The Christmas spirit has always been full of positivity. In my younger days, I remember going carol singing with my friends from building to building, making the crib, decorating our home and building. It was always a lot of fun. Along with fun, I remember one particular tradition we friends followed – talking about our special moments during the year.

As years went by this is something that just stopped happening. While I do reflect on events and memories intermittently as well as at night before bedtime, a special day for reflection and expressing gratitude has not been something I’ve done in a while. So this Christmas, like I used to do with my friends, this year I plan to reserve a day for reflection and gratitude with my kiddos.

How to start

Reflection can be unstructured or you can follow a structured approach. I prefer structuring this activity especially when we are doing it at the year-end since we are aiming to achieve some takeaways from this activity.

Reflecting on the year in a structured manner helps achieve 2 objectives

1. You will be more likely to recollect most of the important events and milestones of the year
2. It helps understand places we could have reacted or tackled differently and helps show us a direction to improve in the coming period
3. It helps in goal setting and planning the year ahead

Simple questions that will help in our reflection process

• What were your best memories of the year
• What were your successes
• Where did you fail
• What regrets do you have
• What lessons did you learn
• Did you achieve the goals that you set for yourself
• Things that  you need to do more of
• What are the things you need to stop doing
• Have you planned your goals for the next year and what are they

Write it down

I always believe in writing down everything – Thoughts, goals, plans and whatever comes to mind.

So this year I have got a diary for our reflection and gratitude. Well, my love for stationery, good paper, and colorful pens just made it more fun. So, there are 2 parts to my journal – 1 where we will reflect using the above questions as well as plan our goals for the next year. The second part is the gratitude journal where we will write down things we were grateful for during the past year. I’ve wanted to do the gratitude jar last year but somehow was not able to and so we will try to recollect whatever we are able to. And hopefully the coming year my gratitude jar will start.

Watch out my Instagram for updates on this once we are done with it.

How does reflecting and being grateful help

• There are many psychological benefits to being grateful and reflecting on your year, including feeling happier and lowering stress, depression, and anxiety.
• There is also scientific evidence that expressing genuine gratitude on a daily basis can improve physical health as well by improving quality of sleep, cardiovascular health and immune function
• Gratitude promotes optimism and helps us to develop a more positive outlook
• Reflective practice has huge benefits in increasing self-awareness. It can also help to develop creative thinking skills as well as keep you motivated
• It helps improve concentration and focus

Looking back and looking ahead

This post is a part of Christmas Blog Train where 16 popular Indian bloggers share some exciting posts with you on Christmas Theme.

#ChristmasBlogging

Don’t forget to check out other exciting blogs too for some exciting Christmas posts

Jayshree: Must try Christmas party outfits

Gunjan:Gifts for the holiday season

Nisha: Must watch rom coms for Christmas