Tag Archives: 12 Week Review

A Guide To Your Mid Year Review

Click to share this post

It’s time for your Mid Year Review 😊

The first 6 months of the year have gone so fast!

How has the first 6 months of 2023 been for you?

Below are the 4 Steps to your Mid Year Review that will help you answer that question.

As you answer the questions in each step, refer to your Wheel of Life that contain the key areas of your life. If you haven’t created a Wheel of Life, you can use mine below.

The areas of my Wheel of Life are Sense of Self, Relationships, Health, Work, Finance, Recreation, Environment & Contribution.

It’s important that you document your review somewhere so you can refer to it and hold yourself accountable to the actions that come out of your review.

Step 1 is all about what went well over the past 6 months

i. What worked well for you in the past 6 months?

What did you do that you enjoyed?

What worked out exactly how you wanted or better than you wanted?

There are so many blessings in our lives each and every day, sometimes it’s just a matter of taking a closer look to find them.

You may see that life goes your way more than you may realise.

Using a daily gratitude journal can really help answering this question.

If you don’t have a daily gratitude journal maybe it’s something you could start for the next 12 weeks. Even just one gratitude a day over 12 weeks is about 90 things to be grateful for over 12 weeks, wouldn’t that be something really lovely to look back and reflect on?

ii. What did you do that supported this success?

How did you bring success into your life?

How did you contribute to the things that worked well for you?

Did you work hard at something and then reap the rewards?

Did you make sacrifices to improve your life?

When we reflect on how we are successful in areas of our life, we underestimate the part we played in that success.

YOU are successful and YOU are the creator of that success. YOU have brought all of your happiness, joy and success into your life.

Knowing how you contribute to your own success means you can build on this to bring so much more success into your life.

iii. What brought you joy and happiness in the past 6 months?

When were you at your happiest over the past 6 months?

Think about what you were doing, who were you with, where were you?

Knowing what brings us happiness allows us to create more time to bring more happiness and joy into our lives.

Knowing who brings you happiness means you can create more time to spend with these very special people.

You want to be spending as much time as possible with those who bring out the best in you. The more you bring out the best in yourself, the more you can bring out the best in others.

iv. Are you happy with where you spent your time over the past 6 months?

Time goes by so fast and as we get older I think time seems to speed up that little bit more.

Time is so precious – we all have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks in a year but nobody knows how many years we have. This realisation always makes me so determined to live life to the fullest every single day and that means spending my time where I am happy spending it.

Where did your precious time go over the past 6 months?

Are you happy with where your time was spent over the past 6 months?

Are you fully enjoying every minute of your days, weeks, months?

Step 2 of your Mid Year Review is all about what didn’t work well for you in the past 6 months.

i. What didn’t go well over the past 6 months

What didn’t go your way in the past 6 months?

What happened that you didn’t enjoy?

What didn’t go to according to plan?

What is holding you back from living your best life?

Challenges, obstacles and plans not working out are a normal part of life.

No matter how much we plan, no matter how much we try to control our plans there are times when things just don’t go our way. Acknowledgment and acceptance of this fact is the first step to turning challenges & obstacles into opportunities.

In his new book ‘Green Lights’, Matthew Mc Connaughey talks about the fact that if we only had green lights in life, if there were no amber or red lights, then life would be very boring and we would never grow and evolve. Such truth and wisdom in that.

How can you acknowledge and accept what doesn’t work out for you and understand this is all part of your path?

ii. What obstacles got in your way?

Looking back at the past 6 months, were there obstacles that got in your way?

Obstacles & challenges can turn into opportunities for success if we take the time to evaluate and learn from them.

The question to ask here is what can you do to eliminate these obstacles & challenges and if you can’t eliminate them how can you think about them differently?

We all have compete control over our thoughts and just reframing things in our mind can turn obstacles & challenges into opportunities for success.

Dr Wayne Dyer’s book ‘Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life’ teaches us that all we have to do to change what is not going well in our lives is to think differently about it. A most profound book, I highly recommend it.

iii. What didn’t bring you joy and happiness in the past 6 months?

Happiness and unhappiness go hand in hand. No human life is devoid of unhappiness just like no human life is devoid of happiness. Acceptance of this goes a long way to find out what exactly makes us unhappy.

When were you at your unhappiest over the past 6 months?

Think about what you were doing, who were you with, where were you?

Knowing what makes us unhappy allows us to think deeper about the role certain people, situations, interactions and places play in our levels of happiness.

There is no such thing as the perfect life that is happy all the time, however there is a level of contentment and inner peace that can be reached by understanding what takes our happiness & joy away and working to avoid, eliminate or understand more about this.

iv. Where would you have liked to have spent more time over the past 6 months

We all know time is precious.

Think about all of the key areas of your life from your Wheel of Life.

Where would you have liked to have spent more time over the past 6 months?

Did you spend too much time in some areas and not enough in others?

What areas would you have liked to have spent more time in?

How balanced is your life in terms of where you spend your time?

Step 3 of your Mid Year Review is all about what you learned in each of the key areas of your life over the past 6 months.

The only way we grow and evolve as humans is by learning more and by turning these learnings into action that propels us forward.

