“Tell me and I will forget, show me and I will remember, involve me and I will understand.” ~ Socrates (470-399 BC)
Socrates had it right. The more we are involved in and with something, the more we understand the topic.
While most of us can easily agree with diving into our work using all the technical knowledge and subject matter expertise, seldom do we pause to reflect on the most powerful source in our reach.
Do you have a regular habit of being reflective?
A colleague of mine, John N. Younker, Ph.D. writes on this subject:
“Reflective Practice is the ability to reflect on one’s actions so as to engage in a process of continuous learning.
It involves paying critical attention to your values and principles as you apply them in your everyday actions (decisions and choices).
By practicing reflection, as a part of your ongoing learning, it can result in developmental insights. A key rationale for reflective practice is that experience alone does not necessarily lead to learning; deliberate reflection on experience is key and essential for learning from your life experiences.
Further, it has been written, that reflection … or having a reflective practice … can be an important tool in practice-based professional learning settings where people learn from their own professional experiences, rather than from formal learning or knowledge transfer. It may be the most important source of personal professional development and improvement.
A person who reflects throughout his or her practice is not just looking back on past actions and events but is taking a conscious look at emotions, experiences, actions, and responses, and using that information to add to his or her existing knowledge base and reach a higher level of understanding.”
For these reasons I have learned to enhance my own New Year’s resolution and goal setting habits to include a deep dive into reflective learning; learning from the past year’s experiences.
Besides merely defining some BHAGs for the new year (Big Hairy &#^#% Goals), you should be deciding on life changes that keep you in sync with who and what you truly want to be about.
Living a Purposeful Life
Living life with intentional direction is far more rewarding than one day arriving at some destination and wondering why or how you got there.
This is why having a different process for setting your new year vision should include an outlook/forecast as well a your own annual planning.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#d98310″ class=”” size=”18″] Therefore, your Outlook & Annual Planning is the ability and the discipline required to live and experience a “Purposeful Life.” Personal strategic planning is a disciplined thought process, that actively engages and involves you. It leads you to make important decisions and take actions that shape what is truly important to you. You do it because of who you are and what you uniquely do; guiding how, when and why you do it. ~John Younker[/perfectpullquote]
The purpose of the Annual Personal Outlook process … Personal Strategic Planning process is to help you to:
- Decide on a direction for your life … your future.
- Make purposeful and meaningful contributions throughout your life.
- Gain clarity of your core values, beliefs
and aspirations. - Make decisions that will positively affect and impact your future.
- Focus your energies on what is most important to you.
- Achieve the greatest results in a defined period of time.
- Focus on increasing your level of performance, in all aspects of your life.
- Live and enjoy a more fulfilling life.
- Create balance and freedom to more effectively choose from your opportunities.
- Reduce uncertainty, anxiety, doubt
and fear. - Leverage your unique Knowledge, Skills
and Abilities to more effectively Perform (KSAPs). - Enhance your confidence and overall peace of mind.
- Be more by doing more that ultimately enables you to gain more from your life choices.
Finding a Plan
If you are into looking for good tools to help you map your intentions and reflections, look at STRYV.
The STRYV (strive) dashboard gives you a simple but powerful way to plot the areas of your life that mean the most to you. If you are lagging in your impact in one or more areas, STRYV gives you the planning tools to get on track and stay there.
Disclaimer: STRYV is an independent offering not affiliated with DougThorpe.com or HeadwayExec, LLC. There is no financial consideration for STRYV being mentioned here.
