84. End-Of-Year Reflection: Why It Matters and 3 Ways To Prepare for the Year Ahead
As we wrap up this year and prepare for what's next, it's tempting to rush straight into new goals and resolutions. But before entering a new season, it’s imperative that you pause. End-of-year reflection sets the stage for the change you want by really understanding what you've already lived through, what worked, what didn’t, and where you’re actually starting from.
In this episode, I'm breaking down three concrete ways to approach your yearly reflection, whether you're someone who spends days in a notebook like my husband or a one-and-done kind of person like me. I know there's an approach here that will feel good to you, because reflection isn't a nice-to-have; it's a strategy that's absolutely the foundation to create change in the new year.
You'll learn exactly how to rate different areas of your life, what questions to ask yourself for honest reflection, and how to create awareness about where your attention needs to go in 2026. By the end of this episode, you'll have the tools to step into the new year grounded, clear, and intentional. Because sometimes we truly have to slow down in order to speed up.
Ready for clarity and a simple action plan to get your business started? Schedule a free 1-hour consultation with me here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why reflection is one of the most powerful ways to pause before moving toward new goals.
How to use the Wheel of Life exercise to rate key areas of your life.
What three simple questions can create a complete year-end evaluation in under an hour.
How mind mapping combines visual creativity with deep reflection across multiple life categories.
Why acknowledging what you want to keep doing is just as important as identifying what needs to change.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Episodes Related to End-of-Year Reflection:
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83. The 3 Things I Love Most About Helping Moms Build Their Businesses
Full Episode Transcript:
I want to give you three very concrete ways to reflect. So if you're sitting there with a blank piece of paper thinking, I don't even know where to start, I've never done this before, this episode will solve that for you. And maybe you have a process that you're jazzed about, and this is just a reminder to schedule time to do it.
Maybe add some of the little pieces that I'm going to talk about into your jazzy process. Or maybe you already have a process, but you're not so jazzed about it and it feels like pulling teeth to actually sit down and do it. And this is perfect because I'm going to jazz you up about these other options.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. Merry Christmas Eve to those who celebrate. Obviously, I recorded this episode last week because if you're listening to this live, it's Christmas Eve. So I'm officially off. I'm taking this week and next week off, and we're traveling back to Maryland, where my entire family lives. And honestly, it's just going to be such a fun, loving, abundant trip.
Earlier this year, we moved our family from Maryland to Colorado, which is a decision I've talked about on the podcast before, and it went from consideration to halfway across the country in about 4 months. So it's been a big adjustment this year, and I'm sharing that because if you're catching this episode live, which I kind of hope you're not, because I hope you're leaning into the holidays and loving on your people.
But if you are, just know I'm probably sitting around with my family, soaking in one of our favorite Christmas Eve traditions. And sadly, it's probably the last time that this tradition will look this way. And that's how life goes. We have to adjust and make sacrifices and changes as our kids grow, as we grow, as our environments change. And so this year, more than most, I'm really doing my best to be fully present and soak it all in.
As I'm wrapping up this year, I just want to also pause and say thank you. Truly, to everyone who's listened, downloaded episodes, clicked that follow button. I know my team is always like “ask people to click the follow button.” So all of those who have clicked that follow button, and especially to the special unicorns who have left reviews. Thank you so much.
My team was sharing some of my end-of-year stats with me and how often episodes were shared, how long people are listening, the growth in followers, and it was just so fun. And I just felt this deep wave of gratitude. This podcast is nothing without people on the other side of it listening, reflecting, and feeling inspired. Inspired to make changes, inspired to create a life you love, inspired to build businesses that change the world. It's amazing. And you're amazing. And so thank you for being here.
And if you haven't already, I want to invite you to follow the podcast going into 2026. Click that plus button in the top right of whatever app you're in or the follow button, whatever it looks like. I don't always know what they all look like, but I really do want this podcast to feel like a little coach in your pocket each week. A place you can come back to when you need perspective, encouragement, or a reminder of who you're becoming, what's possible.
2026 is officially going to be different, I promise you. 2026 is going to be the year you talk about for the rest of your life. It's the year you finally started the business you've been talking about for so long. It's the year you stepped into a more elevated version of yourself, one you may not even fully believe is possible yet, but we'll get you there. And I'm going to be supporting you all the way, in your ear each week or in one or all of the many ways I support moms. So definitely check it out.
Check out the show notes, jenna.coach/84 to see all the ways that I support moms because there's tons of other resources. There's tons of spaces where we can meet face-to-face, where you can get individualized support, where you can get group support. It feels endless and I love it. It feels abundant. So check that out and definitely sign up for the Mom Entrepreneurs circle that I talk about quite often on this podcast. It's free and it's a way to be in community with other moms.
So listen, we're not there yet, okay? Or you might be there if you're listening to this in the new year. But before we rush into the new year, new goals, I want to slow down just a bit, because one of the most important parts of creating real change is real reflection.
And I don't know if you're someone who does end-of-year reflections. My husband absolutely is. He will spend days in a notebook and on his computer reflecting on the year. This year he got a reMarkable, so I'm very curious to witness which method of note-taking he chooses to capture his reflections. I also got a reMarkable, and I'll just say it's life-changing, so I am actually even more excited to do my reflections this year. I am definitely doing it in my reMarkable.
I'm more of a one-and-done kind of person. I'm more of a like, I get down and dirty, do it, hour or two, and I have other things to do. And so I'm going to be talking about a lot of different ways that you can approach your yearly reflection this year. No matter which bucket you fall into, whether you're like my husband and you just want to soak it in and you spend a few days on it, or whether you're like me and you're in and out in a couple hours, or maybe you're in between somewhere or an entirely different bucket, I do want to just note that reflection is important.
And I want this episode to support you and show you exactly what you can do this year to make the most of end-of-year reflections and maybe adopt a process that you want to repeat every year that feels good to you.
Regardless of how you do it, and I'm going to share three different options, no matter how you do it, what feels good to you, it's imperative that you pause before entering a new season, okay? You have to set the stage for the change you want by really understanding what you've already lived through, okay? What worked, what didn't work, and where you're actually starting from.
So in today's episode, I want to do two things, okay? First, I mentioned this a little bit, but I'm just going to say it directly again, I want to encourage you to make time for a reflection session. Even if it's just 1 hour before the end of the year or at the start of the next one. And if you're listening to this mid-year or later, do a half, first half of the year reflection. It's never too late or early to reflect on your year, so just commit to doing it, no matter when you're listening. This is good accountability.
So the timing matters far less than the actual pause and process itself. Because sometimes, I mean, oftentimes, like I'm always saying it to clients and myself, we truly have to slow down in order to speed up. We can't cut corners. Reflection's so important. Reflection is one of the most powerful ways to really pause and take a look so that we can move fast in the new goals ahead of us.
The second thing, I said there were two, I want to give you three very concrete ways to reflect. So if you're sitting there with a blank piece of paper thinking, I don't even know where to start, I've never done this before, this episode will solve that for you.
And maybe you have a process that you're jazzed about, and this is just a reminder to schedule time to do it. Maybe add some of the little pieces that I'm going to talk about into your jazzy process. Or maybe you already have a process, but you're not so jazzed about it and it feels like pulling teeth to actually sit down and do it. And this is perfect because I'm going to jazz you up about these other options.
So let's start with the first one, the Wheel of Life. I love this exercise. It's one of the first tools I learned as a coach, and it still stands the test of time. I use it with clients all the time, regardless of the season, whether I'm with them at the start of the year, the middle of the year, the end of the year, or in the middle of our time together. It's such a simple way to get honest about what's really going on in your life.
And you can easily find a template online. I'll link one in the show notes, but you can also do this by hand. You can just draw a circle, like a wheel, and you want to divide it into eight equal slices, like a pizza. So, you know, one horizontal line, one vertical line, and then two diagonal lines, basically. And each slice represents an area of your life. And the categories I usually use are health, marriage or love, career, money, family, friends, fun or recreation or hobbies, whatever speaks to you, and spirituality. Okay? And that could be spirituality, religion, whatever speaks to you on that one, too.
And again, you can go to the show notes, jenna.coach/84 so that you can grab the transcript and just copy and paste any of the things that I'm talking about and the questions that I'll talk about later. But you don't have to use those categories. If something like creativity is important to you, make it a category. If you want to make kids a category, go for it. If you want to combine family and friends and then make a category for environment or house, live your best life, girl.
So then once you have your eight categories, and you also don't need eight, you could have 10 or you could have five. It is not so much that you have to be following such strict directions. You really just have to make this your own. But I want you to take each category and one by one, you rate it on a scale from one to 10 based on how satisfied you feel right now. One being completely dissatisfied, 10 being it's perfect. I love it just the way it is.
And my clients always have questions about that rating. I want you to not overthink it. Just give it a rating of where it is. Is it above average? Then give it something above a five. Is it feeling below average? Then give it less than a five. And if you feel like it's squarely in the middle, just give it a five. Okay?
On the actual wheel itself, you count out from the center of the wheel, like notches, one, two, three, four, five, let's say, if it's a five. And you mark the section with a line, and you fill it in based on your rating. So if it's a five, half of the pizza slice would be filled in. If it's a one, basically none of the pizza slice would be filled in.