Going through each of the areas of your Wheel of Life (or using mine below) reflect on the questions below to understand what you learned over the past 6 months in all of the key areas of your life.

Sense of Self – What did you learn about yourself? How did you grow and evolve as a person? Have you dedicated time to personal development? What did you learn about your relationship with yourself, has your relationship with yourself improved?

Relationships – What did you learn about your relationship with others, has your relationship with others improved? Are there relationships you want but don’t have? Are there relationships you have but don’t want?

Health – What did you learn about your physical, mental, emotional & spiritual health? Did your physical, mental, emotional & spiritual health improve?

Work – What did you learn about your work? Are you growing and developing in your work? Has your work moved forward and improved?

Finance – What did you learn about personal finance? Did your personal finance improve?

Recreation – What did you learn about socialising and recreation? How can you bring more fun into your life?

Environment – What did you learn about your environment? Did your environment improve? For me environment relates to my home and also our planet, both are of immense importance to me and bring me happiness and joy.

Contribution – What did you learn about contribution? Did you make the world a better place by giving your time, money or skills? Giving doesn’t have to be grand gestures, giving in the smallest possible way can often be the most impactful.

Step 4 of your Mid Year Review is about creating actions that will support you to live your best life every day and move you closer and closer to your goals

i. What can you build on in terms of your success?

Reflect on all your answers in Step 1.

What actions can you take over the next 6 months to ensure you build on the successes of the past 6 months?

ii. What can you build on in terms of the challenges you experienced?

Reflect on all your answers in Step 2.

What actions can you take over the next 6 months to ensure you build on the challenges from the past 6 months?

iii. What can you build on in terms of what you learned over the past 6 months?

Reflect on all your answers in Step 3.

What actions can you take over the next 6 months to ensure you build on and take advantage of the learnings from the past 6 months?

I wish you success, health and happiness as you look back at the past 6 months and even more success, health and happiness as you look forward to the next 6 months.

Happy reflection 😊

Siobhain

x x

Click to share this post

6 Steps to Your Business Quarterly Review

Leave a reply

Click to share this post

Image Credit: Madhuri Gupta

The end of each quarter is time to look back and reflect on how things went in the past quarter and plan for the quarter ahead.

Having a business & personal strategy is all about creating an amazing sustainable business and creating a fulfilled, purposeful and meaningful life. Your business and personal strategy is only as good as the reviews you do and the changes you make as a result of these reviews.

When it comes to business strategy and the goals you have set, the quarterly review can be the most important as there is way more progress quarterly than can be seen daily, weekly and monthly which is always motivating.

Ideally you are reviewing progress of your business goals daily, weekly and monthly which makes your quarterly review easier, more streamlined and more effective,

Your quarterly business review is carried out as you approach the end of a quarter so your action plan is in place for the next quarter as it begins or very shortly after.

Here are 6 simple steps to carry out your Business Quarterly Review:

Step 1 – Review your business goals, the metrics you use to indicate progress and the progress itself

Are your goals still relevant?

Ensuring the goals you set at the beginning of the year are still relevant is critical to the success of your business. Having irrelevant goals means you are traveling in the wrong direction which is almost worse than having no goals!

It has never been more important to have relevant, clear, defined, meaningful, achievable and realistic business goals given the changes that have happened to business’s since the start of 2020.

Are the goals you set at the start of 2022 still relevant to you and your business?

Are you prioritising development of and respect for you and your team?

The success of your business is directly correlated to the amount of time you spend developing and supporting your people.

There is no greater way to spend your time than supporting, developing and showing respect to your people.

Do your goals still align with your Business Vision, Mission, True North and Values?

Your Vision is your direction.

No Vision, no direction, no progress!

Do your goals still align to your Vision, Mission, True North & Values of your business?

Are you regularly communicating your Vision, Mission, True North & Values to your people?

Are you regularly making decisions aligned with your Vision, Mission, True North & Values?

If not, your direction exists only on paper which is not the best place to have it!

Note: If you don’t have a Vision, Mission, True North & Values, now would be a good time to start thinking about creating these. No matter where you are in terms of your business, it is never too late to make positive change and that starts with Vision, Mission, True North & Values.

Do you have the correct metrics in place?

Your metrics should highlight progress towards your goals and should also highlight obstacles that get in the way of progress towards your goals,

Do your metrics highlight progress towards your goals?

Do your metrics highlight obstacles that get in the way of progress towards your goals?

When do you review these metrics?

Are you measuring the right things?

Are your metrics at the right level?

Are you improving your processes?

If you are not improving your processes, chances are your metrics are standing still or going backwards!

Process improvements = metrics moving in the right direction = goals achieved

Have you made as much progress as you planned in the past quarter?

Have you enjoyed the progress made or has it been an uphill struggle?

Have you over stretched yourself?

Have you under stretched yourself?

Step 2 – Evaluate what worked in terms of your goals, how were you successful?

What worked for you in the past quarter?

What did you do that enabled this success?

What areas of your business were successful?

What parts of your business did you enjoy?

Step 3 – Evaluate what didn’t work in terms of your goals, what got in the way of success?

What didn’t work for you and got in the way of your goals?

How did you deal with and overcome these obstacles?

What areas of your business were unsuccessful?

