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Year-end Reflection Exercise: Create The List of Ingredients for Your Best Life ✨

Hi Elpha community!It’s that time of the year when social media is full of year reflections and most of us tend to pause and journal about our own 2020 conclusions. I would like to share with you one of my favourite reflection exercises which takes you out of goals/achievement frame and let you focus on peak experiences and what made them so special for YOU. This will nicely compliment your regular end of the year reflection routine if you already have one or will help you start it :) 1. Find a comfortable quiet space, turn off all the potential distractions2. Take A4 paper and place it horizontally or use both sides of the fold in your notebook. Divide it into 4 columns 3. Relax and think of the best moments of the year, let yourself dive and feel your peak experiences again. 
If you don’t find 2020 very eventful, it’s ok to go back more in time and remember older moments when you felt at your best. When was the time when you felt most happy, fulfilled, free, grateful, most accomplished, productive, joyful...? Whatever YOU remember as peak experiences is right. 4. Now you will break down each experience into 4 elements and write them down in the columns: 
- Where you were
- Who you were with
- What were you doing
- What else was going on (sounds, lights, important elements) 5. Have you noticed any patterns in your peak moments? 

In the end congratulate yourself as you have just created your first master list of magical ingredients: places, people, actions and other important details which apparently make your life better. Keep adding to your list when you experience new peak moments. This exercise helps you see what things are really important for you and give you useful clues to define your values. What ingredients are you going to bring to your kitchen for cooking in 2021?

I’ll definitely take more of time with the ocean, camping, cooking for friends, social media & screen detox, crafting and dance. Please, share your favourite end of the year reflection & goal settings exercises. I'm always curious to explore new ones. Happy Holidays!Victoria
I love this method of recounting joyful memories and then finding patterns from them!I've used the Year Compass for a long time now. I only go through the first half, which is the looking back component, and it takes me about 3-4 hours at a relaxed, introspective kind of pace :)
Definitely on my list to try. Thank you!
I love this!
That’s a good one, thanks for sharing! Year compass has been useful for me as a reflection tool but I had to find other ways for setting goals & intentions for the upcoming year
Thank you so much for sharing Victoria! This is such a great idea! What if one considers an entire period to be peak as opposed to having specific episodes? How would you recommend them to go about recounting memories?
That’s a great question, Iynna! When someone is recalling what seems like the whole period to be a peak, the brain will be piecing together all of the various elements of that period to create a vivid film of memories from the past which would still include the elements of where, who with, what one was doing and what else was going on. I would just let myself write what comes first to mind and therefore might be defining for that period. As the result, ingredients separately may belong to different moments but the final goal to learn what influences us to be and feel at our best will be achieved. P.S. besides that period, I would still try to recall more of the particular memories and it’s ingredients from other times for bigger picture :)
Fantastic idea!"besides that period, I would still try to recall more of the particular memories and it’s ingredients from other times for bigger picture :)" ==> Absolutely - ultimately you are trying to identify patterns of some sort!
Thank you. I will definitely try this out!
Great ideas! Definitely bookmarking this.
Love the value and insights that come from reflecting. For this year, I want to try doing it more often than annually - aiming for monthly and more in-depth quarterly. I've used InkWell Press planners for a few years and recently got the goal planning inserts. I highly recommend them, they are filled with great pages and prompts.
Thanks for sharing! I like that they are fully customizable