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It is very useful to begin the process of end-of-year reflection by acknowledging what went well.

Now aacknowledging what we have done well may not come naturally to many of us. t is SO easy to gloss over the good stuff and go straight to how we need to improve. And yet it is very important to give ourselves a little pat on the back.

Research suggests that when we pause for a moment to reflect on what we are already doing well, it encourages and motivates us to tackle the less-than-easy stuff on our task and project list. Taking a moment to let the good feelings of taking action is VERY effective at training our brain to do more of what works. In a sense, we are "rehearsing" what we need to do more of.

Here are some questions to get you going:

1) What are my 3 biggest successes for this year?
2) The next 3?
3) What are the small successes that were the most challenging for me?
4) What is a smart decision that I made this year?
5) What are 3 ways that I have grown this year? (have...

That is the bad news.

The good news is that persevering towards ambitious projects is valuable for our growth, regardless of whether or not we achieve the specific goals.

I love how Ben Franklin puts it:

"Tho’ I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it."

This is the key: that we will be better and happier human beings for having attempted ambitious self-development goals whether or not we achieve our goals.

Here is your daily dose of Wisdom for Living Your Best Self!Benjamin Franklin set up a system whereby he continued to work on his endeavour of achieving moral perfection.

The way his project was set up reminded me of what Scott Adams says in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big is a great book with lots of wisdom which we shall perhaps explore at another time.

For today, I want to focus on what he says about setting up systems rather than focusing on goals:

"You could word-glue goals and systems together if you chose. All I’m suggesting is that thinking of goals and systems as different concepts has power. Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of...

As we have been discussing, Ben Franklin had written out in detail what he wanted to achieve and grow within himself.

He was onto something.

 Researchers have found again and again that those who write down their goals are much more likely to achieve them (between 1.2 and 1.4 times more likely!)

 Writing down goals (rather than trying to commit them to memory)  has immense power because:

1)   Once goals are externalized and written down, they act as visual cues, they can be reviewed and accessed at any time (even if your brain is distracted by other things).
2)   if you just THINK about one of your goals or dreams, you’re only using the right hemisphere of your brain, which is your imaginative centre.

On the other hand, if you think about something you want to achieve, and then write it down, you also tap into the power of your logic-based left hemisphere.

This is the question that Ben Franklin asked himself every night before bed.

For some of us this will be challenging. We do not like to think about how we have succeeded because we fear this will make us arrogant.

We prefer to focus on our challenges instead, ways that we need to improve, to do better.

Here’s the thing though:

What psychologists have discovered is that we can only perform as high as our self-image allows. If we continuously bring ourselves down by focusing on how we have fallen short, how high is our self-image likely to be?

So consider this:

We may want to practice noticing and acknowledge times when we did, in fact, live up to our best self.  Each time we succeed at something, we need to affirm that by making micro imprints in our consciousness that we can do this – that we are up to the task.

There is a really simple way to do this: Simply say to yourself:  "That’s like me!!!"

"That’s like...

I love how American philosopher and writer Ken Wilber (often referred to as the "Einstein of consciousness studies") puts it: Don’t be a metaphysical glutton.

In other words: Don’t try to change EVERYTHING AT ONCE.

1)   Our good days are better than the previous good days

2)   Our bad days are not quite so bad as our previous bad days and

3)   Overall, we have more good days than bad days.

At least I do.

It is just part of the process. Set backs and relapses into old habits and ways of being do not signal lack of progress because:

GROWTH IS NOT LINEAR.

Growth does not occur in one beautiful, straight line from where you are to where you want to be. Growth looks more like a jagged zig zag line than a straight up-and-to-the-right line.

As George Leonard tells us: As we negotiate our path of mastery and let go of old habits, we need to have a "willingness to take one step back for every two forward, sometimes vice versa."

Sometimes vice versa!! This means that sometimes, on the journey, it will appear that you are taking only one step forward and two or three or four steps backwards.

The trick is to recognize the back slide AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. And get back on track.

Even those of us who are minimally financially savvy, may have heard about compounding savings or the magic of the doubling penny.

Here is how it is often explained:

1. You receive $2.5m in cash today.

Here is how Don Miguel Ruiz puts it in The Four Agreements: "The first step toward personal freedom is awareness. We need to be aware that we are not free in order to be free. We need to be aware of what the problem is in order to solve the problem."

Self-awareness, however, is not a comfortable feeling, ESPECIALLY before we have had a chance to address and change what we have become aware of.