What parts of your business did you not enjoy?

Step 4 – Make informed decisions about what your key focus areas for the next quarter

Based on the answers to all of the above, what ACTION will you take for the next quarter?

Strategy reviews are only as good as the ACTIONS that are taken as a result of those reviews.

How can you support, develop and respect your people more in Q2? #PeopleFirst 😊

Are your 2022 goals still achievable based on progress made in the last quarter?
Do you need more goals to stretch yourself?
Do you need less goals to stop over stretching yourself?
Are there goals that no longer serve you?
What are your priority goals for the next quarter?
What are your non priority goals for the next quarter?
What will you do to continue progress in successful areas of your business?
What will you do to learn from and turn around unsuccessful areas of your business?
How will you measure progress of your goals in the next quarter?
What metrics will you update, add, remove?
How often will you update these metrics?
Where will you document your goals, metrics, progress?
How will you communicate your plans to your team?

Step 5 – Document your strategy, goals, metrics & progress

It’s really important to capture your goals, metrics & progress on your goals somewhere. Whether you prefer physically putting pen to paper or to use something electronic there are so many options. The science behind why writing things down to enable success is outlined in the amazing book

‘Write It Down, Make It Happen’.

My favourite tools are below,

Physical – I love Moleskine journals for tracking progress of goals & journalling. Moleskine journals are colourful, hard wearing, long lasting journals of the highest quality. It doesn’t really matter what you use from once you write your goals down and track progress daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly that will, at the end of the year, result in your Annual Review.

Online – My tools of choice online are Google Docs & Google Sheets and Google Slides. These are almost identical to Microsoft WordExcel and PowerPoint.

I use Asana for Project Management and absolutely love it. It has an app which is super simple to use and keeps everything in the one place and all super organised.

These tools are all ABSOLUTELY FREE, are very easy to use and are all you need to set and track progress in your business.

Step 6 – Learn more about Lean Business Strategy

The longer I work in Lean Business Strategy the more I learn.

There is always another level of Lean Business Strategy to move into and there is always so much to learn.

Your will learn the most about your business from your people. Take the tine to listen to them and prioritise their development. There is no end to what your talented people can teach you if you give the time to listen and learn!

If you are looking for a book on Lean Business Strategy, I highly recommend ‘Getting The Right Things Done’ by Pascal Dennis and really any other books by Pascal Dennis.

This is my bible in terms of Lean Business Strategy and Pascal Dennis is one of my favourite Lean mentors.

Getting The Right Things Done is an incredible book that can be visited again and again as you move deeper & deeper into the world of Business Strategy and success.

Below is a list of mentors that I follow and have learned so much from over the years from their books, podcasts etc – Marie Forleo, Amy Porterfield, Katie Anderson, Karen Martin, Pascal Dennie, Brendon Burchard, Robin Sharma, Tony Robbins, Simon Sinek, Dr Wayne Dyer (RIP), Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle. There are many more but these are my favourites!

I wish you success, health and happiness as you look back at Q1 and even more success, health and happiness as you look forward to Q2,

Want to read more about Positive Change?

Download your free e-book ‘The A-Z of Effective Change’ below.

Thanks for reading,

Siobhain

x x

Click to share this post

4 Steps To Your 12 Week Review

Leave a reply

Click to share this post

Image Credit: Madhuri Gupta

Following on from my blog post on ‘The 5 Reasons to Prioritise Your 12 Week Review’ below are 4 Steps to your 12 Week Review.

Before you start your 12 Week Review, here’s some worthwhile preparation.

Grab a notebook and pen – you can document your review electronically also but science suggests what gets physically written down gets done!

Henriette Anne Klauser’s book ‘Write it Down, Make it Happen’ outlines the science behind the principle that writing your goals down gives them a higher chance of success.

I use Moleskine journals for physically writing down goals and reflecting on them. Moleskine journals are beautiful, hard wearing and in my humble opinion the best journals in the world!

I also use regular notebooks found in any shop for documenting progress of goals.

If someone were to ask me where to start with any change in their life I would say start by buying a notebook and a nice pen and writing down your goals – it’s so simple yet so effective!

The Asana App is my go to app for documenting and monitoring goals online. Asana is super easy to use and is also an excellent project management tool. I have been using the free version of Asana for years and it suits just perfect. I also use Google Suite (Docs, Sheets & Slides) for online documentation

Categorise your life into areas – the categories of my life are Sense of Self, Relationships, Health, Work, Finance, Fun/Experiences, Environment & Contribution. You can use these or create categories of your own.

I wish you success, health and happiness as you look back at the past 12 weeks, here’s the 4 Steps to your 12 Week Review,

1. Step 1 is all about what went well over the past 12 weeks

i. What worked well for you in the past 12 weeks?

What did you do that you enjoyed?

What worked out exactly how you wanted or better than you wanted?

There are so many blessings in our lives each and every day, sometimes it’s just a matter of taking a closer look to find them.

You may see that life goes your way more than you may realise.

Take your time with this, work through every area of your life, focus on the small stuff first – as it’s the small stuff that is really the big stuff!

Using a daily gratitude journal can really help answering this question. If you don’t have a daily gratitude journal maybe it’s something you could start for the next 12 weeks.

