Tips to Help You Reflect on Your Past Successes, Challenges, and Dreams
December 15, 2025 - JUDY WHALEN
Tips to Help You Reflect on Past Successes, Challenges, and Dreams
As the year moves into the final few weeks, there is lots of talk about the new year and new goals. Planning for your future and your business' future requires reflecting on the past before setting new goals. Without reflection followed by careful planning , there’s no way of knowing if your efforts will land you closer to, or farther from, your hopes for the future.
If you’re not intentional about where you’re headed, you’ll likely find yourself repeating the same activities and habits over and over getting the same results you’ve always gotten. If your outcomes are favorable, then you’re on the right track, but what if they aren’t? What if your track record hasn’t been what you hoped and you want something more in the future?
Doing What You've Always Done Gets You What You've Always Gotten
A popular quote by Maya Angelou says, “Do the best you can until you know better. When you know better, do better.” Most of us are doing the best we can with what we know, and our results indicate whether we are doing well or need improvement.
Without paying attention to what you’ve always done, chances are you’ll continue to get what you’ve always gotten, for better or for worse.
Taking time to assess your outcomes and examine how you got there is an important first step.
You Can Change Your Future
If you’re looking for something different in the future, it’s as simple as paying close attention to the past. Reflecting and analyzing the past can dramatically improve future outcomes.
Being intentional with your goals and activities can radically improve and change your future making it easier to live your best life.
Using Reflection to Plan for the Future
Taking time to reflect on the past leads to greater self-awareness. Reflection helps with:
Understanding past choices
Recognizing patterns in thoughts and behaviors
Unearthing good and bad habits
Evaluating priorities
Getting in touch with motivations and triggers
Without Reflection, History Tends to Repeat Itself
Since much of life is on autopilot, it’s easy to repeat history despite any intention to do things differently. This can reflect in the habits we’ve developed that affect our:
Health
Relationships
Finances
Spirituality
Fitness
Goals
Spending time reflecting can unwind subconscious thoughts and behaviors that drive your decisions.
Stopping to understand why we do the things we do can help us make better, more informed choices and get life-changing results - and the future we desire.
Take Action Activity
Look at your calendar for the next two weeks. Circle your can’t-miss personal events. Then reflect on three key areas of your business or life. Jot down your thoughts, assessment of each area, or reflections about your current status. This is the baseline for your planning for the new year.
You’ve got this. 🎯
Do you want to go deeper? I can help you train your mindset to work for you—not against you.
📅 Schedule a free strategy call and let’s talk about how to focus your energy where it matters most.
The Baseline Worksheet is a simple tool to help you track the current status of your business or life. You can use it to reflect of your progress, then record the status at the end of whatever timeframe you are measuring. (Week, month, quarter, or year.)
Using it helps to develop the habit of strategic thinking and measuring progress as each timeframe ends and the next one begins. This simple-to-use worksheet can be done without any fancy software.
Hi! I'm Judy
I've been in business 30+ years serving business owners and nonprofit leaders. They hire me to guide them in developing growth strategies, gain clarity about their priorities, take consistent action, and measure their progress. I also offer Executive Coaching and online programs.
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