Of course, if it's a 10, the whole thing would be filled in. Of course, the more filling a section has, the more it feels full and in alignment with your life. The less full a section is, the more attention it needs in 2026. So you have this nice visual at the end with maybe different colors and different combinations, a circle, and the spokes are all filled in differently.
If you want extra credit, and I really do recommend doing this, I do this for clients as they're talking, but I want you to kind of do it for yourself. Write down a few reasons you gave it that rating. Okay? So if it's a five, say, why did I give it a five?
So for instance, let's say it's your career and you say, it's a five. I like the people I work with, I like working from home, but I don't have flexibility, and I kind of think my boss is annoying. And I really wish I was doing something more exciting or something that aligned with the degree I got. So that would be an example of giving a little bit more color to the five rating that you gave that section.
So this is the exercise that I leaned on for so many years when I was in corporate, and I talk about how my career always got like a six or below each year. So I've talked about that before. I'll say it again here since it's so relevant. I would rate that piece of the pie for career, and it would just get a low rating. It was always minimally filled in every year.
And every year it felt like my career was holding me back. It felt like it was always coming up short. And not even in surface level ways. I always wrote down notes about feeling unfulfilled and feeling like I wanted to be making more impact, needing more alignment, or knowing I was meant for something more.
And truly, it's this Wheel of Life exercise that every year had me face my demons and show me that I needed to leave my job and figure something else out. It was the yearly reflection where I saw that this piece of the pie was lacking, and that nudged me to put wheels in motion to do something different. What I love about this exercise is that it immediately shows you where your attention needs to go and where you might already be doing really well but haven't acknowledged it. If certain categories are a 10, write down why it's a 10 and celebrate it.
Another really helpful exercise, which is something I always do when I'm working through this exercise with clients, is to ask, what would make it a 10? So if you give it a five, ask yourself, why is it a five? And then ask yourself, what would make it a 10? This gives a lot of clarity on exactly what needs to be done in the new year to work towards that 10 score.
And this isn't about making everything a 10 overnight, but it is about awareness, awareness to know what areas of your life feel the most out of alignment and where to focus your attention in the new year. So maybe these are areas that got less attention in the previous year. Maybe they're just areas that really need focus to create change. But play with it, make it your own. I love this exercise. Look it up online. There are so many resources for it.
So that's the first option. And I think I said this before, but I would do this, the Wheel of Life exercise multiple times a year. It's a great check-in with different areas of your life and whether you're truly building an entire life you love.
The second option for this end-of-year reflection is just a simple year-end evaluation. This one is simple. It's kind of boring, if you ask me, but this is for my moms who want to get in and get out. I talk about evaluations a lot on this podcast because I believe everything we do deserves to be evaluated. Your year is just the big picture version of that. You only need three questions. What went well this year? What didn't go well this year? What do I want to do differently next year? That's it. No need to overthink, no need to come up with more questions. It's as simple as that.
I want to make sure, though, that you're not judging yourself in the process for what didn't happen. Make sure that you just have some clean, honest reflection. Make sure you answer what went well fully. Okay? Allow yourself to celebrate all the things. Allow yourself to focus on the good for part of this exercise. When you're thinking about what didn't go well, be honest, but have a dose of self-compassion, a dose of self-compassion goes a long way.
Don't take any mistakes or anything that didn't go well personal. You are human, life is hard. Allow yourself to be human and write down the things that didn't go well with a neutral heart, okay? Not everything can go well. Life is always going to have the good and the bad. Even if your life or your year feels like 80% bad and 20% good, write it out. It's often therapeutic getting these things down on paper.
Knowing what didn't go well and what you will do differently next year stops you from repeating the same pattern year after year and allows you to really step into what you need to do to start making small but meaningful adjustments that actually create change and help you to move closer to that life you love.
I do also want to add a bonus question to this, which I feel like can be a nice addition to maybe any time you're evaluating. But the question, what will I keep doing this year? Okay, so we talk about what's going well, what's not going well, what will I do differently? But let's also explore what will I keep doing this year. And that's acknowledging that some things you want to keep doing.
If you joined a dance group and are having a lot of fun staying in shape through dance, make note that you want to keep doing that. You want to keep prioritizing that. If you started going to an acupuncturist, I don't know what the word would be, like I did this year, and you're feeling a lot of relief, make note to keep doing that in the new year. Of course we want to do things differently, but don't assume that everything needs to change. Respect the changes you made this year that are working for you.
