How have the last 6 months been for you? What about the next 6months? Reviews take place in companies around the world all the time. They’re useful for evaluating and reflecting on what’s happened and provides an opportunity to adjust their actions to keep them in line with achieving their goals. We’re going to look at how you can take this idea and apply it to your own life. Doing a personal review of your life can help us achieve more balance. We can reflect on the achievements of the last 6 months, and it can help us keep on track with any personal goals or projects we want to focus on for the next 6 months. What can you learn by looking back? 1. Make a list of everything you feel proud of over the past 6 months Start by thinking about your experiences you’ve had during this time. This step doesn’t just involve results or things you’ve achieved but focuses on how you feel about what you’ve done. The things that you feel proud of can be anything. Feeling proud of delivering a project for your company might be on your list, maybe alongside feeling proud of the fact that you’ve exercised a couple of times each week. It’s your list so it can be anything! 2. What were your goals at the start of the year? Have they changed? Many of us start the year with New Year’s Resolutions. You might find that these have changed over time, or at least shifted slightly. If a particular goal isn’t serving you anymore then this is the time to adjust, where necessary. As well as looking at your goals individually, reflect on your personal life as a whole: Are you feeling pulled in different directions right now? Too many commitments? Would you like to have more variety in your life? Asking yourself questions like this now, can help prevent you feeling overwhelmed or like you haven’t made the most of your time. What can you create by looking ahead? 1. Identify 2 areas of your life you’d like to focus on over the next 6 months Our lives can be broadly divided up into the following areas: Family | Leisure & fun | Career | Finance | Relationships | Health – both Mental and Physical | Our environment | Personal development Explore each area and think about how satisfied you feel with this aspect of your life right now - it can be helpful to think about your satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10. Once you’ve identified the two areas of your life you most want to focus on - these will usually be the two areas with the lowest satisfaction scores, write down three things you can do to raise your score in these areas. They don't have to be dramatic changes; consistently taking small steps can also get you to where you want to be. 2. Pick a word or phrase that will sum up your next 6 months This step might sound a little 'out there', but it’s another way of helping you stay on track between now and in 6 months time. Having a word or phrase that captures how you’d like to be during the next 6 months helps remind you of the goals and intentions you’re setting/resetting now. As you might have experienced with goals you've set before, we can start off with the best of intentions to achieve those goals, only to have commitments and distractions throw us off course. Having a word or phrase that sums up how we want to be, supports keeping us aligned with our original intentions and reduces the chance that we’ll regret how we spent our time. Our phrase at the time of writing this is: Flow with focus This is our reminder that while supporting people and companies is our core purpose, flowing rather than forcing keeps us energised and at our best both personally and professionally. And remember, these techniques can be used at any time of the year not just midway through or at the start. Just begin where you are now