Goodbye and Thank You: Getting Complete
We made it! The end of 2020! Well done us.
If you had said what we would all achieve this year 12 months ago, it would have sounded impossible. There is a lot we have accomplished and there is much that we didn’t get to do.
Before setting goals for the year ahead, there is one thing I do first. It gives me power, takes away guilty feelings around past goals and gives me freedom. I’m sure there are lots of ways to describe this process and in our house we call it ‘getting complete’.
Getting complete about 2020 is more important than ever before to reflect, learn and process what happened with uncertainty and lack of control.
No doubt we all have one or two things we didn’t do in 2020 and we have things we are surprised we were able to achieve. Getting complete is an opportunity to celebrate our accomplishments (if you don’t who will?!) and to look at, acknowledge and face the disappointment, upset, unmet expectations of the year. This brings us power and helps ensure our past year doesn’t colour or view what is next.
Getting complete isn’t just about looking at what we didn’t do. It is an opportunity to really celebrate what we did. We can get stuck on, bogged down by and feel guilty about what we didn’t complete. This can take away from the celebration of what we did do, diminish our power and be a guilty cloud that hangs over us when we go to create our new year.
For me it’s easier to create a list of what I didn’t do rather than what I did do. We usually add more significance to the ‘didn’t do’ list and one ‘didn’t do’ can feel like 5 bricks and one did do might seem easy and not even like a brick at all.
Time to get power for 2021 and learn some hacks for you to do the hard stuff.
Here is a simple exercise that we use and you can too to get complete on your 2020 before creating 2021. Bring some lightness to it, play some fun music - my playlist for this year included S Club 7’s Bring it All Back (thanks Caitie for the recommendation).
Get complete on your year in 10 minutes
Create a list of what you said you would do in 2020 but didn’t. This could be as simple as not taking the rubbish out to not submitting a report of time to your manager, not exercising three times per week or not writing the book I said I would write. This isn’t a beat yourself up exercise - it’s about acknowledging it so we can do something about it.
Create a list of what you did accomplish in 2020. These could be goals you set at the start of the year and unexpected things you achieved like working from home while homeschooling or working out how to use zoom to present online.
Look at two or three specific items on your ‘not complete’ list. Why did you not complete these? What got in the way? Was it the tasks were too big and you felt overwhelmed? Were you waiting for inspiration to ‘come to you’? Were you wanting to get tasks right before you finished it?
Look at two or three specific items in your ‘complete’ list. Why did you complete these? Was it because you planned to do tasks so they got done? Did you get these tasks done because they were tasks you enjoyed or were more interesting than others? Did accountability with others to keep you motivated?
To finish getting complete, look at your ‘not complete list’. Go through each item and either recommit to a date you will have it complete by or, if you are no longer going to do it, cross it out and ditch the task.