50 for 50 Idea #17: Weekly Reflection Practice

posted on: April 19, 2018
author: Brian Lomax, Ed.D.

Do you ever feel that time flies by? Days, weeks and months pass and you can hardly believe that it’s April already. We more or less spend our lives on auto-pilot going through each week while looking forward to the weekend before the cycle starts over again. This is normal behavior, but being on auto-pilot with respect to your goals could be dangerous. How do you know you’re still on track? Perhaps you need to make some adjustments. Taking the time for a weekly reflection may be the habit you need to go to the next level.

When I first became an entrepreneur, I purchased a self-help program from Success Magazine entitled “Living Your Best Year Ever” so I could, you know, live my best year ever! I wanted to get off to a good start in my business, and I knew that I needed to develop some good habits to have success, but I didn’t know what they were. One of the habits that stuck with me from that program was the Weekly Reflection exercise.

The exercise was called the Weekly Rhythm Register and the goal was to get you in a rhythm of having productive weeks one after the other. In practical terms, you review the past week for successes, improvement opportunities, things you learned, and things you were grateful for. Once you record those observations, you write down some adjustments that you want to make so that you can stay on track to reach your goal.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” -Will Durant from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Greatest Philosophers

Idea #17 – Start a Weekly Reflection Practice

I have adapted the Weekly Rhythm Register exercise into a series of reflection questions that you could use at the end of each week. I go through this process on Sundays so that I can implement my adjustments beginning on Monday. Here are the questions that I reflect on:

1. What went well this week?

2. What did not go well this week?

3. What adjustments do I need to make to stay on track?

4. What did I learn this week (through study or experience)?

5. What are 3 to 5 things that I’m grateful for that happened last week?

When you apply these questions to your week, consider how you’re doing with your key daily habits as well as what occurred during the week. For example, if one of your daily habits is meditation, how did that go? The first 3 questions can help you bring excellence to your daily habits.

Question 4 is my favorite because I love learning new things, and the reflection is an opportunity to recognize that. You may learn things through deliberate study, deliberate practice, experiences throughout the week, or about yourself. Record these thoughts and give yourself credit for being a great student.

The last question is about Gratitude, and as I mentioned in my earlier post on this topic, this is a powerful positive emotion that can increase levels of happiness, positivity, and optimism. When reviewing your week, see if you can find the silver lining in events that at first might be perceived as negative. Perhaps there’s a future benefit you could gain because of that experience. And of course, be grateful for the positive things that occurred during your week.

Reflecting on your week can help you have more great weeks, and with more great weeks, you are likely to have a great year. Take 10 to 15 minutes to do this. It’s not a big time investment, but the return has the potential to be huge.