That's option number two. Option number three is a little complicated. It's a mind mapping exercise. This one's complicated, but it's fun if you're more visual or creative. My husband loves doing mind mapping for his end-of-year reflection. A mind map, and if you're not sure quite what a mind map is or looks like, just do a quick Google and you can see the basic what it looks like and get an idea.
But a mind map starts with a central idea. That central idea for this exercise would be your year. And then it branches out into different areas of your life. And there are lots of digital tools and apps that you can use to make it more seamless, which I would recommend. It makes it just so much easier to space it and to make it different colors and make it look really pretty. But you can also do it with pen and paper.
And this third option is kind of like if the Wheel of Life and the simple evaluation had a reflection baby, okay? Because it's a combination of those two. The idea is to break each area down of your life, categories like we talked about in the Wheel of Life, and we want to reflect more deeply on each one. And you can use those same categories from the Wheel of Life, which will be easy to copy and paste from the transcript, or I also grabbed a few categories from my own mind maps that I had done in years past
So some of the categories I've used are health and fitness. And for each category, we want to think about what you accomplished, what's still open to accomplish, what you want next. So this one is a little bit goal focused, but of course you could also just do the basic evaluation questions.
So you could do health and fitness, what went well, what didn't go well, what will I do differently, what will I do similar next year. So there's the health and fitness category that I've used before, career and work, adventure and creativity, productivity and organization, emotions and well-being, contribution and impact, education and skill development, and relationships.
If you can imagine a mind map, which is basically a bunch of circles that branch out from a central circle, you're going to have in the middle, in that central circle, it's going to say like, "Year 2025 Reflection." And then you're going to branch out from that with however many categories you want to include.
So kind of like a spider, maybe. So you have the center spoke, and then you have all these lines, these maybe eight lines coming out from the middle. And Adley loves spiders, and I don't know if I've ever talked about that on this podcast, but at the earliest age when kids show interest in something, whatever that age is, since that age, he has been interested in spiders.
When we lived in Maryland, we lived in a house in an area that was really wooded, and there were endless spiders. And Chris, my husband, and I really wanted to be intentional to not foster a fear of spiders in him, even though both of us were not thrilled about spiders. So we both had to like suck it up and find spiders and catch spiders. And it was a whole thing. And I really think we overcorrected because every year he wants to be a spider for Halloween. He's always drawing spiders, trying to find spiders. It's an obsession.
So anyway, you have this mind map, this thing that might look like a spider, because it has a middle body and then eight lines or however many lines coming out from it. And each of those lines now represents a category of your life. You write the category, draw a circle around it. For each of those second-tier circles, you're going to think about what you accomplished in that category, what's still open, what your goals are for next year. And you're going to just do quick sentences, quick bubbles around it, just capturing thoughts for each.
And then there's a third tier from each of those questions with like all the things. And that's what I was kind of mentioning. Like the answers to all of these questions are all the things, and they all have their own little bubble that includes answers to those questions. Okay, so for example, I pulled up the mind map that I completed in 2016, and I had a line and bubble coming off of the center circle for education and skill development. So in that category, and if you can imagine these are all like color-coded so the end result looks really like fun and colorful.
So in the category of education and skill development, there was a question of what is still open, like, what do I still have to achieve? Another way to think about that is what didn't go well. And one of the bubbles was that in that year, I had applied to an MBA program and didn't get in.
So that was something that I wrote down on this reflection of something that didn't go well, something that is still open. I applied in the next year, so 2017 and was admitted. There were things that I knew I needed to work on in the new year to make a stronger or create a stronger application. So being able to write that down, being able to look at it is so important for planning where my focus goes in the next year.
There's another circle category for career and work, and in the "what is still open" or "what didn't go well" question, it says, "lack feelings of consistent fulfillment." So that's what I was talking about a little bit earlier when I was doing the Wheel of Life. Those themes also came up when I did my mind mapping years ago.
If you're leaning towards this option for reflection, I trust that you're also creative and want to make it your own. So please don't feel like you have to stick to my questions or categories. Ultimately, what we want to do is see a true mind map. Again, just Google it if you've never seen one. It's a really nice visual.
It captures the highlights, it captures just quick blurbs about your year, and you can really see visually maybe where you had more wins, where you had more losses. We really just want to have a way to organize our reflections in a way that's easy and fun on the eyes. It feels really good afterwards because you have this whole beautiful thing, and there's no perfect way to do it, no one right way to do it.
You do not need a perfect reflection in order to create change this year, but you do need to reflect so that you can create awareness. You also need to reflect honestly, and you need self-trust in the process. You need to give yourself permission to pause and trust yourself along the way within the reflection.
