Hi guys! I’ve been in Westchester since Sunday night for the Jewish holidays. In keeping with my “write 3x’s a week” goal for September, I decided to schedule out some content in advance. I’m feeling like a very legit blogger for once with a content calendar.
Even though I didn’t go back to school last week (SUCH a weird feeling!) I always get swept up in the back-to-school vibes. September has always felt more like a “new year” than the actual New Years in January. Ya feel me? Being Jewish I also get to celebrate new year in September, which feels rather fitting.
September is a great time to take a step back and reflect. How are things going? No seriously, how are things really going.
There can be this scary connotation to reflecting. More often than not I find that when I take a step back I end up realizing how far I’ve come. Sometimes I forget that what I have now is often times something I yearned for in the past. Exhibit A: I make most of my income through teaching fitness. Once upon a time I wanted nothing more than to get paid to teach one class a week, let alone 10+. It’s easy to forget how far you’ve come when you’re in the thick of it.
I haven’t been doing a ton of journaling lately, which is oftentimes my favorite reflection tool, but there are also so many other ways to do it. Ways that don’t even involve pen to paper.
Ready? Here are some ways I like to take a step back and reflect.
My Favorite Tools For Reflecting
I look at my business KPI’s
If you don’t have a business, feel free to skip this one 🙂
As a blogger, I keep track of certain statistics: Instagram followers, blog traffic, where my traffic is coming from, income, and so on. Even when I’m tracking stuff week over week, month over month, I can forget how much I’ve grown in the previous year.
This is something I tend to do more in December. That’s usually when I can take a deep breath and dive into Google Analytics. If it’s something you’ve never done for your business, sit down and go through all your previous data. In my head, I sometimes get depressed about how blogging is dead. In actuality, I’m always [pleasantly] surprised when my blog traffic has gone up far more than I realized.
10Q
I’ve been doing 10Q since 2011 — my senior year of college! The idea for 10Q was inspired by the ten days of reflection between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur but it has nothing to do with Judaism.
How it works is every day you answer a question that requires some reflecting. Things like: Is there something that you wish you had done differently this past year?
At the end of the 10 days your answers go into a “vault.” One year later you’ll get your answers emailed to you. And in my case, I have access to all my answers since 2011. Which is insane when I go back and read about what was going on when I was 21.
Every year I am floored when I read my answers from the previous year. This year I was reminded that I no longer feel the heartache of getting fired from my dream job, a pain that once consumed me. A few years ago I predicted that I’d do my yoga teacher training and start a business — both of which I did that year.
Clearly I’m obsessed with 10Q and think EVERYONE should do it, Jewish or not. I’m looking forward to filling mine out over the next 10 days.
Listen to podcast interviews
Sometimes when I’m listening to my favorite podcasts, I like to pretend I’m the guest they are interviewing. I’ll pause and think about my own answer to the various questions being asked. You’d be surprised how much good thinking it can spur. Or in my case, a lot of my blog and instagram posts are inspired by things I heard or thought about while listening to podcasts.
Really great podcasts for this: The Chasing Joy Podcast, Let it Out, and That’s So Maven.
Your Turn: What are your favorite ways to reflect and look back?
Leave a Reply