Even just one gratitude a day over 12 weeks is about 90 things to be grateful for over 12 weeks, wouldn’t that be something really lovely to look back and reflect on?

ii. What did you do that supported this success?

How did you bring success into your life?

How did you contribute to the things that worked well for you?

The only person who has control over your life is you and the only life you can control is your own. Keeping that in mind, all success in your life starts and ends with you.

No-one is going to improve your life for you, no-one is going to set and reach your goals for you, yes, it’s all on YOU!

Did you work hard at something and then reap the rewards?

Did you make sacrifices to improve your life?

Knowing how you contribute to your own success means you can build on this to bring so much more success into your life.

iii. What brought you joy and happiness in the past 12 weeks?

When were you at your happiest over the past 12 weeks?

Think about what you were doing, who were you with, where were you?

Knowing what brings us happiness allows us to create more time to bring more happiness and joy into our lives.

Who doesn’t want to be happier and more joyful?

Knowing who brings you happiness means you can create more time to spend with these very special people.

You want to be spending as much time as possible with those who bring out the best in you. The more you bring out the best in yourself, the more you can bring out the best in others.

iv. Are you happy with where you spent your time over the past 12 weeks?

Time is so precious – we all have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks in a year but nobody knows how many years we have.

This realisation always makes me so determined to live life to the fullest every single day and that means spending my time where I am happy spending it.

Where did your precious time go over the past 12 weeks?

Are you happy with where your time was spent over the past 12 weeks?

Are you fully enjoying every minute of your days, weeks, months?

That’s Step 1 of your Personal 12 Week Review done!

2. Step 2 is all about what didn’t work well for you in the past 12 weeks

i. What didn’t go well over the past 12 weeks

What didn’t go your way in the past 12 weeks?

What happened that you didn’t enjoy?

What didn’t go to plan?

What is holding you back from living your best life?

Challenges and obstacles are a normal part of life.

Acknowledging when things don’t work out takes bravery and courage and also an understanding that it is completely normal.

How can you acknowledge and accept what doesn’t work out for you and understand this is all part of your path?

ii. What obstacles got in your way?

Looking back at the past 12 weeks, were there obstacles that got in your way? Did you get in your own way?

Obstacles & challenges can turn into opportunities for success if we take the time to evaluate and learn from them.

The question to ask here is what can you do to eliminate these obstacles & challenges and if you can’t eliminate them how can you think about them differently?

We all have compete control over our thoughts and just reframing things in our mind can turn obstacles & challenges into opportunities for success.

iii. What didn’t bring you joy and happiness in the past 12 weeks?

Happiness and unhappiness go hand in hand. No human life is devoid of unhappiness just like no human life is devoid of happiness.

Acceptance of this goes a long way to find out what exactly makes us unhappy.

When were you at your unhappiest over the past 12 weeks? Think about what you were doing, who were you with, where were you?

Knowing what makes us unhappy allows us to think deeper about the role certain people, situations, interactions and places play in our levels of happiness.

What could you have done to understand and alleviate your unhappiness?

iii. Where would you have liked to have spent more time over the past 12 weeks?

Where would you have liked to have spent more time over the past 12 weeks?

Think about all of the key areas of your life from your Wheel of Life – did you spend too much time in some areas and not enough in others?

What areas would you have liked to have spent more time in?

How balanced is your life in terms of where you spend your time?

That’s Step 2 of your Personal 12 Week Review done!

3. Step 3 is all about what you learned in the key areas of your life

The only way we grow and evolve as humans is by learning more and by turning these learnings into action that propels us forward.

Reflect on the questions below to understand what you learned over the past 12 weeks in all of the key areas of your life.

Health is Wealth – What did you learn about your physical, mental, emotional & spiritual health? Did your physical, mental, emotional & spiritual health improve?

Work – What did you learn about your work? Are you growing and developing in your work? Has your work moved forward and improved?

Finance – What did you learn about personal finance? Did your personal finance improve?

Fun/Experiences – What did you learn about fun & experiences? How can you bring more fun into your life? What experiences have you enjoyed? What experiences have you not enjoyed?

That’s Step 3 of your Personal 12 Week Review done!

4. Step 4 is about learning more about personal goal setting & reviewing.

i. Do you set personal annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily goals?

Yes – great, are you reaching these goals daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually?

No – why not? What is keeping you from setting & reaching your personal goals?

ii. Do you celebrate and learn from your successes?

Yes – great, keep celebrating every single success, no matter how small! Look out for the small successes, they really are the big things!

No – when are you going to start celebrating your successes, each and every one of them, each and every day?

iii. Do you reflect on and learn from your challenges?

Yes – great, keep reflecting and learning. Reflecting on what happens and what doesn’t happen is one of the most powerful ways we can learn.

No – when are you going to start reflecting and learning from your challenges, each and every one of them, each and every day?

iv.How do you like to learn about personal goal setting and reviewing?

It’s one thing setting goals, working towards them and reviewing progress. It’s another thing to continue to learn about what you want from your life and how to achieve that.

Do you like learning about yourself and your life? Learning is the key to success as you are the only person who can bring success into your life.

