Celebrate and Forecast with the Favorites and Reflections Game

How often do you look back on your year, your vacation or an event and ask what the best part was?
Do you ever thinkitate on the lessons you learned or what you would have changed?
Join me in playing the Favorites and Reflections game.

In the past week, I've celebrated my 4th business birthday and my 19th wedding anniversary and mentioned to my mastermind circle a game I play with myself, my husband and my clients (depending on the situation). I make a point to go through any event, year, or time frame that is significant and ask myself questions to reflect, learn, forecast and grow. By discussing it with someone else, I also hear their version and how what they experienced may be different than mine. I love this game. Below are some real-life ways I use it with one example each of my genuine answers. Play it and let me know what you think!

Business Birthday

1. What are my biggest brags of the past year? Launching my online course.
2. What are my biggest lessons learned for what could I do differently? Don't give something important away to another company where I don't have control over timelines, edits, etc.
3. High Fives (smart decisions or something extra special that I did) – Joining Savor the Success.

Wedding Anniversary (my hubby and I discussed this year over ice cream).

1. What was your favorite day for us together? The day we had dinner on the beach in Huatulco, Mexico.
2. What was the smartest decision we made as a couple? Selling our house and buying our little fixer-upper paradise so we can be debt free by 50.
3. What are we doing well as a couple? Being laser-focused on paying off our house.
4. What are you doing that makes a difference to me? Making the bed in the morning.
5. What can we do better? What do you need from me? Tell each other one thing we are grateful for and one thing that was amazing each day from our 5 min journal.

Birthdays (Mine is September 8. I shared this with my husband on our way to Asheville and he shared his perspective for me.)

1. What were my favorite days or things that I did in the past year? Dancing with Wendy until we closed the place down in Mexico and hydrotherapy with Todd, winning the Perfect Couple game with Kevin, hiking with my nieces in Hocking Hills, Ohio.
2. What did I learn in my 42nd year? Some friendships will fade for different reasons; it's not always personal.
3. What am I most proud? Managing my illnesses.
4. Who has played a significant role in my life this year? Stephanie Scotti.

Deaths (I'll use my Grandpa Wally B as my example.)

1. What is your favorite memory? Filming him and my grandma for the weekend to create a family documentary.
2. What is the craziest/funniest/most impressive/memorable thing he did? Handstands on a horse.
3. What lesson have you learned from them? That whatever I do, I will be the best at it (in his mind at least).
4. Is there anything you wish you would have said or done? Nope. He was my guy, and he knew it.

Vacations (this includes weekend trips or going home to visit family. I'll use a recent family weekend away to Hocking Hills, Ohio.)

1. What was your favorite day/event/party? A 6-mile hike with my whole family and spending the entire time with my six y/o niece who kept saying “my legs aren't even tired!”.
2. What was your favorite meal or food? Burrito bake night.
3. What would you do differently? Bought two scoops.
4. What was the best gift? (I use this for birthdays and holidays if I get gifts, but I don't expect them, and it's often not what people think it will be. Last year it was trivets that my nieces made for us and the year before it was a donation my Mom made to The Fistula Foundation.)

I do the game with clients after getaway trips and include the question – what was most impactful from a coaching perspective?

I love this game. I celebrate milestones all the time and reflect with others who were part of it. It's always entertaining to do with kids to hear what their favorite part was; it's rarely what you think it will be. I also like to know what other people saw in how I grew, a lesson I learned or how they were proud of me.

Try it for your next vacation, event, or milestone. I promise you'll get at least one nugget out of it.