Where o where has 2021 gone?! If you are anything like us here at The League, it feels like this past year has flown by! We can’t believe that we are preparing to wrap up 2021 and turn our focus towards 2022. While many of us are still coming to terms with the past year (including the impact of COVID and the uncertainty of so many details for the future), we felt now is as good a time as any to take a moment for some reflection.
The holidays tend to be a period when most people spend more time with family, gather around the table together, and (hopefully) have a few days off here or there. Moments like this tend to bring to the surface many memories, including those of past holidays, thoughts of loved ones, and rumination on the past. We encourage you to use this time of the year to take your own pause for some reflection. Pour yourself a cup of your favorite warm beverage, find a comfy spot to settle into, and take a moment to deep dive into your past year of highs and maybe even a few lows. Here are a few ideas for you to help create some space for reflection:
1. Take time to journal: What have you accomplished this past year? What did you not accomplish but had hoped to? What was the biggest obstacle you faced? What was your happiest moment of the past year? What was your saddest? Spend some time with your thoughts and memories and write them down.
2. Look back through photos: In today’s age of technology, most of us take and store more pictures than ever before. Take some time to scroll through your social media over the past year, appreciating the images captured and the ideas you shared. Or, if you are not a big social media person, chances are you have created a feed of memories on your cell phone’s photo storage. Take a walk down memory lane looking at these images- pondering where you were, who you were with, and how you felt at that moment.
3. Flip back through your calendar: We all (almost all?) keep a log of our recent history. For some of us, that might be in the form of a digital calendar somewhere, and for others, it might still be in a physical paper calendar. By flipping back through the past months and looking at the different appointments you have set or the events marked down, these will act as the perfect prompts for reflection on all you have faced, handled, and accomplished.
4. Read through some notes: Again, everyone’s paper trail will look different, but we are sure most of us here have one. Whether it is in the form of a journal or diary that you keep, or even in the emails that you have sent, take some time to look back through your past correspondence- even if it is just with yourself in your own notebook. How did you feel at that moment? What was the entry or email in regards to? Was it something significant in your world at the time or something that was simply a part of your daily to-do list?
There are several ways we can all create a space of reflection for ourselves. Before we officially wrap up 2021 (hello, New Year’s Eve 2022, we see you!), we highly encourage everyone to take a moment to pause and explore how this past year has felt, both in the highs and the lows. In a
year that has seemed to have flown past in the blink of an eye, we are sure there are several sweet moments to be cherished. Happy reflecting!
The mission of the Global Leadership League is to ignite change across the global education field by empowering, connecting, and training leaders. We invite you to reach out to us here or learn more about becoming a member.