What is your preferred way of learning – through books, podcasts, courses, videos, mentors, coaches, your work, observing the world, observing others, observing yourself, through reflection?

Whatever your preferred way of learning is, make sure it is part of your daily plans for the next 12 weeks.

Download your ’12 Week Review Workbook’ below – this will sign you up to my emails where I share resources and learnings every week.

That’s Step 4 of your Personal 12 Week Review done.

I wish you success, health and happiness as you look back at the past 12 weeks and even more success, health and happiness as you look forward to the next 12 weeks.

Want to join my weekly newsletter?

If so download my free ebook ‘The A-Z of Effective Change’ below and you are all signed up!

Thanks for reading,

Siobhain

x x

Click to share this post

How To Get SERIOUS About Your Goals!

Leave a reply

Click to share this post

Image Credit: Madhuri Gupta

Following on from my previous blog post ‘A Guide To Your Mid Year Personal Review’,

Step 5 of your Mid Year Review is getting SERIOUS about your GOALS for the next 6 months.

This is my favourite part of the Mid Year Review as it is where you take your learnings from the first 4 steps and turn them into PURPOSEFUL PERSONAL GOALS!

So how do you set PURPOSEFUL PERSONAL GOALS for the rest of 2022?

Here are six simple steps to Personal Goal Setting.

1.Buy notebook – I highly recommend physically writing your goals down, if you don’t write your goals down somewhere it’s very easy to forget them and not be accountable to them. Henriette Anne Klauser’s excellent book ‘Write It Down, Make It Happen’ explains the science behind writing down your goals and their increased chance of success.

2. Divide your life into categories, this creates your Wheel of Life. If you can’t think of categories you can use my Wheel of Life below or your own version of it. The categories of my life are Relationships, Health & Fitness, Personal Development, Career/Work/Purpose, Finance, Social Life/Recreation, Environment & Contribution.

3. Set goals for each area of your life with the timeline of the end of December 2022. Don’t forget to DREAM BIG as Robin Sharma advises. (Document these in your notebook)

4. Work on your goals EVERY DAY (Document what you do in your notebook)

5. Review your goals EVERY DAY (Document your progress in your notebook)

6. Celebrate and acknowledge progress of your goals EVERY DAY (Document this in your notebook)

The above will build a habit of working on, documenting and reviewing progress of your goals EVERY DAY.

This gives your goals the best chance of success and will ensure you are learning about goal setting, achieving and reviewing EVERY SINGLE DAY.

The acronym SERIOUS can support you to set goals for the rest of 2022 in all of the key areas of your life.

Go through your Wheel of Life (or use mine) and ask yourself the following questions for each of the key areas of your life,

S = STOP

What will you stop doing that is not supporting you?

Do you have habits that you want to stop?

Do you have behaviours that you want to stop?

E = ENGAGE

Who do you need to engage with to support you?

Are there relationships you need to give more time to?

Are there relationships you need to give less time to?

Do you need to find a coach and/or mentor?

R = REMOVE

What do you physically need to remove from your life/work/business?

What do you mentally/emotionally need to remove like beliefs & stories you tell yourself?

What do you need to remove electronically – electronic space also takes up mental headspace!

If your life is full, there is no room for anything else to enter!

I = IMPROVE

What will you improve in each area of your life?

What is working for you that you want to build on?

What parts of your life do you love that you want more of?

O = OPEN YOUR MIND

How will you open your mind, grow, evolve and move out of your comfort zone?

Your comfort zone is exactly that – comfortable.

There is no growth there, you will only grow by moving outside of your comfort zone.

What do you need to learn about to move you out of your comfort zone?

U = UNDERSTAND

How will you understand more about each area of your life?

How will you understand more about yourself?

How will you understand more about others?

S = START

What will you start?

Our lives are already overflowing with busy and so to start something new, we need to create the precious time, space and energy to do so.

It’s better to focus on everything else in SERIOUS (especially STOP & REMOVE) so you can create the physical, mental and emotional time & space to start something new!

That’s it, answer these quick & easy questions to get SERIOUS about PERSONAL GOAL SETTING in every area of your life for the rest of 2022.

Whether this was your first time setting Personal Goals or you have been doing this for many years, I hope you learn something new during your Personal Goal setting process.

More importantly, I hope you TAKE ACTION!

Goal setting is only as good as the ACTION YOU TAKE.

I wish you happiness, joy, success and purposeful, positive change for the rest of 2022 and beyond.

If you missed my post on ‘A Guide To Your Mid Year Personal Review’, you can find it here,

‘A Guide To Your Mid Year Personal Review’

Thanks for reading,

Siobhain

x x

Want to read more about Positive Change in life & business?

Download your free e-book ‘The A-Z of Effective Change’ and sign up to my Weekly Newsletter below.

Click to share this post

My 12 Week Review

Leave a reply

Click to share this post

Firstly wherever you are I hope you are safe and well. Covid 19 has had a devastating impact on some people’s lives and and we are not yet in control of it. Here’s hoping the next 12 weeks bring more hopeful and positive times.

Going into lockdown straight after Christmas here in Ireland, we thought the time would never pass by, but it did and our restrictions are easing and beautiful spring is in the air. I love the spring, there is a real sense of renewal and of awakening from the winter that can be dark, dreary and filled with somewhat low energy. Even the thoughts of summer is enough to brighten up my day!

