Don’t Make Resolutions Until You Savor Your Successes

It’s that time of year again! It’s time for the annual ritual of writing down your key successes for this year before creating your goals or resolutions for the new year. We rarely pause to celebrate and savor all we have accomplished—professionally and personally—before moving on to the next thing on our eternal “to do” list.

This simple, conscious practice will not only make you feel good and help with your work-life balance, but it will give you the confidence and focus you need to achieve your 2019 goals. Consider doing it as an end-of-the-year, team-building exercise at work, as well as with your family and friends.

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My 2018 Success List includes:

1. My quarterly pro bono vision board workshops for sex trafficking survivors at Wellspring Living‘s Women’s Academy. I’m committed to conduct these workshops every year for this outstanding organization.
2. My first-ever online course called CRAVE Your Goals! Motivate Your Team and Get Things Done, by Velociteach. (Save 15% when you use promo code CRAVE15.)
3. Spending a total of about three months in New York taking care of my mom. She’s doing great!

• Download and print My Success List!  Make copies for others. There’s room for 20 successes and then you can turn it over and keep on writing!
• Consider what you’re most proud of and grateful for this year, including your family, health, work, finances and fun.
• Then, go deeper to the gifts that come from setbacks and mistakes. Yes, those lessons are successes, too! This year, I went a step further and actually wrote a separate list of disappointments that included trusted colleagues who didn’t follow through on their commitments and promising speaking engagements that never materialized. It was very therapeutic to write them down and then reflect on what I could do to salvage or release each one. You should try it!
• Once your Success List is complete, share it with others and invite them to do the same. Our family has been doing this for more than a decade. (I knew it made an impression when my 24-year-old son, Connor, who currently lives in another state, asked me to email him the Success List so he could write his and share this ritual with his girlfriend and her family.)