Every now and then we’re fortunate to have a holiday season that provides us an opportunity to wind down from our daily routine. Most of our time is obviously spent with our families and loved ones or we use this occasion to go on vacation. That’s great, but what’s equally important is to find some time for yourself. A time when you can reflect on your life and your career.

A great way to spend your time off is to reflect on what you’ve accomplished so far, where your journey is taking you and get your head back in the game. It’s important to do this so you’re getting perspective on your career and personal life. Also it helps to reflect upon the lighter side of life just so you’re able to extract the most from your time and efforts.

During this holiday season – which luckily is coming midyear – here are a few things you should reflect on:

1. What have you spent most of your time doing?

Time flies by fast and there’s no stopping it or point chasing it. Instead it’s best to run with time so you’re making the most of the ride. But to ensure you’re utilizing your time well, you need to be doing things productively and things that you’re passionate about. So reflect on how you’ve been spending your time lately. Have you been able to allocate time to read or develop yourself? Have you spent enough time with family and friends? Were you able to give time to staying healthy and active? This is your chance to wake up and shake things up so that you’re spending your time doing things that you value.

2. What have been your successes and disappointments so far?

Taking a look back at your wins and losses is a great way to strengthen your abilities and positively reinforce behavior that’s been beneficial. Reflect on your behavior and efforts that have produced positive results so that you can fuel off it and build more confidence. Simultaneously, you should also reflect on things that have resulted in disappointments. These may or may not be directly resultants of your doing, but identifying them and learning from them is key to help you avoid them in the future.

3. Are you living up to your full potential?

There are times you get caught up in daily routine that prevents you from truly exploiting your full potential. These are tasks that challenge you less and utilize more of your “known” abilities to solve problems. However, too much of such activities holds you back from challenging yourself to grow, be creative and limits strategic thinking. Take this time to reflect on what you’ve been doing lately that’s been challenging. Things that have enabled you to exploit your true potential. Ask yourself if your scope of work is challenging you? The last thing you want to become is complacent as that’ll be the death of career growth.

4. Have you established useful networks?

Network building isn’t only for those who are into business development or marketing and sales. Being a working professional requires that you have a pulse on the market, the industry and talent. And to ensure you’re informed you need to keep constantly in touch with your network. Reflect on who all in your network needs to be touched base with – those important figures and players in the market who you should be jiving with. Try reaching out to them and letting them know you’re thinking about them. You could go a step further and set up time to catch up with them even.

5. What’s the year ahead looking like?

Probably the most important thing to reflect upon is how everything you’re doing, every experience you’re acquiring and every person you’re interacting with ties in with the objective of your purpose and goal in life. Basically, what you’re aiming for is taking the time to reflect upon what lies ahead for you. Are you in line with your plans and on the trajectory to success? If not then what all do you have to do to stay on course? What help or support do you need to get there? Think about all this and chalk out a plan that’ll see you get there.

You’ve made it this far in your life and your career but your journey hasn’t ended yet. Taking the time to reflect on the things that are important to you and that which you value is essential so that you don’t lose sight of your purpose and goal in life.

Are there things that you reflect upon during your holidays? Would love to hear about them from you.

Like what you read? Subscribe to the Keijzer Community and get updates to your inbox. You’ll also get a free download which will help you take your leadership teams through a growth model which will help them mature on a personal and professional level.