Lydia Vidal. We live in a start-up culture: January arrives as «the month of goals», of resolutions and of getting back to work. start. The difference between a well-intentioned list and a plan that actually holds up is what happens beforehand: look at what happened. What better month than December to do so with perspective.
Want focus in January? Don't look for it in January.
When we do not review what happened in the current year, the new year will start with inertia: with the same or more goals, the same or more haste, the same pattern. The year goes by almost by itself, as if we were going on automatically. Not because of a lack of ambition, but because of a lack of closure.
On the other hand, when we integrate what we have experienced, future goals can cease to be a desire and become a choice.
The starting point: stopping to integrate (Norberto Levy)
From the «wisdom of emotions», as Norberto Levy puts it in his book of the same title, stopping and looking back is useful because emotions need to be heard, felt and understood in order to fulfil their function. And what happened to us in a year that has been a quasi-infinite accumulation of emotions?
For Levy, emotions are intelligent messages that inform how we are experiencing what is happening to us. From this perspective, looking back allows us to do just that: to give time and space to the emotional experience to make sense of it.
There is a key idea: if there is no pause, emotion is not integrated. And what is not integrated does not disappear; it seeps out.
And when it seeps in, it often does so where we want clarity most: in the targets. Sometimes it appears in the form of self-demand (“I have to”), others such as avoidance (goals that distract from what's important), and others such as compensation(objectives to fill a gap or repair something pending).
That is why December matters: not as a romantic balance, but as a moment of perspective. Because when what has been experienced is recognised and ordered, goals cease to be a reaction and start to look more like a choice.
Stopping and reviewing what we have experienced has several objectives:
- It settles the experience: When we return to what happened, the emotion can “close its cycle”. The experience ceases to be internal noise and becomes embodied learning.
- It turns experience into awareness: without review, there are facts; with review, there is understanding. And only from understanding can we choose differently.
- Difference repetition of choice: looking back clarifies what was nourishing and what was not, what deserves to be repeated and what should be let go of. Not from judgement, but from listening.
- It restores presence and internal coherence: by acknowledging what is felt, the connection with oneself is re-established. Haste, on the other hand, generates emotional disconnection.
- It releases energy to move forward: the unseen remains retaining psychic energy. Integrating what we have lived," says Levy, "does not bind us to the past, it clears the future for us.
Why looking back improves the quality of your future goals
1) Avoid «reactive» targets»
Many objectives are born from a recent injury (“next year it won't happen to me again...”). The review turns reaction into criteria. Beyond what we don't want, what we do want.
2) Reduces noise and increases focus
Looking back does not add tasks: it removes them. A good closing of the year purifies priorities. To stop and savour what happened to us as important is to settle down and see that «those» are the things that internally satisfy us and make us well and, then, to know which ones to look for again.
3) Transforms learning into behaviour
Without revision: intention. With review: observable behaviour (the only thing that sustains an objective). It is easier to set up an annual plan and then monthly or weekly plans than to invent a plan of «don'ts» and actions to avoid.
Not a new approach: four looks at objectives
Different traditions have shared this same idea, with different languages, for a long time. So, in order to review the year without getting caught up in it, here are four complementary views:
- positive psychology, which invites to identify what worked (strengths, supports, meaning) to design goals with more resources and less punishment.
- stoicism, which trains the distinction between the controllable (decisions, habits, conversations) and the uncontrollable, making goals more realistic and actionable
- CNV, which proposes separating facts from judgements and connecting with emotions and needs so that objectives emerge with clarity and conversations are cleaner.
- Buddhism, which suggests reviewing with attention and letting go, learning without clinging in order to enter January with lightness.
Acknowledging what happened during the year with honesty and without make-up has a value in itself. Reviewing what happened without judging ourselves, just to name what is real: what came up, what hurt, what amused us so much, what we held on to in spite of everything, what we lost... and what no longer deserves to take up space. That recognition - serene, complete - can help to put something in order inside.
Why write it down?
Reviewing with evidence serves three very practical purposes:
- Clarify thinking: When writing, it separates facts from interpretations and lowers the mental noise. What was fuzzy becomes formulable.
- Integrating emotion: Putting your feelings into words helps to close cycles, reduce rumination and recover energy to make better decisions.
- Turning experience into actionable objectives: a list or a diary makes it easy to detect patterns (what drains you, what sustains you) and translate them into concrete priorities for the next month.
Exercises you can do (using your diary or the photos on your mobile phone)
- make a list of what comes to your mind
- free writing or writing as a diary
- writing thank you and/or closing letters
- Line of the year: draw a line from January to December with milestones
- Energy inventory: two columns: it burdens me / it drains me