Following my previous blog post ‘7 Reasons to Prioritise Your 12 Week Review’, this post is my 12 Week Review, it’s pretty high level but I hope it gives you an insight into how powerful reflection can be and also how reflection makes it so easy to know what improvements are needed in your life going forward.

Have you taken the time to sit with yourself and reflect on the past 12 weeks, I hope so. Reflection is one of the most powerful tools you can use to understand more about yourself, your life, where you want to be and how you are going to get there.

I’m a big fan of reflection and have been reflecting through writing in journals since I was very young and have brought this love of reflection with me throughout my life and career. In my humble opinion I think reflection is one of the most underrated and underutilised tools for success. Like most incredible tools for success, reflection is completely free and available to everyone!

At the beginning of every year, I use the ‘Wheel of Life’ to categorise areas of my life and set annual goals for these areas which filter down into quarterly, monthly, weekly & daily goals. This makes reflecting on the past 12 weeks a relatively easy exercise as I have already reflected on progress daily, weekly & monthly.

Here’s my 12 Week Review on what the past 12 weeks have brought to me in the areas of my ‘Wheel of Life’,

Relationships:

I would normally have plans to visit my family regularly, have nights out with Mike, catch ups with friends, weekends away, holidays etc but lockdown put an end to all that. Instead it was cosy nights in and phone/video calls with loved ones. As I’m sure was the case for everyone, it has been hard not spending time with my family & friends and I am so glad restrictions have lifted slightly. On a positive note, I think the restrictions and the global pandemic in general has given me an even deeper appreciation for how precious time with our loved ones is.

On another positive note, what the pandemic also brought is loads of new friendships from around the world due to everything now being online.

As always, my relationship with myself and understanding more about who I am and why I do what I do underpins the quality of all of my relationships.

I’m looking forward to the next 12 weeks and beyond being more social – in the real world!

Health is Wealth:

Health to me is Mind, Body & Soul which is all about what I feed my mind, what I feed my body and what I feed my soul.

Pick up your phone, choose any social media platform and you will see a stream of people telling you what’s good for your health, how to get fit, how to eat healthily, what to read etc. Most of this is really good advice and people who share their personal stories have got some really good results from what works for them. I am a huge advocate of learning from those who have achieved the results we want to achieve but first we must know what we want for ourselves and why!

In terms of our Mind, Body & Soul we must find out what is best for us as individuals, what keeps us stable and what improves the health of our Mind, Body & Soul. This is different for everyone and so before we go chasing the latest fad, it’s a really good idea to check in and see does it align with what we want for ourselves. What works for someone else may not work for us! This also means not comparing our journey to anyone else’s, especially in terms of what we see on social media which we all know isn’t the full story of people’s lives.

Over the years, I have learned what keeps my Mind, Body & Soul stable, aligned, happy & healthy. The following are critical to my health – precious time with loved ones, healthy eating, exercise, reading, learning, personal growth, journaling, solitude, rest/relaxation & meditation.

These should be my highest priority as they enable me to bring the best version of myself to the world and to those I love. Unfortunately over the past 12 weeks, I didn’t prioritise these and so didn’t reach any of my goals in terms of Mind, Body & Soul! We reflect to learn so we can make better judgements going forward and so over the next 12 weeks Mind, Body & Soul will become my first priority.

Health is Wealth and if we don’t prioritise it now, we will for sure pay for it later!

Personal Development/Growth:

I’m not a typical academic and was never top of the class, I’m more of a curious, creative learner and like learning about many different topics instead of being master at just one. Marie Forleo calls this being ‘multi passionate’ which describes me very well. Learning more about many different topics helps me learn more about myself which is the prerequisite to success of any kind. My favourite way to learn is reading/listening to books, if I could get paid to read all day every day, this would be my dream job! #DreamBig

I also love to learn from podcasts, videos and from people on social media and in the real world. If we are connected in some way, chances are I learn from you!

One of my goals from last year was to up my game in terms of learning about online business which I did through taking my very first online course, Natalie Sisson’s ‘Launch Your Damn Course’ and also by signing up to Natalie’s 10K Club for female entrepreneurs – I love being a part of both of these groups and am learning a huge amount from Natalie and all the other amazing course creators & female entrepreneurs. If you want to learn how to create an online course and also learn how to create an online business I suggest you connect with Natalie (or drop me a DM and I can connect you with Natalie personally).

This year my goal is to increase my learning even further in topics I am passionate about and so I have signed up to the following courses that have been on my ‘to do’ list for ages. Now all I need is time to go through them!

The Copy Cure by Marie Forleo
List Builder’s Society by Amy Porterfield
Beyond Flexibility by Karin Dimitrivova
Business & Executive Coaching Certificate with Career Decisions/Skillnet

Personal Development/Growth ties in with Health is Wealth in that if you are continuously learning you are continuously nurturing your Mind, Body & Soul. Similar to Health is Wealth, on reflection I didn’t prioritise this area of my life, I signed up to many courses but haven’t even started some of them. This is a priority area for the next 12 weeks and a part of this priority is learning something that doesn’t involve being online – I need to get away from my computer!

