New Year’s Day is a reflective day. Normally down to the over indulgence of the night before. I was a good boy this year and only had a few drinks, in front of the telly. Saying that I went for a run this morning and still felt the effects of a week of over eating and drinking.
Anyway normally when I look back at my life, like many others I get bogged down ruminating about all the events that did not go well. This is far from constructive and generally makes me feel rubbish about myself. No doubt that sounds familiar to many of you.
This year I decided to use a positive psychology approach, in fact an approach I encourage at work. Instead of constantly looking at what we don’t do well, why don’t we try to learn from what we did well. So I have looked at my achievements this year, and celebrate them. Thinking about them is easy enough, and is quite enjoyable, even inspiring. Writing them down and telling people is quite difficult, as no one likes a show off. But I am going to give it a go. Really telling people what you have done well is not showing off if you encourage others to share their successes. All it does is make us all feel happy and inspired to achieve more. That is the point of a review, to inspire your future plans using your previous recipes of success, rather than you recipes of failure.
So here are my highlights (my successes).
Most of my highlights are work related:
- I have devised a document that incorporates a sepsis screening tool and sepsis checklist for children
- I set up a new induction and rotation for newly qualified children’s nurses
- I have coached 5 young people helping them to decide their future
- I have coached 4 leaders to further develop their leadership skills
- I have delivered human factors training to all the newly qualified nurses at our hospital trust in October, and now helping to roll out a programme for the all staff next year
- I have started as coaching lead within the trust for a year
- I am working in partnership with my local university, doing a meta ethnography on attitudes of young people with eating disorders to the care they receive in a general hospital.
- I have started writing down my memories for my boys to provide them with a history of my family when I was growing up
- I have finally accepted my depression and don’t let it control my life
- I am optimistic now for the first time
- I am starting to enjoy my own company and one day soon will actually tell myself how much I appreciate me
- I am learning to share my job with someone else
- I have started to write my own self help guide, and if it helps me I might share it with you all (for a small fee)
There may be some more achievements, but that will do.
You know what, I actually feel quite good. When you start writing it down you realise how much you have done. Give it a go, it really is inspiring. You may think that you have not done anything much. That is what I felt. It’s not true, you have, you are just conditioned not to concentrate on the positive, but dwell on the negative.
So now I have looked at what I have achieved I can look forward to what comes next. Now a number of what I have started will continue. In fact most of them will. Many of them will change and become bigger and better. This next year I also want to take part in some more research, start teaching coaching skills, further develop my coaching, and provide more coaching to more people (to make coaching accessible, and an important part of all of our lives).
2018 will be incredible and exciting if I make it. Your year ahead will be whatever you make it.
If you want to do something amazing, get in touch we can have a chat and decide if being coached is for you.
Connected Coaching 