“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.” ― Margaret J. Wheatley

Each month, I set aside a chunk of time to reflect on the previous month: memorable moments, lessons I learned, how I spent my time, how I’m different, who/what I’m grateful for, improvements for next month, and goals to work toward. I want to be more intentional in my personal development this year, and posting each month serves as a way to help keep me accountable.

Three lessons I learned this past month:

• To achieve your goals, sometimes you need to let go of them (for now). I have a big list of things I want to accomplish in my life, but if I tried to do them all at once, I’d never complete any of them. I’m learning to focus on a few now and let the others take the backseat until I have the capacity to work toward them.
• Reading is a much better way to spend free time than Facebook ;). Rediscovering my love of reading, I’ve started reading much more and have found that it stops me from being so glued to my phone all of the time.
• Getting things out of your head and recorded somewhere is a helpful tool for lessening stress. If I write down all of my to-do’s in my “trusted system” (a.k.a. my Passion Planner), I can relax or read with peace of mind knowing what I need to do is recorded and scheduled for when I need to do it.

What big lessons have you learned over the past month? Share in the comments below!