It's not a nice-to-have, okay, it's a strategy that is absolutely the foundation to create change in the new year. So to get better in the areas that are weighing you down and to know exactly where you need to be more intentional, you have to reflect and figure those out. And when you take the time to really understand where you are, you can step into the new year grounded, clear, and intentional. This is how change actually gets set into motion.
I hope this episode gives you the space and the tools to do exactly that. I'm so excited. Next week, my team put together an amazing best of 2025 episode that I'm really excited for you to listen to and to share. I'll release it on New Year's Eve morning, and it'll be a great way to have its own little reflection, you know, before starting the new year of this podcast. It's a dose of reflection, just like I recommend in this episode, so that we can look forward to all this podcast has to bring in 2026.
I will be back with you in the new year, and I cannot wait to support you as you step into what's next, whatever that is in 2026. Whatever your family celebrates this season, I want to wish you a warm, happy holidays, mom friends. And I will see you in the new year.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Maybe add some of the little pieces that I'm going to talk about into your jazzy process. Or maybe you already have a process, but you're not so jazzed about it and it feels like pulling teeth to actually sit down and do it. And this is perfect because I'm going to jazz you up about these other options.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. Merry Christmas Eve to those who celebrate. Obviously, I recorded this episode last week because if you're listening to this live, it's Christmas Eve. So I'm officially off. I'm taking this week and next week off, and we're traveling back to Maryland, where my entire family lives. And honestly, it's just going to be such a fun, loving, abundant trip.
Earlier this year, we moved our family from Maryland to Colorado, which is a decision I've talked about on the podcast before, and it went from consideration to halfway across the country in about 4 months. So it's been a big adjustment this year, and I'm sharing that because if you're catching this episode live, which I kind of hope you're not, because I hope you're leaning into the holidays and loving on your people.
But if you are, just know I'm probably sitting around with my family, soaking in one of our favorite Christmas Eve traditions. And sadly, it's probably the last time that this tradition will look this way. And that's how life goes. We have to adjust and make sacrifices and changes as our kids grow, as we grow, as our environments change. And so this year, more than most, I'm really doing my best to be fully present and soak it all in.
As I'm wrapping up this year, I just want to also pause and say thank you. Truly, to everyone who's listened, downloaded episodes, clicked that follow button. I know my team is always like “ask people to click the follow button.” So all of those who have clicked that follow button, and especially to the special unicorns who have left reviews. Thank you so much.
My team was sharing some of my end-of-year stats with me and how often episodes were shared, how long people are listening, the growth in followers, and it was just so fun. And I just felt this deep wave of gratitude. This podcast is nothing without people on the other side of it listening, reflecting, and feeling inspired. Inspired to make changes, inspired to create a life you love, inspired to build businesses that change the world. It's amazing. And you're amazing. And so thank you for being here.
And if you haven't already, I want to invite you to follow the podcast going into 2026. Click that plus button in the top right of whatever app you're in or the follow button, whatever it looks like. I don't always know what they all look like, but I really do want this podcast to feel like a little coach in your pocket each week. A place you can come back to when you need perspective, encouragement, or a reminder of who you're becoming, what's possible.
2026 is officially going to be different, I promise you. 2026 is going to be the year you talk about for the rest of your life. It's the year you finally started the business you've been talking about for so long. It's the year you stepped into a more elevated version of yourself, one you may not even fully believe is possible yet, but we'll get you there. And I'm going to be supporting you all the way, in your ear each week or in one or all of the many ways I support moms. So definitely check it out.
Check out the show notes, jenna.coach/84 to see all the ways that I support moms because there's tons of other resources. There's tons of spaces where we can meet face-to-face, where you can get individualized support, where you can get group support. It feels endless and I love it. It feels abundant. So check that out and definitely sign up for the Mom Entrepreneurs circle that I talk about quite often on this podcast. It's free and it's a way to be in community with other moms.
So listen, we're not there yet, okay? Or you might be there if you're listening to this in the new year. But before we rush into the new year, new goals, I want to slow down just a bit, because one of the most important parts of creating real change is real reflection.
And I don't know if you're someone who does end-of-year reflections. My husband absolutely is. He will spend days in a notebook and on his computer reflecting on the year. This year he got a reMarkable, so I'm very curious to witness which method of note-taking he chooses to capture his reflections. I also got a reMarkable, and I'll just say it's life-changing, so I am actually even more excited to do my reflections this year. I am definitely doing it in my reMarkable.
I'm more of a one-and-done kind of person. I'm more of a like, I get down and dirty, do it, hour or two, and I have other things to do. And so I'm going to be talking about a lot of different ways that you can approach your yearly reflection this year. No matter which bucket you fall into, whether you're like my husband and you just want to soak it in and you spend a few days on it, or whether you're like me and you're in and out in a couple hours, or maybe you're in between somewhere or an entirely different bucket, I do want to just note that reflection is important.
And I want this episode to support you and show you exactly what you can do this year to make the most of end-of-year reflections and maybe adopt a process that you want to repeat every year that feels good to you.
Regardless of how you do it, and I'm going to share three different options, no matter how you do it, what feels good to you, it's imperative that you pause before entering a new season, okay? You have to set the stage for the change you want by really understanding what you've already lived through, okay? What worked, what didn't work, and where you're actually starting from.
So in today's episode, I want to do two things, okay? First, I mentioned this a little bit, but I'm just going to say it directly again, I want to encourage you to make time for a reflection session. Even if it's just 1 hour before the end of the year or at the start of the next one. And if you're listening to this mid-year or later, do a half, first half of the year reflection. It's never too late or early to reflect on your year, so just commit to doing it, no matter when you're listening. This is good accountability.
So the timing matters far less than the actual pause and process itself. Because sometimes, I mean, oftentimes, like I'm always saying it to clients and myself, we truly have to slow down in order to speed up. We can't cut corners. Reflection's so important. Reflection is one of the most powerful ways to really pause and take a look so that we can move fast in the new goals ahead of us.
The second thing, I said there were two, I want to give you three very concrete ways to reflect. So if you're sitting there with a blank piece of paper thinking, I don't even know where to start, I've never done this before, this episode will solve that for you.
And maybe you have a process that you're jazzed about, and this is just a reminder to schedule time to do it. Maybe add some of the little pieces that I'm going to talk about into your jazzy process. Or maybe you already have a process, but you're not so jazzed about it and it feels like pulling teeth to actually sit down and do it. And this is perfect because I'm going to jazz you up about these other options.
So let's start with the first one, the Wheel of Life. I love this exercise. It's one of the first tools I learned as a coach, and it still stands the test of time. I use it with clients all the time, regardless of the season, whether I'm with them at the start of the year, the middle of the year, the end of the year, or in the middle of our time together. It's such a simple way to get honest about what's really going on in your life.
And you can easily find a template online. I'll link one in the show notes, but you can also do this by hand. You can just draw a circle, like a wheel, and you want to divide it into eight equal slices, like a pizza. So, you know, one horizontal line, one vertical line, and then two diagonal lines, basically. And each slice represents an area of your life. And the categories I usually use are health, marriage or love, career, money, family, friends, fun or recreation or hobbies, whatever speaks to you, and spirituality. Okay? And that could be spirituality, religion, whatever speaks to you on that one, too.
And again, you can go to the show notes, jenna.coach/84 so that you can grab the transcript and just copy and paste any of the things that I'm talking about and the questions that I'll talk about later. But you don't have to use those categories. If something like creativity is important to you, make it a category. If you want to make kids a category, go for it. If you want to combine family and friends and then make a category for environment or house, live your best life, girl.
So then once you have your eight categories, and you also don't need eight, you could have 10 or you could have five. It is not so much that you have to be following such strict directions. You really just have to make this your own. But I want you to take each category and one by one, you rate it on a scale from one to 10 based on how satisfied you feel right now. One being completely dissatisfied, 10 being it's perfect. I love it just the way it is.
And my clients always have questions about that rating. I want you to not overthink it. Just give it a rating of where it is. Is it above average? Then give it something above a five. Is it feeling below average? Then give it less than a five. And if you feel like it's squarely in the middle, just give it a five. Okay?
On the actual wheel itself, you count out from the center of the wheel, like notches, one, two, three, four, five, let's say, if it's a five. And you mark the section with a line, and you fill it in based on your rating. So if it's a five, half of the pizza slice would be filled in. If it's a one, basically none of the pizza slice would be filled in.
Of course, if it's a 10, the whole thing would be filled in. Of course, the more filling a section has, the more it feels full and in alignment with your life. The less full a section is, the more attention it needs in 2026. So you have this nice visual at the end with maybe different colors and different combinations, a circle, and the spokes are all filled in differently.
If you want extra credit, and I really do recommend doing this, I do this for clients as they're talking, but I want you to kind of do it for yourself. Write down a few reasons you gave it that rating. Okay? So if it's a five, say, why did I give it a five?
So for instance, let's say it's your career and you say, it's a five. I like the people I work with, I like working from home, but I don't have flexibility, and I kind of think my boss is annoying. And I really wish I was doing something more exciting or something that aligned with the degree I got. So that would be an example of giving a little bit more color to the five rating that you gave that section.
