PETER DRUCKER

It is a healthy activity to reflect back on the time gone by, in an objective way, before making plans for the year ahead. However, most of us are moving towards one of the two extremes:

1. Self-ridicule or lamenting the stuff we didn’t do or did wrong.
2. Self-congratulation or patting oneself on the back for all the great stuff we did, while ignoring the mistakes.

While reflecting on the past, we normally look at our achievements and appreciate what we have been successful at.

Despite our best efforts, we sometimes do not get success due to other factors like luck, timing etc. The right approach is to learn from the experiences and to appreciate one’s effort.

Example: Going for various interviews that didn’t go well wasted a lot of our time, energy, effort and resources, but we still have to appreciate our effort and what all we learned from the rejections.

Sometimes the reason for your success is the failure you endured. The good nights sleep that helped you shine the next day for the interview, is an important aspect of success.

Most of the time it is our own self-care and other unidentified reasons that become a cause for our eventual success, and one needs to think holistically while reflecting to find the hidden reasons.

If we learned and changed during the past year/decade, we are on the path towards growth, even though it may not be visible or tangible as of now.

Personal growth means your experiments are paying results. The troubling thing would be to remain completely unchanged, as stagnancy is a cause for concern.

It’s a great idea to have an objective assessment for one’s achievements and efforts, reviewing them like a supportive boss would do while providing an appraisal.

To maintain an ideal balance, give yourself constructive feedback (25 percent) and appreciate the hard work and achieved goals (75 percent).