Finance:

My philosophy around finance is very simple & my goals revolve around having an abundance mindset, the flow of money in and out of my life and learning more about financial freedom.

I have learned a huge amount about financial freedom and what it means to me from Tony Robbins excellent book ‘Money, Master the Game’. Chapter 3 goes into the details of financial freedom and how you determine what that means to you and how you reach it. This is not rocket science and Tony breaks it down into really simple, easy to understand, easy to implement steps. The rest of this book is heavy and isn’t the type of book I’d normally read but it’s worth buying it for chapter 3 alone.

Over the past 12 weeks I would call my finances stable – my day job earnings were down as we were on reduced hours but I created income from my business which was very exciting and I moved another few steps towards my version of financial freedom!!

As important as money is and we need it to live, where I am in my life right now, time is a more valuable currency to me, I read this quote from Jim Rohn every day to remind me of the importance of valuing my time,

“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.”

Something to ponder on!

Work/Purpose:

I divide work and purpose in two as for me they are two very separate entities. Work is what I do for a living, in other words, my day job. I love my day job & the amazing team I work with and I count my blessings for both each and every day. However, my day job is not my purpose. Yes, for sure, my day job and purpose are aligned but they are not the same thing.

Our purpose in life is our reason for being, the reason we are here, the reason we get up in the morning and the reason we strive to be a better version of ourselves every day. When I think of purpose I think of Mark Twain’s beautiful quote ‘The most two important days in your life are the day your born and the day you find out why’.

Finding our WHY is an ongoing journey that is a work in progress for our entire lives. The first step to understanding our purpose is knowing we have one! Have you thought about your purpose in life? Is it your day job? If not, what might it be? My advice for finding your purpose in life is to follow what you love to do and then contribute this gift to the world.

As mentioned above, my purpose is aligned to my day job as I have immense passion for Lean Strategy & Culture however my purpose is more closely aligned to what I do outside of work which over many years has evolved from Travel Photography, Blogging & Writing to more recently Online Course Creation, Writing & Business (Travel Photography is on hold for he moment for obvious reasons!). My purpose is very much a work in progress and I am loving the journey of exploring it all.

The past 12 weeks was incredibly busy and I made huge progress in Online Course Creation, Business & Writing. This was so exciting and brought me immense joy & happiness.

In saying that, there was a cost! I totally underestimated the amount of time it would take to deliver all of the below which meant I made much progress in this area of my life but created little to no progress in other areas. This led to being unbalanced which is what I felt numerous times during the past 12 weeks – the next 12 weeks will be all about bringing balance back into my life and ensuring all areas of my life are prioritised equally!

Here are the milestones I reached over the past 12 weeks that I’m most proud of,

My first self hosted free webinar – I am used to hosting presentations/webinars online through my day job, however hosting my own webinar is another story altogether. From handling all the tech to promotion, communication, content creation, hosting the webinar, sharing the recording and follow up on all the communication (emails & social media) – I loved every minute of this webinar but it did move me way outside of my comfort zone which is great for personal growth but oh so uncomfortable! Following this webinar, I worked with Shannon Chamber to run the webinar again which has brought many exciting opportunities.

My first 6 Week Online Course – Moving even further outside of my comfort zone I created, launched, promoted and delivered my very first 6 Week Online Course. This was so much work, so nerve wracking and so enjoyable in equal amounts. Five beautiful souls (you know who you are) trusted me with guiding them through the steps to create their Personal Strategy and I am so grateful for this. I loved delivering the course content and I equally loved learning from the group through the deep, honest and open discussions we had. We are all unique and we all have a story to tell and a message to share, we can learn so much from each other if we are open to this learning.

My first podcast interviews – I was interviewed on Natalie Sisson’s ‘Untapped’ podcast which was my very first podcast interview. In terms of my comfort zone – this brought nerves to a whole new level! I have been following Natalie online for many years and being part of her LYDC & 10K Club has been amazing but getting to be a guest on her podcast was just brilliant! Recording the podcast was so much fun, however listening back to my own voice was a bit surreal!

I was also interviewed for Sharon Singh Sidhu’s podcast ‘The Financially Free Woman’ podcast. I love Sharon’s philosophy around financial freedom and really align with her teachings in terms of our mindset around money.

All of the above opened up many doors of opportunity that I am currently working on and looking forward to sharing with you.

Social Life:

As we have been I lockdown since Christmas my social life has been very much based at home and not really what I would normally refer to as a social life.

I’m looking forward to our social lives returning to some level of normality over the next 12 weeks and beyond!

Environment:

My goals for this pillar of my Personal Strategy include decorating our home and being more aware of and kinder to our beautiful planet.

After over a year of working from home on our kitchen table, I have finally moved into my new home office. We have turned our spare room downstairs into my home office and I love it, I can finally separate work and home life! I’m looking forward to decorating my new home office and creating a really chilled yet productive space to work.

As part of being more aware of an kinder to our planet, I am reducing the amount of plastic I use and looking at using more eco friendly products. This is a work in progress but it’s really inspiring to see how many Irish companies support eco friendly and sustainable products.

