How to Capture Your Most Valuable Lessons from 2024

Nonprofit Power Podcast

Nonprofit Power Podcast
How to Capture Your Most Valuable Lessons from 2024
Dec 21, 2024 Episode 76
Kath Patrick

Between the waning light and the kind of tucking in that happens around the solstice, and the anticipation of closing one year and opening a new one. It's the perfect time to do some reflection on how the year has gone for us, what it's meant for us. And to think about ways that we can carry our most valuable lessons into the new year. 

This year, maybe more than most, there's a lot to reflect on. For most of us in the progressive world, it's been a pretty mixed bag. You know, we had this election that was pretty consequential. Fortunately a lot of good things happened at the state and local level. But at the national level it was a tough election. We did not get the outcomes we wanted. And that obviously has massive implications for us going into the new year. 

When really big, dramatic events like that happen, either positive or negative, they tend to pull all of our attention, and cause us to lose sight of the less dramatic events in our world. It would be a shame if we let that happen. Because while that was monumental and has a lot of implications, so are all the things that you did during the year. Some of the things that you worked on were probably huge successes. Some of them, maybe they were more of a lesson than a success. Some of them may have you saying, oh my goodness, I'll never do that again. Even that is valuable. 

I'd like to invite you to join me in a practice that I do at the end of each year. I’m sharing with you how I'm recapitulating the year in a way that allows me to identify the most important lessons, and decide what I want to pull forward with me into the next year's work.

 
In this episode, we share:

  • The key questions that will help you uncover your most important lessons from the year
  • Where to start and what to ask first to set you up for success
  • How to avoid the common pitfalls that prevent us from finding those lessons 
  • Why we often find it easier to recall the negative experiences, and minimize the positive ones
  • The hidden factor that likely had an outsize effect on how things went for you this year
  • How to stay in curiosity and avoid self-recrimination when reflecting on things that didn’t go well
  • How to carry your most important lessons into the new year

 

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Thanks!