Intentional Assessment
The very best thing that you can do to support yourself in being able to be both focused and fluid as we flow into this new year is to assess the year that has just passed using your highly sensitive strengths in support of the year that we enter into.
The assessment process I am going to share with you will support you in rising above the fray of socialized trends and most importantly, accessing hope. Accessing hope regardless of what is happening around you. The ability to do this is the mark of a Highly Sensitive Leader.
A highly sensitive who is untrained, a highly sensitive who does not choose leadership waits for the other 80% to dictate and decide which way the world is going to go, the economy is going to go, the community is going to go, the day-to-day is going to go.
As HSPs in business and leadership we choose differently. We choose to access the power of hope, informed by intentional assessment, regardless of what is happening around us in order to be both focused and fluid through the acceptance of these changing times.
Here’s how you begin. Watch the training clip below, then complete the end-of-year assessment process in the Transformation Assignment.
Training Clip
Transformation Assignment
1. Use the definition of hope as referenced in the book, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier by Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey, “…optimism is the belief that things will turn out all right; hope makes no such assumption but is a conviction that one can act to make things better in some way”.
2. Remember that as an HSP in business and leadership your nervous system is your primary tool of creation. You specifically want to assess from the understanding that, based on research from John Hopkins Medical, the brain’s structure is not static; it changes with acquiring new knowledge as well as that research also shows that being curious increases the number of connections between brain cells.
So, by intentionally taking yourself through an end-of-year assessment you are strengthening your highly sensitive nervous system to work for you rather than against you and raising the probability that you will create different, better results in the new year.
3. Connect into the power of your heart which is the gateway to your HSP strength of intuition. This is because the heart is connected to the nervous system through the cardiac plexus, which is a network of nerves that receives signals from the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system. According to the HeartMath Institute, the heart is approximately 60 times greater electrically and up to 5,000 times stronger magnetically than the brain. This awareness places the head-brain relatively weak in comparison to the heart-brain.
This connection will greatly raise the probability that as you assess year end and begin to plan for the new year you will, again, be positioning yourself to create different, better results in the new year.
4. Address your fears proactively about being able to actually create what you want in the upcoming year. An effective tool I recommend for this is the Belief Transformation Tool as I teach in the Highly Sensitive Leadership Training Programs and can also be found in the Training Kit: Stop The Overwhelm.
5. Acknowledge what has been created and accomplished by identifying:
- Most Important Inner Accomplishment from the previous year. Ask yourself, where do I choose to celebrate being resilient? (e.g. you made it through a loss or transition, you showed up for a Difficult Conversation, faced an avoidance or resistance etc.)
- Most Important Outer Accomplishment from the previous year. Ask yourself, where do I choose to celebrate being a Conscious Creator? (e.g. you created new marketing, established new operation systems, enrolled/signed on new business, built a barn, got married, adopted a cat etc.)
- Most Important Learning. Ask yourself, where do I choose to acknowledge something of significance that I learned whether through joy or through pain? (e.g., you learned to put boundaries in place with a specific person or situation, you learned you do better on 6 hours of sleep rather than more, you learned you don’t need the team support you thought you did, you learned you need more team support, a marketing system no longer works, Time OFF is important etc.)
6. Clarify what you will UNLEARN in the upcoming year. