The annual review allows us to see what worked well so we can celebrate & build on our success and what didn’t work well so we can adjust & change direction.
Hansei which is Japanese for self reflection is an integral part of Lean. I have been using this Lean concept in my personal life for a long time and this is the 12th year I have published my annual review (annual hansei) online.
I will be happy to see the end of 2024, it has been the hardest and most challenging year of my life.
I said exactly the same thing about 2023, my Dad passed away in August 2023 and it was a horrific year. 2024 was worse because my family and I have spent this entire year without my Dad – every family occasion, every happy event, every sad event, every birthday, every anniversary, every conversation – Dad was missing and dearly missed from it all.
Over the past few years my life was challenged in ways I had not planned for and certainly would not have asked for. Because of these challenges, I reached very few of the goals I set.
I could have done without these challenges yet ironically I wouldn’t want to lose the lessons I learned or the work I have done to push through these challenges.
It’s almost like I have been guided away from what I want towards what I don’t want.
That is life – we make plans and sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t. I have realised that no matter how much we plan, the path that is meant for us will always be the path we travel.
Whatever 2024 brought you, I hope you find time to reflect on your year, leave behind what doesn’t serve you and bring into 2025 everything that supports & nurtures you.
I use the Wheel of Life (below) to categorise my life into Sense of Self, Relationships, Health, Work, Finance, Recreation, Environment & Contribution. When reflecting on your year, you can use these categories or create some of your own.
Here is my Annual Review for 2024
1. Relationships:
The loss of my Dad is something I carry every minute of every day. There are no words to describe the enormous loss Dad is from my family’s lives.
2024 was spent adjusting to this loss, I’ve never felt such deep, overwhelming, all consuming sadness. It’s like every cell in my body is full of sadness and there is no room for any other emotion.
I do feel other emotions like joy and happiness yet these are fleeting, they come and go. The sadness is constant, it feels like a part of me, not something I can remove myself from, etched in my DNA, a part of my soul.
My Dad’s passing has heightened my awareness of the fact that time is not finite, we don’t have a never ending supply of time.
One day our time with those we love will run out.
One day our own time will run out.
This is a constant reminder to spend time with those we love.
Whilst I spent much time with Mike and my family in 2024, it seems that all of my relationships came second to the overwhelming sadness I felt. I didn’t bring anywhere near the best version of myself to anything and anyone in 2024, such is the nature grief, it’s all consuming.
As with every year previous Mike, my family and friends the most important people in my life and I am dearly grateful for them.
2. Sense of Self:
Over the past few years, personal development and personal strategy stopped working for me and weren’t improving my life anymore.
I knew I needed something more meaningful and so last year I added the category Sense of Self to the categories of my life.
Sense of Self,
- combines my relationship with myself, my story, my soul & spirituality including personal development and personal strategy
- is all about who I am, who I want to be and how I feel about myself and the world around me
- is where I work on the concepts of self love, self worth, self esteem, self belief, self trust, self confidence, self respect, self awareness and self observation
Over the past few years, my Sense of Self has been on very shaky ground, chipped away at with every new challenge.
I’m a born optimist and so I will find something positive in every difficult situation.
The positive of being challenged in the external world is that I turned into my inner world and focused on, learned about, got support with and built a more solid foundation for my Sense of Self.
Developing a strong Sense of Self is like building armour for the battles of the external world from the inside out. I’ll be writing more about Sense of Self in 2025 – a most fascinating subject.
3. Health:
There is no truer saying than health is wealth, the quality of every area of our lives is totally dependant on our health.
I have always been aware of the importance of physical, mental, emotional, & spiritual health yet over the past few years, for many reasons, this awareness has been brought to a deeper level.
I actually went backwards in terms of most of my health goals over the past few years. 2024 was slightly improved yet that wouldn’t be difficult as the baseline was at an all time low.
Health is a fickle thing – one day you have it and the next you don’t, one day you don’t have it and the next day you do. Physical, mental, emotional, & spiritual health ebbs and flows like the tides, it’s never one thing or another and improving health is never a straight line or a consistent forward motion.
The important thing is to keep working on health, keep learning about it, keep focusing on it, keep prioritising it, don’t give it away for anyone or anything – it is our greatest wealth.
4. Work:
Over the past 3 years I have spent the least amount of time in this category which is ironic as for the previous 25 years it was where I spent the most time!
I left the corporate world in October 2021 and wanted to set up own business but life had other plans for me! I took time off from the working world and 3 years later I am still enjoying this time off!
No job or salary can compete with how precious this time has been, this time has been life changing.
This time away from the working world,
- meant I had a precious time with my Dad during the last stage of his life – that time was the greatest gift of my entire life
- allowed me to slow down and see my life more clearly without the fogged up glasses caused by racing around at a million miles an hour
- gave me the space to realise what work filled my life yet no longer interests or serves me
- gave me much clarity on what I want to do in terms of my work going forward
One constant that stayed with me over the past few years while everything else took a break was writing.
Writing has been a constant my entire life, it’s always been there, in the background, part of my daily life, waiting patiently for me to slow down and give it the time and attention it deserves.
As challenging as the past few years have been I have consistently sent a weekly email to my community for over 4 years. This one single, solitary weekly email kept me sane and the replies I received from my readers kept me writing on some very hard days.
This one single, solitary weekly email taught me,
- much about writing and the discipline required for consistent writing
- how to share more of myself and be more confident in my writing
- that everyone goes through hard times and writing is a very powerful tool for connection during these hard times
People may not speak about the challenges they face, we may not see it on their faces or on social media yet people will share it with you through their writing, in their own words. Anything that gets people to open up about their challenges is an incredibly important human connection tool – such is the power of writing.
