As we continue this week’s focus on finishing strong, today we pick up the topic of finishing strong at year’s end. In another day we enter December, the final month of 2016. The end of the year is a great time to take a longer view look at how you have been doing in your life overall and in your leadership in particular. How have you been and done in 2016? Has this been a great year, a good year, a bad year, or a terrible year? Whatever your response, why have you labeled it the way you have? What does your response have to do with your overall goal and plan for finishing strong?
That’s a lot of questions, let’s pause a moment to respond, in general to them. If this has been a great year, what has made it so? In the same way if you answered it was a good year, a bad year or a terrible year why did you give that answer? Wherever we are on the continuum from great to terrible for 2016, what has that done to ensure you will finish well one day? Even if 2016 has been a terrible year, there are different kinds of terrible, right? It could have been terrible from a physical health standpoint. It could have been terrible from a relational standpoint, or a leadership standpoint. The reason or reasons we give for labeling the year as great, good, bad or terrible has a lot to do with whether we are moving toward finishing strong.
For example, let’s say it was a terrible year from the standpoint of your health. In the midst of health problems we sometimes find it easier to follow God than when all is flowing smoothly. On the other hand, if it’s been a terrible year, because you have had a number of relational blow ups that’s different. Or if you lost your job. In those cases it will be more difficult to keep your focus on God. You may even blame God for the problems you face in that case. If you’re not a person of faith, that will make it even more challenging to move forward toward finishing strong, if any of the obstacles mentioned turns your year terrible.
At the same time, whatever our year has been like, taking the time to sit down, reflect on it, and consider what we can learn from the ups and downs of the year, is a step toward finishing strong. After all, as we always say around here, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” When we stop to reflect on where we’ve been, and the results we’ve gained from how we’ve done what we’ve done, we can also make mid-course corrections so the year ahead will be more effective, and will move us toward our goal of finishing strong.
I know folks who take several days at the end of each year to evaluate every area of their lives, then to make corrections and plan for the next year. I’m not saying that you or I have to do that in order to finish strong, but I do recommend taking at least a day to sit down, evaluate the year we’ve just lived, and then assess what went right and wrong in order to move into 2017 with our eyes wide open. Then set some annual goals, and keep your eye on that overarching goal of finishing strong.
A lot of these posts emphasize the importance of self-analysis. That’s because nothing is more important in moving us forward as leaders than having a sane estimate of our own value, and moving forward based on what ever that estimate shows us. For example, if I know I do my best work in the morning and that I make bad decisions after 9:00 pm, it would make sense for me to be in bed by 9:00 am. so I can get up 5:00 fully rested and ready to attack the day, the week, the month–you get the idea.
Here’s to leading better as we move to the end of 2016, by taking the time to consider where we’ve been and where we’re going-today, or sometime in the next couple of weeks!