Visuals For Looking Back AND Looking Ahead

December is usually a month where people reflect on the year that has passed. What have you achieved this year?

Can you believe it that most people don’t really like to look back to see what they did? The most common reason for this is that they feel they didn’t do that much… I even hear some people tell me they actually feel back because their year seems to be wasted!

If you feel like that, or you think you did OK, or even did great… this is the best time to reflect and move forward. No need to feel bad about what “could have”. You are only learning about what you did because it helps you focus your mind again.

December is also a wonderful time to look ahead. What will you do next year? What wonderful things are waiting for you in the year to come?

When you think about this, you will focus your mind again. This makes your life so much easier!!! After all, when you know where you are going, you can identify the events, people and things you see that can help you move forward.

You may think… what has all of this have to do with mindmaps?

That’s a very good question!

As you know, your mind loves pictures. You should use this to make sure your current and new year is captured in a brain friendly picture (for instance a mindmap). This helps you focus AND the map makes it easier to overview these two periods in your life.

From this image, you can determine what you will focus on, what your next steps will be, how you value what you have, etc.

How to do this

There are many different ways you can do this. Of course you can use the ‘boring’ way to do this and create a mindmap with 2 branches, called 2010 and 2011. In each branch you add the things you did and what you want and wanted to do. Something like this:

You may even go all NLP on your words and choose words like REACH or ACCOMPLISH or ACHIEVE in stead of WANT. That is all up to you. After all, you are the owner of your own overview. There is no right or wrong. There is just good and better.

Another thing you can do is play with the outline of the branches. Why create an outline in a ‘radial’ manner. It might be better for your brain to align all branches to one side (I normally use the right hand side), like this:

If you like to do something special and think outside the mindmap format, you can go for this approach. You create 2 mindmaps which you position next to each other. This way you can see what you did and wanted to do in 2010 AND you can see where you are going in 2011. By pointing them towards each other, your brain starts to think differently about them. You think about the 2010 things and usually try to connect them to 2011. You take the starting point and (sub)consciously figure out ways to move into 2011 and achieve the things you added to that small map.

It looks something like this:

Of course you can add different branches to the years. You can think of categories like:

• FAMILY
• WORK
• STUDY
• TRAVEL
• SPORTS
• HOME
• FRIENDS
• MONEY
• SPIRITUAL
• etc.

That is all up to you. I know you understand that you can add all these categories to each of the 3 types of maps we discussed before.

Here’s a hint… when you do this, make sure you create goals, dreams and ideas which support each other. Don’t go on a wild goose chase and plan to build a family, go on a 4 month trip around the world, get a big fat raise, study 5 different languages, become a pro golfer, etc. I know it might be possible… but still, remain slightly realistic (not too realistic however!!!)

In order to know where you are going, you need to know where you’ve been and where you are right now. No point in going somewhere if you don’t know what direction you have to go, right?

Enjoy creating a visual overview of your current and upcoming year. You will be amazed how much this will help you to move forward and get things done.

As always… I need to know what you achieved with this and what other questions there may be. So be sure to add your thoughts, ideas, results and questions below.

Talk soon!

UPDATE

Of course creating a mindmap with your goals is nice… but it is not what you really want, right? You want to create an overview that helps you to move forward faster towards your goals. Knowing them is the first step.

There is something you can do right now with your mindmap.

Right next to each goal you have, you write down in which 3 steps you can accomplish this goal. All things can be broken down into 3 steps. Just try this.

After you did that, you identified exactly what you need to do to reach your goals. And when one of the steps is too big or overwhelming, you simply break it down into 3 more steps. My advise is you break your goal in to steps which can be done in a day (at most). This way you can work on it, get it done, and move forward.

(So if you can’t accomplish something in less than a day, you need additional steps)

This combination of using goals and sub-goals, tasks and activities in a single map transforms the mindmap with goals into a plan of action.

This is practical usage of a mindmap! This is something which will help you unleash your mindmaps.

Enjoy this additional information.

Let me know below if you have questions or when you want to tell your fellow mindmap users what you did that worked for you!

Tags: everyday life, experience, goals, Reflection, your life