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“A year without learning is a wasted year”
My coaching fellow once told me, and I really liked the phrase.
How was your 2021?
December and January have pretty much the same, but year-end is a great moment to reflect who you are and what you learned to thrive in the next year. In this post, I will capture my examples, hoping you might get something out of it and reflect your own year.
Contents
What I reflect
This year, in line with the previous year, I mainly reflected 5 things: (1) diary, (2) major events, (3) Creative activities (4) my emotion trajectory and (5) learning.
Diary
I continued keeping a diary every morning since last May, and it surely became my daily routine after morning meditation. I write about below points:
(1) past (what I did),
(2) present (my emotion level from 1-3, what I appreciate and assessment of last night sleep),
(3) future (what to do) and;
(4) creative exercise: I create an outline of new story every day.
Major events
- Portuguese language: joined my blog family members (which made 5 languages in this blog). I also wanted to take an exam (Celpe-bra) but timeline didn’t fit.
- Dealing with emotional challenge: I faced mental challenge for the first time in my life. It started with self-awareness, trial of emotional regulation, seeing a professional (counselor) and come up with personal preventive measurement (3E, social time, down time, etc.)
- Coaching: after obtaining life coach certificate, I decided to have some practical session including the ones with coaching buddy
- New family: this is for sure one of the biggest events in 2021 and parenting is totally new area.
- New life direction: I started brainstorming my personal project, shifted my job direction ( saying “no” to non-priority area, including the request to travel and adding consultancy) and started investment and drafting my will
- Started house gardening: see “10 Reasons to start planting foods at home“. This will align with my personal project
- Book project (s): I decided to work on both fiction and non-fiction book projects
- Passed Chinese test: See “Passing HSK 3 in 1 month…“
- New destination: New job(s) started and came to Denmark
- Promoting 3E: Maintained ”3E” in some way and provided some lectures on them.
Creative activities
Although I haven’t published as many blog articles as I wanted each experience was valuable.
- 10 Reasons to start planting foods at home
- Passing HSK 3 in 1 month after 3 years of absence since the decision to study Chinese
- 5 simple ways you can apply right away to find happiness
- 5 Reasons to watch TED and 10 Recommended TED Talks
- 5 Things Good Facilitators Have in Common
- Happy New Year 2021 for 育
In addition, I have worked on several writing projects (still to be completed), edited videos and given some lectures at middle/high schools and universities. (Lecture article at Tsukuba University in Japanese can be found here “Learning from International Educational Development to Support 4 Continents, 6 Duty Stations and 36 Countries”
I also made a turning point drawing centered around Pacific Islands.
My emotion trajectory
To be completely honest, my emotion level was down for quite some time from the beginning of 2021. I thought it was rather wrong to feel that way, let alone sharing it with others due partly to a tacit notion that we are not supposed to show our vulnerability.
My diary exercise helped me to be aware of it. When I realized, I decided to see a professional and consulted my friends, which helped me reflect more. Of course that was not the end. The important thing, as is always the case with other physical and mental challenges, it is a continuous journey where you should build resilience and keep practicing wellbeing activities.
I was pretty comfortable to promote lifeskill and wellbeing (I even couch for that), but not for myself. In fact, before doing anything for others, you have to stay well (we all remember the airplane guidance saying you put a mask first before helping others). It became important lesson especially now that I have other important person to take care of.
After reviewing all above, as of Dec 31 2021, I feel pretty good and will be working on it!
The learning of this time
Reflecting on 2021, I have dealt with emotional challenge, decided and worked on new life direction via trial and error and new family arrival, which helped to find who I am and what I would want in 2022.
Thank you for reading this article. If you like it, please don’t forget to subscribe. If you have any comment/question, please feel free to leave. Have a great learning!
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