It’s pretty unbelievable to think that we’re at the end of June and that half of 2018 is already gone. I don’t set new year resolutions but I started out this year very differently to the few before it, mostly because I entered it with a significant goal that I had already been working towards for a few months and this had a major influence on my mindset. I decided to focus on developing fitness (physical fitness, mental fitness, spiritual fitness & financial fitness) and courage in 2018. This coming week I’ll be sitting down to do my own personal mid-year review and to assess how I’m tracking against these dimensions of my life and the goals and objectives I set within them.

There are a few reasons I’ve decided to implement a mid-year reflection into my year:

I want to ensure the goals I set are still appropriate in the context of how the year has unfolded. Between the start of the year and now a lot of things have happened that I didn’t plan for – good and bad – and I need to take all of these things into account.

I want to ensure that my daily actions and disciplines are aligned to moving me towards the goals I set for myself. It’s important to keep checking the roadmap to make sure I’m still on the right track.

I want to identify any key learning opportunities so that I can make continuous improvement in the second half of the year. It’s important to me that I keep growing and stretching myself as I move towards my goals.

I am more focused on one specific goal than I have ever been on any other goal in my entire life and I want to ensure that this goal (as important as it is) is not derailing some of the goals in the other dimensions of my life and throwing things off balance.

As I prepared the questions I want to answer across the different areas of my life, I realized that for people who work in corporate roles, mid-year and year-end reviews are a standard practice. It’s a mandatory requirement. But how often, if ever, do we adopt this practice in our personal lives? For me, this isn’t an exercise in going through the motions. It’s going to be an opportunity for me to honestly assess my intentions versus my actions and ensure that I’m really moving towards who and where I want to be in my own life.

Everyone has their own unique set of motivations and goals and a personal review may not be not be something you think is relevant or necessary, but just in case it’s piqued your interest or you’re curious to learn more, I thought I’d share a few of the questions I’ll be answering myself as part of my personal mid-year review. Feel free to adapt these and use them for yourself if you find any value.

For each one of my personal goal dimensions across fitness and courage, I’ll cover three specific areas, meaning I’ll answer this set of questions five times. The questions within each area are generic enough to be applied to any goal but I’ve structured them to challenge myself in terms of providing detailed and specific feedback (no options for yes/no answers!).

1. Reconnecting with each goal and why I set this:

What is the primary goal or objective for me in this area of my life for 2018?

Why is this goal important to me?

2. Looking back at the past six months:

Where am I currently tracking towards achieving this specific goal?

What are 1-3 things that I did towards achieving this goal?

What opportunities were there to learn new things that I took advantage of?

What new skills did I learn?

What did I learn about myself?

What mistakes did I make?

What did I learn from these mistakes?

How have I managed my time in this area of my life?

3. Looking ahead to the next six months:

What are the 1-3 things that I need to focus on in order to achieve my goals in this area of my life?

What adjustments, if any, do I need to make to my overall goals?

What actions / habits / daily disciplines do I need to adopt in order to keep me moving forward?

How am I tracking my accountability on my goals?

Who am I sharing my goals with that will hold me accountable?

What is the one critical skill / habit / learning that would make the greatest impact in terms of moving me forward in this area of my life?

What do I need to eliminate in order to ensure that I maintain my focus?

How can I better manage my time in this area?

What extra support do I need in order to ensure success?

Who do I want to meet, connect or reconnect with?

How will this help me to move towards the goals in this area of my life?

My intention in answering all of these questions is to ensure that I set myself up for the second half of 2018 to be my best six months ever. I’ve learned over the past few months that continuous improvement is much better than perfection and that being able to sit down with myself and do this kind of honest assessment means I am taking full ownership of my life and where I am headed. It’s a great feeling to know that optimizing my life, how I live it and how I experience it is fully within my own control.

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