Your Personal State of the Union: 4 Ways to Review Your Year
I've been thinking a lot lately about how we reflect on our years. Most of us either skip the reflection entirely because life keeps moving, or we sit down with grand intentions and then stare at a blank page unsure where to start. Neither feels great.
So I want to offer something simpler. A personal state of the union, if you will. Not a corporate performance review of your life, but an honest look at where you've been and what it's taught you.
My advice is to start simple and let complexity come naturally. You don't need a perfect framework before you begin because once you start writing or talking it through, you'll find yourself layering in details and connections you didn't expect. The reflection deepens itself if you give it room to breathe.
Here are four approaches I've found helpful, both for myself and for clients I work with. Pick the one that resonates most, or borrow pieces from a few.
1 - The Wheel of Life Review
This approach works well if you want a holistic view of your year across multiple areas (search for Wheel of Life templates online). You'd look at categories like career, relationships, health, finances, personal growth, fun, and spirituality, then honestly assess what went well and what didn't in each one.
The beauty of this method is that it forces you to look at your life as a whole rather than just the parts that feel loudest. Sometimes we think we had a rough year because work was hard, but when we zoom out, we realize we actually grew in three other areas we weren't paying attention to. And sometimes the opposite is true. We feel great about one win and miss that several other areas have been quietly neglected. Both are worth knowing.
2 - The Memory Walk
For this one, you'd scroll through your camera roll and flip through any journals, notes, or voice memos you've kept throughout the year. You're not looking at everything with equal weight. You're looking for the moments that feel significant when you land on them.
Not every photo or entry will spark something, but the ones that do are worth sitting with. Ask yourself what made that moment matter and what it reveals about where you were versus where you are now. This approach is less structured than the others, but it often surfaces things the more analytical methods miss. Our memories hold wisdom if we're willing to slow down and listen to them.
3 - The Goals Audit
If you set specific goals at the beginning of the year with measurable outcomes, this is your chance to look at the numbers honestly. Pull out whatever you wrote down in January and measure your progress against what you said you wanted.
I won't pretend this one is comfortable. It can feel confronting to see the gap between intention and reality. But it's also clarifying in ways that soften over time. Sometimes you'll find you hit goals you forgot you set, which is a strange and lovely surprise. Other times you'll realize a goal you missed doesn't even matter to you anymore, and that's useful information too. Not every goal we set deserves to follow us into the next year.
4 - Highs and Lows
This is the most straightforward option if you want something quick that still has depth. You'd simply list your highest moments of the year and your lowest ones, then look at what they have in common or what they reveal.
The highs show you what you want more of. They point to the environments, people, and activities that bring you alive. The lows often point to where you're being invited to grow or set better boundaries. They're not just painful memories to move past. They're data about what's not working and what you might need to protect yourself from going forward.
Simplicity can be powerful when you're honest with yourself.
A Final Thought
You don't have to do all four of these. You don't even have to finish one. The goal isn't to produce a perfect document. The goal is to give yourself the gift of pausing long enough to notice what happened this year before you rush into the next one.
Because here's what I've learned: the years start blending together if we don't mark them intentionally. And we deserve to remember our own lives with clarity, not just a blur of busyness we can barely recall.
So find twenty minutes. Pick one of these approaches. And see what comes up.
You might surprise yourself.