So this is the exercise that I leaned on for so many years when I was in corporate, and I talk about how my career always got like a six or below each year. So I've talked about that before. I'll say it again here since it's so relevant. I would rate that piece of the pie for career, and it would just get a low rating. It was always minimally filled in every year.
And every year it felt like my career was holding me back. It felt like it was always coming up short. And not even in surface level ways. I always wrote down notes about feeling unfulfilled and feeling like I wanted to be making more impact, needing more alignment, or knowing I was meant for something more.
And truly, it's this Wheel of Life exercise that every year had me face my demons and show me that I needed to leave my job and figure something else out. It was the yearly reflection where I saw that this piece of the pie was lacking, and that nudged me to put wheels in motion to do something different. What I love about this exercise is that it immediately shows you where your attention needs to go and where you might already be doing really well but haven't acknowledged it. If certain categories are a 10, write down why it's a 10 and celebrate it.
Another really helpful exercise, which is something I always do when I'm working through this exercise with clients, is to ask, what would make it a 10? So if you give it a five, ask yourself, why is it a five? And then ask yourself, what would make it a 10? This gives a lot of clarity on exactly what needs to be done in the new year to work towards that 10 score.
And this isn't about making everything a 10 overnight, but it is about awareness, awareness to know what areas of your life feel the most out of alignment and where to focus your attention in the new year. So maybe these are areas that got less attention in the previous year. Maybe they're just areas that really need focus to create change. But play with it, make it your own. I love this exercise. Look it up online. There are so many resources for it.
So that's the first option. And I think I said this before, but I would do this, the Wheel of Life exercise multiple times a year. It's a great check-in with different areas of your life and whether you're truly building an entire life you love.
The second option for this end-of-year reflection is just a simple year-end evaluation. This one is simple. It's kind of boring, if you ask me, but this is for my moms who want to get in and get out. I talk about evaluations a lot on this podcast because I believe everything we do deserves to be evaluated. Your year is just the big picture version of that. You only need three questions. What went well this year? What didn't go well this year? What do I want to do differently next year? That's it. No need to overthink, no need to come up with more questions. It's as simple as that.
I want to make sure, though, that you're not judging yourself in the process for what didn't happen. Make sure that you just have some clean, honest reflection. Make sure you answer what went well fully. Okay? Allow yourself to celebrate all the things. Allow yourself to focus on the good for part of this exercise. When you're thinking about what didn't go well, be honest, but have a dose of self-compassion, a dose of self-compassion goes a long way.
Don't take any mistakes or anything that didn't go well personal. You are human, life is hard. Allow yourself to be human and write down the things that didn't go well with a neutral heart, okay? Not everything can go well. Life is always going to have the good and the bad. Even if your life or your year feels like 80% bad and 20% good, write it out. It's often therapeutic getting these things down on paper.
Knowing what didn't go well and what you will do differently next year stops you from repeating the same pattern year after year and allows you to really step into what you need to do to start making small but meaningful adjustments that actually create change and help you to move closer to that life you love.
I do also want to add a bonus question to this, which I feel like can be a nice addition to maybe any time you're evaluating. But the question, what will I keep doing this year? Okay, so we talk about what's going well, what's not going well, what will I do differently? But let's also explore what will I keep doing this year. And that's acknowledging that some things you want to keep doing.
If you joined a dance group and are having a lot of fun staying in shape through dance, make note that you want to keep doing that. You want to keep prioritizing that. If you started going to an acupuncturist, I don't know what the word would be, like I did this year, and you're feeling a lot of relief, make note to keep doing that in the new year. Of course we want to do things differently, but don't assume that everything needs to change. Respect the changes you made this year that are working for you.
That's option number two. Option number three is a little complicated. It's a mind mapping exercise. This one's complicated, but it's fun if you're more visual or creative. My husband loves doing mind mapping for his end-of-year reflection. A mind map, and if you're not sure quite what a mind map is or looks like, just do a quick Google and you can see the basic what it looks like and get an idea.
But a mind map starts with a central idea. That central idea for this exercise would be your year. And then it branches out into different areas of your life. And there are lots of digital tools and apps that you can use to make it more seamless, which I would recommend. It makes it just so much easier to space it and to make it different colors and make it look really pretty. But you can also do it with pen and paper.
And this third option is kind of like if the Wheel of Life and the simple evaluation had a reflection baby, okay? Because it's a combination of those two. The idea is to break each area down of your life, categories like we talked about in the Wheel of Life, and we want to reflect more deeply on each one. And you can use those same categories from the Wheel of Life, which will be easy to copy and paste from the transcript, or I also grabbed a few categories from my own mind maps that I had done in years past
So some of the categories I've used are health and fitness. And for each category, we want to think about what you accomplished, what's still open to accomplish, what you want next. So this one is a little bit goal focused, but of course you could also just do the basic evaluation questions.
