to us and it hurts the most, but when you’re an adult or even teenager, you should be used to it by now and it should be something that you’re able to handle in a mature manner. It’s never easy but living your life in a way where you avoid it at all costs is neither productive nor healthy. Next time you get rejected, take a deep breath, ask yourself if you put your best effort forward, see where you might have gone wrong or ask for an answer if feasible, and keep moving on and don’t look back. Rejections should serve to motivate you to be better, do better, and keep striving forwards to reaching your goals and not letting rejection stop you in your tracks. Get used to rejection because it’s a part of life, but it’s not our whole life.