You can sign up to my weekly email here.
I had three simple goals for my writing in 2024,
- Write more
In 2024 I wrote more than I have ever written in any previous year. I am for the first time in my life, writing more than I am sharing, this is a huge milestone and has been a dream of mine for a very long time. Now I have to figure out how to share more of my writing – this is a wonderful place to finally find myself in!
I created an email course, the first course I have created in over 3 years. I loved creating it yet I was so nervous sharing it online. Marketing online is a whole new world and one I’m just learning about, it’s not easy but it is fascinating! My free email course is about reclaiming your time from social media. You can sign up here https://www.siobhaindanaher.com/social-course/
- Learn more about writing
Ask any accomplished writer how to learn more about writing and they will give you two pieces of advice,
- Write more
- Read more
Writing more than I have done in previous years taught me a huge amount about writing and my own writing style. Reading taught me how other’s write, what flows well in writing, how to keep someone’s interest and how to use words to the best effect.
I also learned about writing from other writers online. Through sharing my own writing I have connected with authors, journalists, copywriters, marketers and loads more people who use the power of their words for a living. This has been so enjoyable yet has also opened my eyes to how much I don’t know about writing and have to learn!
- Improve my writing
Over the past few years I became unhappy and disillusioned with my writing. My writing didn’t accurately reflect how my life has changed. I wanted my writing to be richer, deeper, more meaningful, and more impactful. I wanted to write from a place of more transparency & openness to see where it takes me.
In 2024 my writing definitely became more aligned with who I am yet it is a journey to richer, deeper, more meaningful, more impactful, more transparent and open writing.
This journey will last as long as I continue to write which I want to be as long as I live.
5. Finance:
The more I learn about personal finance the more I wish it was a subject I learned in school, it certainly would have saved me much trial and error. Just like health – finance is a journey of which learning & understanding are constant companions.
Being without a salary for 3+ years has decreased my overall financial value yet ironically how I manage my finances has improved dramatically. While I watched my financial value decrease further in 2024, I improved many spending habits that were not serving me.
In 2024 I completed two large financial projects and many smaller financial projects. All of these projects were aimed at streamlining my finances and moving me step by step closer towards financial freedom.
My top 3 financial learnings over the past few years stood firm for 2024,
1.One of the most important elements of finance is mindset
There are 2 types of financial mindset, abundance and scarcity, both will dictate our relationship with money and how freely it flows in and out of our lives and also how much we enjoy earning and spending money.
Someone with an abundance mindset can receive €100 and feel rich yet someone with a scarcity mindset can receive €1,000,000 and feel it’s not enough.
Someone with an abundance mindset thinks that what they have enough and that money will flow freely to them even if they are struggling financially. Someone with a scarcity mindset thinks they don’t have enough and that money will not flow freely to them even if they have loads of money and have never struggled financially.
The difference has nothing to do with numbers, it’s mindset.
I truly believe that having a growth mindset is the first step to reaching financial goals. If you want to learn more about the power of mindset read Carol Dwecke’s brilliant book Mindset, it’s a game changer.
2. Abundance is not just about money
When I left my day job over 3 years ago, my income dramatically reduced but I felt more abundant in so many other areas of my life. Abundance can be about money yet it’s also about love, time, health, freedom and everything else that money cannot buy.
When we focus on the abundance of love, time, health, freedom and not just on the abundance of money, we can see how truly wealthy we really are. This wealth costs nothing and is also not for sale – it exists in all of our lives in immense abundance, if we just take the time to look.
3. Time is more valuable than money
Jim Rohn’s quote about time and money is one of my all time favourites ‘Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time’. Every day I am learning the true essence of this quote. Now that I no longer trade my time for money, I see the true value of time which is priceless – absolutely priceless.
6. Recreation:
This category could be combined with relationships as it is with those I love that I have the most fun times – these people are food for my soul!
I didn’t have much of a social life in 2024 which suited me fine as I didn’t feel very sociable. In saying that I did get out and about a bit more than I had in previous years.
Maybe I’ll be a little more social in 2025 – who knows!
I did travel more this year than recent previous years which is also food for my soul. I travelled with Mike, my family, my friends and for the first time in a very long time, on my own. Every trip reminded me of the love I have for the beautiful people iin my life and my love of travel.
7. Environment:
In 2022 I started decluttering our home using the techniques in Marie Kondo’s brilliant book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up – I’m still decluttering and so I’m pretty sure I’m not doing in right!
In saying that our home is much less cluttered, I have given away so much of what we no longer need which has created a great sense of space in our home. I’ve got a way to go to finish Marie Kondo’s advice yet I’m happy with progress so far even though it’s taken much longer than expected.
I’m a minimalist in that I don’t need much stuff but I only realised how much stuff I actually had when I started to declutter it!
8. Contribution:
I continued to give to charities albeit not at the level I would have when I was working. Over the past few years I became more aware of the contribution I make to the world in terms of my time & skills and the contributions I make which aren’t monetary. \
We all contribute to the world in so many ways that we don’t even notice, this has been an unexpected education for me!
That’s it, my 2024 review, it was a tough year and I’m happy to say goodbye to it.
I wish you success, health and happiness as you look back on 2024 and even more success, health and happiness as you look forward to 2025.
Thank you for reading and for your kind words in 2024, I really appreciate your support.
Siobhain
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If you want to carry out your own annual review, download your Annual Review Workbook below 😊
This is the 12th year I have shared my Annual Review online,
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