This year is swiftly heading to an end, and for many people this becomes a time of reflection.
We’ve been taught that new years are for new beginning, right? We don’t have to wait for
January 1st to start thinking about what’s important to us.
With the coaching work that we do at Vet Empowered, we often find an influx of enquiries from people that are worried they haven’t ‘achieved enough/anything’ in the previous 11months and want some support in 2023. We love to help and encourage professionals to realign with that’s important to them, but we are also fully committed to holding a mirror up and reminding them
that they are already valuable; it’s easy for us to intertwine achievement and self-value. Quite
often, those who come and say they haven’t achieved enough, have in reality, achieved a huge amount.
Here’s a note to take some pressure off.
When that narrative pops in telling us that we haven’t achieved anything, what if we asked “is
that really true?”. What if we started to give ourselves chance to sit back and actually reflect on the small things throughout the year that we’ve forgotten about, or not acknowledged? Often a quick scroll through our camera roll, social media feeds, emails or messages can highlight many things that don’t immediately come to mind – or perhaps acknowledging that you came through a trickier year. Whether in clinical practice or not, there will be plenty of people you’ve positively impacted that will remember you with a smile.
I’d encourage those reading to give themselves the time and space to look back over the year
through a kinder lens – maybe considering what you’d say to a friend or loved one. That might
feel a bit strange at first, but often it’s small tweaks in perspective that can catalyse unexpected shifts; there’s real power in some self-compassionate reflection.
What if 2023 was about aligning with what’s really important to you? What is your definition of
success? What small action could you take towards that today? So often we will chase what we think we should want or achieve – there are plenty of professionals with a myriad of letters after their names that still feel like there is something missing. Here is your chance to break the moulds that we have been handed and redefine your own.
Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at Dominican University in California, ran a study on goal setting with 267 participants. She found that you are 42 percent more likely to achieve your goals just by writing them down – so maybe this is something that could help you for 2023?
Here are a few prompts that you might find helpful to get you started reflecting on 2022:
● What were your three proudest moments of 2022? At work and home.
● In which areas have I improved my skillset?
● Which challenges did I overcome?
● What has been the most important lesson that I learned in 2022?
● What was my best memory of 2022?
● What would success look like to you in 2023?
Always remember that with approaching reflective questions such as these, it’s ok if you answer “I don’t know”, or if you need to revisit these. One of our biggest mantras at Vet Empowered is ‘curiosity over criticism’, so we really encourage you to approach these questions without judgement.
If you like the idea of spending some time realigning, at Vet Empowered we’re holding our
Vision 2023 workshop, a 2hour reflective online session where we help you to reflect further and plan for 2023. Tickets are priced at a special discount rate of £20 for those finding this through JHP Recruitment:
Sunday January 8th, 10am-12pm GMT (2h)