It’s almost the end of the month so it’s time for a monthly reflection. News flash, the beginning of a new year is not the only time you can set goals for yourself. In fact, you should be reviewing those big yearly goals every month.
By doing a monthly reflection each month, you can observe your personal growth and development on a smaller scale and adjust it to fit your lifestyle as you grow throughout the year.
I started doing a monthly reflection about 2 years ago and it has helped me tremendously to know myself better and make sure I’m always focusing on my goals.
Many people make goals or New Year’s resolutions in January, but by February they’ve lost motivation or completely forgotten what that goal was at all. By doing monthly reflections, you’ll have time to review those goals and plan for what your next steps are every month. Just imagine how many goals you could get done in a year if you stay focused every month.
Monthly reflections are not hard to do and don’t need to take a lot of time. I’m gonna walk you through what I do to review and reflect every month. Plus I have 15 monthly reflection questions for you at the end to help you dive deeper into your monthly check-in.
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Before we get started grab my monthly reflection workbook below and follow along with me.
What is a Monthly Reflection and Why Do One?
A monthly reflection is a time to review and reflect on your past month’s accomplishments, your goals, and where you are at with them. This is when you can take time to hit the pause button on life for a moment to decide how you want to keep moving forward.
Maybe you noticed you didn’t spend as much time on your goals as you would have liked. Or ate out too much and didn’t save as much money as you had hoped. Or you didn’t get to hang out with friends and family as much.
Each monthly reflection gives you a chance to start over, re-evaluate, and make a new plan.
You can set time to reflect every week, month, quarter, and year if you would like. But today we are just talking about a monthly reflection. This is the time for you to reflect on your routines, habits, and smaller goals.
Things To Reflect On Each Month
Monthly Wins
When sitting down to do a self-reflection, it is always a good idea to start with something positive about yourself. We often forget about our big accomplishments throughout the month cause we are always in a state of “go, go, go, go”. This reflection time is supposed to be a time to hit pause and acknowledge your hard work. Make sure to recognize your big and small wins.
On the flip side, if you didn’t have as many wins take that as a time to learn more about yourself and how you get things done.
Review Current Habits and Routines
Now it’s time to go into the details of your everyday habits and routines.
Did you make a plan to go to the gym 3 times a week and it didn’t end up working out at all? Are you finding yourself to be tired all the time cause you aren’t getting enough sleep?
Use this time to brain dump all the habits and routines in your life that may or may not be working for you. Then if something needs to change, make a plan.
Do you need to set out your gym bag the night before so you remember to go after work? Or do you need to buy a cute water bottle to encourage yourself to drink more throughout the day?
Make your habits and routines work for you.
Related:
How to Build New Habits with 8 Easy Steps
What is a Routines? Why are They Important?
Review Your Goals
It is a great idea to get in the habit of reviewing your goals every month. This will keep you on top of them and make you more likely to achieve them in a timely matter.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself when reviewing your goals:
- Did I achieve my goal?
- Did my approach work? Why or why not?
- Is it something I still want to pursue?
- How can I improve on actually getting it done?
One Positive Lesson
It is also good to end this reflection time on a positive note. Go back over your notes for the month and pick out one lesson you want to take away and learn from it.
Ask yourself how the lesson made you grow as a person and how you are going to apply it to your life this next month.
Your #1 Priority
Now that the reflection is basically done, go over your notes and decide on your #1 focus for next month.
You want to try and have just one main thing to focus on each month. Whether that’d be a project you’re working on or a certain area of your personal growth to work on, pick just one thing to prioritize next month.
15 Monthly Reflection Questions
After you go through the 5 things to reflect on above, grab a piece of paper and answer the rest of these questions. Each one will help you dive deeper into your monthly check-in.
Answer each question like a journal prompt. Take some time to really think about each question.
- What went well this month? What did I accomplish? How does it make me feel?
- What didn’t go so well? How can I improve for next month?
- What lessons did I learn this month? How did I grow as a person?
- What challenges did I face this month? How did I deal with them?
- What am I spending too little or too much time on?
- What didn’t go as planned? And how can I improve on it?
- Review any goals you set for this month. Did you reach them? Why or why not?
- Was there anything holding me back from reaching my goals?
- What goals do I have for next month?
- List 5 things that made you feel most grateful this month.
- What habits did I focus on this month and how did I do?
- Which habits should I continue working on next month? Why?
- Are there any bad habits I want to work on next month? Make an action plan.
- What new habits do I want to try and implement next month? Why?
- Overall, am I satisfied with how the month went? Why or why not?
Final Thoughts about Monthly Reflection
Try doing a monthly reflection every month for the next few months in a row and see how much more productive and motivated you are. By keeping up with it you have a higher chance of actually completing the goals or resolutions you set for yourself at the beginning of the year.
Wouldn’t it be cool to look back at 2022 next January and see that you actually completed all the goals you set out to do? Or even better, completed more goals than you thought you would?
It’s time to get ahead of your goals!
What goals do you have for the next month? Let me know in the comments below.
Ready to dive deep into self-reflection and get focused on your dreams this month? Check out the ⬇️
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4 thoughts on “How to Do a Monthly Reflection | 15 Questions to Ask Yourself”
Very helpful post. Thank you Alyssa
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