Contribution:

There are so many charities who do incredible work for those less fortunate and I am very grateful that I can afford to support some of these charities. I have a few favourite charities that are personal to me and year on year I try to give more to them. Charities have been hit really hard during the Covid 19 pandemic and so they can do with all of the help and support we can give them.

That’s the past 12 weeks for me – albeit at a very high level.

How has the past 12 weeks been for you?

I’m hoping happy, successful and full of optimism for the next 12 weeks.

I wish you success, health and happiness as you look back at the past 12 weeks and even more success, health and happiness as you look forward to the next 12 weeks and beyond!

Siobhain

x x

To support you with your 12 Week Review, I have created a free resource, the ‘12 Week Review Workbook’ that will walk you through the 5 steps to carry out your 12 Week Review. You can download it below. I hope you find time for some quiet reflection and find this workbook useful.

Click to share this post

5 Reasons to Prioritise Your 12 Week Review

Leave a reply

Click to share this post

Image Credit: Madhuri Gupta

When you start doing quarterly reviews you start to realise just how fast 3 months go by.

The end of each quarter is a super time to look back and reflect on how things went in the past quarter and plan for the quarter ahead.

Having a personal strategy is all about creating an amazing, fulfilled, purposeful and meaningful life. Your personal strategy is only as good as the reviews you do and the changes you make as a result of these reviews.

When personal strategy and the goals you have set, the quarterly review can be the most important. It certainly is my favourite review because it’s a deep dive into progress of goals and there is way more progress quarterly than can be seen daily, weekly and monthly which is always motivating.

As humans we are wired to perform better when we are making progress which is why reflection & reviews are so important. You may not think you are making progress in your life & work but you are probably making way more progress than you think!

On reflection, this will become very clear!

BUT FIRST – WHY!

WHY should you carry out a 12 Week Review?

Simon Sinek is famous for his brilliant TED Talk ‘How great leaders inspire action’ with over 13 million views on YouTube. In this video, Simon talks about the importance of knowing your ‘WHY’ in terms of everything you do.

When it comes to everything in your life, your WHY is the first step to success!

Here are 5 reasons WHY I think your 12 Week Review deserves to be your priority,

1. It slows you down and gives you time & space to think

We live in an extremely fast paced world and we seem to be so busy all the time.

Reflection of any kind allows us to stop moving forward, to be still in the present moment and to give the necessary time and space required to learn from the past.

Not to dwell on or judge the past, but to take the learnings from it to move forward with more knowledge, focus, intention, purpose, motivation & understanding of what our priorities are.

When was the last time you took a few hours to look back and reflect on your life & work?

Do you give yourself the gift of sufficient time & space to reflect regularly and learn from reflection?

2. It allows you to acknowledge, appreciate and celebrate your successes

Do you celebrate all your wins & successes or do you move through life at the speed of light, not acknowledging, appreciating and celebrating your success?

We make progress in our lives & work all day EVERY SINGLE DAY yet we are sometimes so busy & focused on getting things done that we don’t see all of these wins and successes.

Carrying out your 12 Week Review gives you the time and space to acknowledge, appreciate and celebrate the progress you have made in the past 12 weeks.

This in turn will get you thinking about all of the amazing wins and successes you have EVERY SINGLE DAY of which we all have so many.

3. It allows you to understand what contributes to your success and take action to create more

There are many reasons why we are successful at some things and not so successful at others.

Have you ever sat down and reflected on your successes and really thought about how they happened.

Was it something you did?

Was it something you got support with?

Was it something that happened quickly or something that took a long time?

Was it a bit of pot luck or did you plan meticulously for it?

When we understand what contributes to our success, we can replicate & build on this to bring us more success.

Success has a different meaning for everyone as we all live different lives, are at different stages and have different priorities.

Reflecting on success supports you to learn more about exactly what success means to you so you can create an action plan that will build on the success you already enjoy!

4. It allows you to acknowledge challenges that got in the way of your success

Things don’t always work out how we plan or how we want them to.

Even the best plans don’t work out, this is a normal part of life and work.

Acknowledging your challenges/obstacles is the first step to learning about them and overcoming them.

This in turn ensures you don’t come up against them again and if you do, you are better prepared.

Sometimes we don’t want to face our challenges/obstacles let alone reflect on and review them, however it is from our challenges/obstacles that we can learn so much and grow and evolve as human beings!

5. It allows you to understand what contributed to these challenges and turn these into successes

Challenges and obstacles are a normal part of life and work, it is how we deal with them that determines our ability to overcome them.

Understanding what caused the challenges and obstacles goes a long way to dealing with and overcoming them in a healthy way.

Challenges/obstacles are a constant companion on the road to your goals and are your stepping stones to success. Llearning from them makes stepping over those stones that bit easier!

Taking action from what you learn will turn challenges/obstacles into opportunities!

What can you learn from the challenges you experienced over the past 12 weeks?

What action can you take to turn your challenges into successes?

That’s it, the 5 Reasons to Prioritise Your 12 Week Review.

I wish you success, health and happiness as you look back at the past 12 weeks and even more success, health and happiness as you look forward to the next 12 weeks.

Want to join my weekly newsletter?

If so download my free ebook ‘The A-Z of Effective Change’ below and you are all signed up!

Thanks for reading,

Siobhain

x x

Click to share this post