An end-of-year reflection that’s illuminating, validating, compassionate, whole and peaceful
Even though the world feels awash with end-of-year reflections and wrap-up-your-year workbooks I feel drawn to running my reflective workshops each year in December.
This was the fourth year that I have run my end-of-year workshops in which we use landscape imagery and writing prompts to look back over the year.
My process combines reflective writing and imagery.
To consolidate our experiences and identify connections, relationships and tensions in our experience of the year we use the Map of Meaning® as a sensemaking framework.
This year’s series, Mapping 2024 – Through Landscapes and Stories, wrapped up last weekend and I’ve started seeing some patterns in the words people have used to describe their experience over the years.
I decided to capture some of these words alongside suggestions of what helps generate these experiences.
Illuminating
Something people always share at the end of this process is that it was illuminating, took them beyond what they thought they knew; beyond the obvious.
It’s a process that brings out what may otherwise have stayed hidden or elusive.
It’s the combination between two seemingly unrelated elements, writing prompts and images, that helps us look differently at this year’s experiences and events. The images evoke emotions and invite us to go deeper.
Mapping it in a sensemaking framework like the Map of Meaning provides clarity: it helps us notice any gaps, tensions and where things feel balanced or out of balance. This makes us aware of what’s working, what isn’t, and how we want to be with this. This last part makes it also a very practical process: the workshop leaves people empowered, proud, confident, and sometimes surprised at what they were able to handle, process, deal with and work through.
Validating
When people realise that their experience, no matter how easy or tricky the year was, fits into a framework like the Map of Meaning, they often feel validated.
The fact that there is a framework in the first place which has been shaped by the stories other people, people just like us, shared about meaning is normalising.
I run all my workshops in fairly small groups as this creates more opportunity for connection. And there’s usually some time and space for (optional) sharing, sharing that feels safe enough, not like speaking into a void of switched off cameras. I believe this also contributes to a sense of validation and a normalising of our experiences.
No matter how diverse the group and how different their years were, there’s usually a recognition in most things people share.
Even if it’s along the lines of, ‘Yes, I remember a year like this…’ There’s a recognition that big life transitions, growing older, ill health, work challenges, or relationship breakups are part of living. And it’s a space where we celebrate making good decisions, taking risks, healing our bodies, hearts and souls, reconnecting, succeeding and realising our ideas.
Compassionate
Compassion is somewhat connected to feeling seen and validated in our experience. Through Dr. Kristin Neff’s work, we know that one important element of self-compassion is the acknowledgment of our shared humanity and the acceptance that suffering is part of life.
As people share some of what their reflections revealed, it is always done in the spirit of witnessing, not offering advice, solutions and definitely not judgment.
When I work with the Map of Meaning I like to highlight the tensions between different dimensions of meaning.
It helps us recognise that feeling pulled into all directions and feeling stretched too thinly is a shared experience, not a unique struggle.
It also normalises that we often experience an internal tug of war between the different things that matter to us or between our needs and the needs of others. We realise that experiencing times where meaning is absent or hard to get hold of is also not as rare as it might sometimes seem in a world where so much of what we share is polished, selective and artificially enhanced.
Whole
The dominant visual element in the Map of Meaning is a circle. Across many cultures, circles represent wholeness, stability, unity, balance.
Working with the Map for a few years now has helped me to feel whole and integrated and feeling whole is something that regularly comes up at the end of these reflective workshops. The Map pulls together different forces that are alive in us: our need for autonomy and our need for connection. Our need to accomplish and progress ideas as well as our need to pause, look inward, be with our innermost thoughts and feelings.
Mapping our experiences helps us see how our all our different parts can make a contribution to living meaningfully in their own unique ways.
All this is experienced as integrating, leaving us with a greater sense of wholeness.
The process I’ve designed of using imagery, writing and a sensemaking framework is also integrating: images are the language of our lower brain structures. Writing is a way of expression our thinking brain feels comfortable with. And working with a framework like the Map allows us to analyse, compare and contrast, but also to see what’s present in our own landscape of meaning and notice any physical sensations, further thoughts or feelings around this.
Peaceful
Last, but not least, people find this process peaceful.
It brings ease to notice what has been accomplished or shifted, sometimes against all odds. It helps us settle into acceptance of what hasn’t turned out the way we had hoped.
There’s also a deep sense of regulation that’s created by the rhythm with which I guide people through the writing prompts. The stretches of quiet inward reflection are held by a gentle writing rhythm as I drop new prompts into the group like a pebble that creates new ripples in people’s reflections.
Feeling peaceful at the end of the year seems like an excellent outcome.
It’s so much easier to gently switch gears and allow ourselves to disconnect from work, obligations, the noise in the world for a few days (or weeks) when we feel at ease and peace, not exhausted and overstretched.
After four years, I feel the same sense of gratitude, connection and appreciation for each person who has joined these reflections and stayed with the process. Sometimes, the images challenge people, especially those whose thinking brains are quick to execute the task, they write like the wind and then they remember to pause and look at the landscape I’ve offered them. And every time, someone is open to really take in the landscapes in addition to the writing prompt, they seem to access some deeper knowing inside themselves.
It’s always humbling and deeply meaningful to guide and witness these groups.
My ‘headline’ at the end of my own reflection was: Rest well.
I wish you the same.
Reflecting on Meaning starts on 27th January 2025.
I would love to welcome you as a co-creator of meaning during these turbulent times.
To find out more:
Sensemaking Studio is a series of four-month online programs to cultivate a reflective practice in a small group of 6 like-minded Sense Makers.
Each program can be booked individually or you can create your own longer-term program by joining more than one. In each Studio group, we’ll focus on a specific modality, theme or framework to shape and cultivate a personal and sustainable reflective practice.
Reflecting on Meaning focuses on the exploration of meaning and fulfilment in work and life using The Map of Meaning as a framework.
It doesn't matter whether you have a reflective practice or any knowledge of the Map of Meaning. Reflecting on Meaning is a place to be curious about your personal meaning practice.
The program starts on Monday 27th January and finishes on 28th April 2025.
You will join 4 online live sessions (on Zoom, each session is between 1.5-2 hours long).
In-between our live sessions you'll receive video prompts to deepen your practice with self-paced reflective experiments. During the 4-month program, you also get free access to monthly drop-in studio sessions to experiment with some loose guidance from me.
This program is for anyone who wants to start or deepen their reflective practice and create the conditions for meaning, success, change, joy, rest, connection… whatever it is you seek more of.