I know a very wise man who shared with me last year a Christmas tradition of his and I don't think he'll mind me passing it on to you. Between Christmas Day and New Year's Eve he writes down (you can use your writing implement of choice whether it be technological, ink or graphite) everything he has achieved during the year. These should be professional and personal. It's not something you need to share with the class. We're not just talking about large-scale achievements like buying a house, getting a new job or running a marathon (for the record, I didn't meet my objective of doing the latter, but I'm rocking my front-room fitness regime!). Perhaps you made your very first comment on a professional blog or presented an idea in a team meeting. Maybe you renegotiated your home insurance and got a better deal or even found the courage to go to the cinema by yourself. It's worth remembering that what might seem easy to the outside world may have taken a lot of guts to achieve. Only you will get the true sense of satisfaction that comes from, for example, paying your mortgage every month by yourself. But these are the achievements of which you can be justifiably proud and are worth reflecting on in your personal review of 2012.
There will be countless articles in the press over the next few weeks reminiscing about 2012 and all that was achieved. Remember the Olympics? Of course you do. What lessons can we learn from them, individually and in business? Success required good planning and preparation and lots and lots and lots of hard work.
"Reassess, realign - and move on"
I started off the year talking about my objective of finding a good work life balance and the desire to be contented and healthy. I'm pleased that I've achieved this, despite a dip mid-year thanks to a bout of whooping cough. My suggestion that by sensibly building something into your life, you will succeed, proved me right this year. Rather than making a resolution in January that I would have quickly abandoned (for I know my own mind and my levels of willpower), I thought about where I hoped to be as the year progressed and how I would get there. Where things fell by the wayside, I stopped to consider if I was expecting too much of myself, whether I was being realistic and so I reassessed, realigned and moved on.
How we measure our successes and failures requires total honesty with ourselves. Being able to address things that don't go to plan would seem to me to be a great example of the need to have objectives - to plan, review and change things in order to get better, to achieve and to succeed.
From me and all the team at Sue Hill Recruitment, we wish you a happy, healthy and successful 2013.
Suzanne Wheatley is a Recruitment Manager at Sue Hill Recruitment. She has worked in information management recruitment for ten years. You can follow her on Twitter @suzyredrec. Throughout 2012 she has written about her personal and professional objectives for the year and shared her progress - and lessons learned.
Photo courtesy of GranthWeb via Flickr.