As each new year comes around, it’s a great time to reflect on the year that we have left behind and look at what has been achieved.

Whether you are a parent, educator, support worker, sibling, health professional, or a person on the spectrum, reflecting and reviewing is a great way to work out what did and what didn’t work so that you might look at how to approach things differently, based on your experiences.

It helps to write these thoughts somewhere as a part of the reflection process. Some examples of questions that you might ask yourself are as follows:

What worked? How do you know?

• What do you consider to be a positive outcome?
• Do you feel that you have gained skills / abilities as a result?
• Do you feel like you have more confidence in certain areas?
• Are you able to attempt a new task with or without help?

What didn’t work?

• What do you think might have made things hard or difficult?
• Was the task too difficult for you?
• Did you find that other people weren’t helping you in the way that you like to be helped?
• Was time a factor in regards to learning some new skills or doing some training?

What would you do again?

• List down the pros and cons of particular experiences and work out if that’s something you would like to try / do again or continue
• Look at the positive outcomes and begin to plan a similar strategy / activity
• Observe and analyse the benefits of existing strategies / programs

What can you learn from your experiences?

• Is there something that you might avoid doing in the future?
• When you have a success with something, then you might try that again.
• Activities / tasks don’t always go to plan – be prepared to change or be flexible with your strategies and your approach!

When you’re planning out your goals for the coming year, next month or just next week, it is a good idea to ask yourself these questions – it will help you to provide the best possible support you can for someone or just to help yourself to nut out a plan or direction.