So you could do health and fitness, what went well, what didn't go well, what will I do differently, what will I do similar next year. So there's the health and fitness category that I've used before, career and work, adventure and creativity, productivity and organization, emotions and well-being, contribution and impact, education and skill development, and relationships.
If you can imagine a mind map, which is basically a bunch of circles that branch out from a central circle, you're going to have in the middle, in that central circle, it's going to say like, "Year 2025 Reflection." And then you're going to branch out from that with however many categories you want to include.
So kind of like a spider, maybe. So you have the center spoke, and then you have all these lines, these maybe eight lines coming out from the middle. And Adley loves spiders, and I don't know if I've ever talked about that on this podcast, but at the earliest age when kids show interest in something, whatever that age is, since that age, he has been interested in spiders.
When we lived in Maryland, we lived in a house in an area that was really wooded, and there were endless spiders. And Chris, my husband, and I really wanted to be intentional to not foster a fear of spiders in him, even though both of us were not thrilled about spiders. So we both had to like suck it up and find spiders and catch spiders. And it was a whole thing. And I really think we overcorrected because every year he wants to be a spider for Halloween. He's always drawing spiders, trying to find spiders. It's an obsession.
So anyway, you have this mind map, this thing that might look like a spider, because it has a middle body and then eight lines or however many lines coming out from it. And each of those lines now represents a category of your life. You write the category, draw a circle around it. For each of those second-tier circles, you're going to think about what you accomplished in that category, what's still open, what your goals are for next year. And you're going to just do quick sentences, quick bubbles around it, just capturing thoughts for each.
And then there's a third tier from each of those questions with like all the things. And that's what I was kind of mentioning. Like the answers to all of these questions are all the things, and they all have their own little bubble that includes answers to those questions. Okay, so for example, I pulled up the mind map that I completed in 2016, and I had a line and bubble coming off of the center circle for education and skill development. So in that category, and if you can imagine these are all like color-coded so the end result looks really like fun and colorful.
So in the category of education and skill development, there was a question of what is still open, like, what do I still have to achieve? Another way to think about that is what didn't go well. And one of the bubbles was that in that year, I had applied to an MBA program and didn't get in.
So that was something that I wrote down on this reflection of something that didn't go well, something that is still open. I applied in the next year, so 2017 and was admitted. There were things that I knew I needed to work on in the new year to make a stronger or create a stronger application. So being able to write that down, being able to look at it is so important for planning where my focus goes in the next year.
There's another circle category for career and work, and in the "what is still open" or "what didn't go well" question, it says, "lack feelings of consistent fulfillment." So that's what I was talking about a little bit earlier when I was doing the Wheel of Life. Those themes also came up when I did my mind mapping years ago.
If you're leaning towards this option for reflection, I trust that you're also creative and want to make it your own. So please don't feel like you have to stick to my questions or categories. Ultimately, what we want to do is see a true mind map. Again, just Google it if you've never seen one. It's a really nice visual.
It captures the highlights, it captures just quick blurbs about your year, and you can really see visually maybe where you had more wins, where you had more losses. We really just want to have a way to organize our reflections in a way that's easy and fun on the eyes. It feels really good afterwards because you have this whole beautiful thing, and there's no perfect way to do it, no one right way to do it.
You do not need a perfect reflection in order to create change this year, but you do need to reflect so that you can create awareness. You also need to reflect honestly, and you need self-trust in the process. You need to give yourself permission to pause and trust yourself along the way within the reflection.
It's not a nice-to-have, okay, it's a strategy that is absolutely the foundation to create change in the new year. So to get better in the areas that are weighing you down and to know exactly where you need to be more intentional, you have to reflect and figure those out. And when you take the time to really understand where you are, you can step into the new year grounded, clear, and intentional. This is how change actually gets set into motion.
I hope this episode gives you the space and the tools to do exactly that. I'm so excited. Next week, my team put together an amazing best of 2025 episode that I'm really excited for you to listen to and to share. I'll release it on New Year's Eve morning, and it'll be a great way to have its own little reflection, you know, before starting the new year of this podcast. It's a dose of reflection, just like I recommend in this episode, so that we can look forward to all this podcast has to bring in 2026.
I will be back with you in the new year, and I cannot wait to support you as you step into what's next, whatever that is in 2026. Whatever your family celebrates this season, I want to wish you a warm, happy holidays, mom friends. And I will see you in the new year.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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