Hello there - how’re you feeling in these last few weeks of 2022? Did you manage to read through my last note → giveaways, not takeaways? One reader reported a paradox: “long note and tiny exercise! But very manageable.” There are several personal Annual Reflections and Reviews out there, and its time to unwrap something different, and visual: a framework (and a process) that’ll help you chart out, reflect and wrap your 2022 journey while setting the pathway for 2023.
Apps and digital services we use, have a ring side view of our behaviours. Through tons of data we inadvertently share via the many sensors and analytics in the apps, and on our beloved phones. Often upto the second, thinly sliced by days, months. All of which leads to that much loved cumulative “year in review”. Packaged beautifully, these have become trendy, drool and share-worthy.
What food did I order? And when? What songs caught my fancy? What did I seemingly like, love or hate? And how it compares to people around me - my real and ‘social network’ friends, folks in my neighbourhood, or demographics.
Everything we consume creates intricate data patterns. But we often fail to see the larger, more important patterns of our own life which we create by doing, feeling, thinking, acting and showing up in certain ways. This is a little nudge for you to rediscover and see what’s hidden in plain sight.
The news of me
Years ago, and even now, newspapers, news agencies, news channels and magazines share their ‘year in review’. Google added to the tradition with ‘the year in search’.
There’s sports, politics, ecology, economics - you can slice and dice and get a year-in-reviews for any of these, or others. What’s interesting is the shift from the news of the world around me to the news of me. And that’s what we’ll do in this exercise - define our news sharper - with a ‘headline’ and a narrative.
from the news of the world around me → to the news of me
Does consumption define you?
I know you’re shaking your head in disagreement to the question! There’s much more to us - what we do (or won’t), things we create, our ideas, our relationships, our learning and reflections, our beliefs, the stories about us which we frame and reframe.
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards”
Søren Kierkegaard
But there is something else that defines a lot of our internal life - and consequently our external life: our thoughts, feelings and emotions. They’re powerful, they’re fleeting and very rarely do we have control over them. And it’s not easy to objectively attach data to them - unlike consumption data. But there’s a way…
An ECG of your Feelings & Emotions
While toying with my own frameworks and reflecting on questions that can help us get a wholistic wrapped-up view of our year, I felt that the answer lay in our emotional journey of ups and down through the days, weeks, months and the year.
You most often remember these surge of emotions and feelings. They all had people, places, events, decisions, actions, thoughts and narratives attached with them. “March was terrible and draining” is a summation of multiple feelings, emotions and storylines - though it may just be a couple of isolated incidents colouring the entire month.
So here’s a simple visual framework I created (now at version 0.3) - and got a few friends to test it out. The results were very surprising - it uncannily resembled an ECG or Electrocardiograph. An ECG of our feelings and emotions created by events - and told the story of our year. Meet F-ECG, or the Feelings-EmotionsChronoGraph!
📎 Here’s the sheet for you - download the PDF, print it out and scribble away. There are two pages. In the first, on the left is a bunch of emotions (they could be grouped better I feel, though this is start). There are 52 long columns representing a year. Think of the events across these and what it made you feel. Plot it out. There may be some weeks where you felt something - but can’t recall the exact incident. That’s okay….
On the right are overview part - what were your top 3 Highs and Lows - who, why, what made you feel that way. And finally how does this reflection itself make you feel? The good news is that we all have pre-wired super-sensitive sensors in our body and mind. No app update required. Here’s what I did with my F-ECG sheet…
I first plotted out the events I recalled, and realised these were two distinct lines - one was for the personal life involving family, home, school, kid - and the other was work. So I used two different coloured lines. You could use more lines - eg for money, hobbies and health. And see the correlation between these.
A sense of closure
For me, this year was one of highs followed by sheer drops of super lows. The lows in my life - my dad passing away (it was life altering for us, especially for my mom), followed soon after by my mom’s hospitalisation. All of these dragged the ‘work graph’ down. I don’t remember the exact events (they were a blur), but I clearly recall this was a time of disengagement from work, mixed with being worried about how the team was coping, what was being missed out.
Putting it on paper helped me externalise and redefine the narrative around the very generic sense of “what a terrible year it was”. Seeing the visual representation brought gratitude for the people who supported me - in work and in life. And gratitude for the many lessons the lows and super-lows taught me. In a sense, it brought closure.
“You start projecting hurt and pain onto yourself when you don't find closure. Be honest with the situation and yourself, clean the wound, and move on.” - Jay Shetty
The Buddha taught us that the fundamental condition for happiness is freedom. He spoke about embracing our emotions, feelings, hurt and sorrows the way a young child is lovingly embraced, without judgement. By embracing and understanding - not by running away, fighting, avoiding or drowning our emotions and feelings - we free them, and therefore ourselves. A millennia old counsel from the Shakyamuni.
Communicating new realities
Part 2 (in the same PDF) takes the F-ECG and the Highs/Lows identified there, into another related framework: the three cups, to redefine a new narrative for you.
The columns are about a metaphor and paradox familiar to you - about sipping and savouring what is there, emptying what you don’t need and filling and refilling that which will help you. The three rows focus on habits & decision frameworks, people, and narratives. Based on the columns, the reflection for each change.
Finally, based on all your reflections, there’s an invitation to give your 2022 story a headline and an intent for 2023. More like a mantra - an affirmation, maybe a reminder, but most importantly an intent. The third column - Start doing: Fill is also your broad indicative 2023 pathway.
“The truly unique trait of 'Sapiens' is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their communication system to describe reality. We use our communication system to create new realities.” - Yuval Noah Harari
A wrap-up party?
Here’s another idea - reflection is usually meant to be a solitary pursuit, but what if you joined up with a few folks? Time for a review party with a few close friends or empathetic colleagues. Time box 90 minutes and let each one share theirs.
Do the first part, the F-ECG on your own. While you’re starting to fill in part 2 - it may be a good time to get together, (over a few cups of tea or coffee) and discuss your wins, the lows and the learnings. People who know you and have seen your journey over the year would be able to add more detail and colour, or restore a tad more objective balance to your narrative.
The shape of 2023
Things often don’t go as per plan. 2023 will be no different - assume it’ll throw a mix of predicaments, challenges and trials in your path. Assume and you won’t be surprised, and wouldn’t need to be woken up in 2024 (I wrote about it earlier).
Unlike the academic-world, life doesn’t come with exams which have a date, time, assessment patterns or syllabus. Hopefully the F-ECG and the 3 Cups frameworks will keep you prepped up for the unannounced tests and trials of 2023 - sharpen your own internal sensors and analytics a little more. Become more self aware. And look at much larger view of the ‘wrapped’ beyond consumption patterns.
Stay curious, stay resilient!
PS: I will wait to hear from you on how these exercises (and the wrap-up party) went! Looking forward to your feedback, and that’ll help me update and tweak.
Main image by Mingwei Lim via Unsplash | Frameworks, and designs by yours truly.
Love this Jay. I might use this in my own yearly analysis for myself amongst some micro frameworks I myself use. Reflective exercises need conscious thought and a lot of us need these frameworks. Thanks for sharing :)
Love this Jay. I might use this in my own yearly analysis for myself amongst some micro frameworks I myself use. Reflective exercises need conscious thought and a lot of us need these frameworks. Thanks for sharing :)