Do You Use Reviews?

Do you track and measure your progress towards your personal and/or business goals? Some of you may have groaned or zoned out. Tracking sounds very technical and… boring.

Why Bother with Reviews?

Perhaps you’ve heard this quote… “What we focus on expands.”

From what I’ve read about manifestation, when we give our brain (specifically, the Reticular Activating System) something to focus on, it goes in search of that thing in our physical world.

Let’s take this a step further. It’s really easy to get distracted from our goals. In order to keep our focus on what we want to have in our life (or to have more of in our life) we can use vision boards, for example, as a visual reminder of what we want to create.

In addition to this, we can monitor our progress on a regular basis. One way of doing this is a review.

A yearly review is a great place to start. It allows you to reflect upon the previous year and look at your results, what worked, what didn’t work etc.

Monthly reviews help you keep on track with your goals on a consistent basis throughout the year. Plus you can use monthly reviews as reminders when you do the yearly review (versus trying to remember what happened back in January!).

You can even do weekly or daily reviews if you really want to keep on track and make any adjustments along the way.

What Do You Review?

What you review can vary depending on what you want more of in your life.

Yearly
In a yearly review you can look at the results in the main areas of your life: Health, Relationships, Personal Development, Spirituality, Contribution, Business/Career, Finances etc.

For instance:

  • What was your income this year?
  • How much money and/or time did you contribute to others?
  • What is the quality of your relationships with yourself and others?
  • What new skills did you learn this year?
  • How many books did you read?
  • How is your physical health? Mental health?
  • What vacations did you take?
  • What are you proud of?
  • What did you want to accomplish that you did not?
  • What worked? What didn’t work?
  • What can you do differently next year?

Monthly
In a monthly review, you can look at each intention you have for the year and state what progress you made that month. Plus you can look at what is working, not working, and what you’ll do differently next month.

Weekly
The same as for the monthly review, done weekly.

Daily
A daily review can be much shorter. What did you do today that got you closer to your goals? What will you do tomorrow?

At the end of the review, create your intentions for the next year, month, week or day.

How to Use the Review

1. Celebrate your successes!
A review will reveal to you your results. Celebrate your successes! We can get so busy with getting the next thing done that we forget to celebrate the small victories.

2. Make any adjustments

If you get off track or discover things that aren’t working, make adjustments. What can you do differently? If you don’t know, ask someone for input.

3. Deal with any negative emotions that come up.

This is a new twist I learned from Amy Ahlers, The Wake-Up Call Coach. I listened to a call on the topic of setting goals in which Amy suggested using EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique also known as Tapping) to clear any negative emotions we may feel after doing a yearly review. By doing so, we can truly set our new goals with a clean slate.

Another option is to use “The Work” technique from Byron Katie. It allows you to separate the reality of what happened from any meaning you may attach to it. You can find it in the resource section of her site.

In summary, regular reviews are a valuable tool for your life and your business. Just keep it simple and get started today.