Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
It is difficult to believe that we are in the 4th quarter and the year will be in the rearview mirror before we can bat an eye.
Hopefully, you have been working on your 2024 planning by now, but I’d like to suggest you add another item to your plate. A self-assessment.
As we enter into a new year, we all aspire to make this year better than the past.
As professionals, we constantly strive to improve.
However, improving ourselves and our lives takes focus, strategy, and specific goals – which is achieved by doing a self-assessment.
Many of us are assessed by our employers for how we perform at work.
But, all too often we neglect the very important process of assessing ourselves.
Our employer may tell us in what areas we did well and how they would like us to improve.
We take this feedback into consideration and plan our work for the upcoming year. This translates into goals.
But what about us personally?
We do our best at work when our life is in balance and we are strong in all areas of our personal lives.
Self-assessment happens when we take the time to stop and think about how we performed – against our expectations for ourselves.
And, how we hold ourselves accountable for doing those things that we know we need to do.
When we evaluate ourselves we should be thinking about how we are managing every aspect of our lives and how well we are making strides to improve.
Spirit, Soul, and Body
The Bible talks about our spirit, soul, and body.
And, our ability to manage each of these areas in our life can have a direct impact on how fulfilled we are; how happy we are; and how well we perform on the job.
After we do this personal assessment we need to develop a plan for 2024 and WRITE IT DOWN.
This discipline of putting it in print helps us not forget and serves as a tool that we can use to hold ourselves accountable for doing what we said we wanted to do.
When reflecting on the past year there are some questions we need to ask ourselves.
8 Self-Assessment Questions To Ask Yourself
1. How is my spiritual health?
Being a Christian means recognizing that we never arrive – and are on a constant journey of spiritual growth.
We all have seasons of growth, seasons of stagnation, and sometimes seasons of spiritual decline.
However, we can’t ever give up the fight to continue our walk toward spiritual growth.
The beginning of the year is a great time to make a new goal for Bible intake and personal time with God.
We all know that it is difficult to hear from God when we don’t ever talk to Him!
2. What am I doing to stay physically healthy?
Anyone who has ever been sick understands the importance of good health and feeling well.
It is difficult to get much accomplished when we don’t feel well so it is important to make living a healthy lifestyle a priority.
Taking the time to plan what you eat, when you exercise, and how you manage your stress are all ways to make sure you keep your physical body in peak condition.
3. What are my financial goals for the year?
Financial well-being is an important part of Christian living and being off-balance can result in undue stress.
Unmanaged debt, unbudgeted resources, and lack of planning can be disastrous. You need a plan for your personal finances.
We can’t give if we don’t have so we need a plan to improve our financial health for the year so we can plan to give more.
4. What are you doing to pay down debt, increase savings, and give more?
As in the previous point – being able to give more requires having a plan.
Part of that plan is determining how much you want to give.
But before you can determine how much you want to give, you need to understand what percentage you currently give.
It doesn’t matter as much how big that percentage is – just that you know what percent of your annual income you are giving away.
Once you know what you are giving away, you can set a goal to increase your giving.
For instance, if you do the math and realize that you are giving 2 percent of your annual salary, make a plan to try to increase that to 3 or 4 percent. Any move upward is positive.
5. What am I doing to develop new skills?
As leaders, we know we need to grow and learn new skills.
Learning new skills requires us to use a different part of our brain, and can be a great distraction from responsibilities and stressors in other areas of our life.
Regardless of what life stage we are in, we all have opportunities to develop new skills.
Whether that skill is to learn a new sport, hobby, or computer program – developing ourselves on a personal level keeps us balanced and more productive on a professional level.
6. What am I reading?
Reading a good book is food for your brain.
We need to be intentional about what we feed our brain and balance it with Biblical content, insightful learning, and interesting knowledge.
A good book can inspire you to take on new challenges, empathize with a cause, or bring new ideas to the workplace.
Reading can help you improve yourself or just relax in a fictional novel.
I am one who has always struggled with finding the time to read but I am committed to increasing my book time in 2024!
7. What am I doing to strengthen personal relationships?
Personal relationships are an important part of life and strong relationships don’t happen by accident.
Developing and maintaining those important relationships takes time and commitment.
Whether those relationships are with our coworkers, spouse or children – we need to take the time to strengthen them.
8. How successful was I last year doing what I said and hoped I would do?
Look back over the past year and think about all those accomplishments you had and then think about those things you wanted to do and just didn’t.
Oftentimes we don’t get things done for lots of good reasons but that is the beauty of a new year.
We have a fresh start, and hopefully new inspiration to accomplish those things that will help take us to the next level.
We assess our employees, so why not assess ourselves? Take the time to ask yourself these questions before the end of the year, make a plan, and perhaps 2024 will be the year you achieve those things that are most important to you!
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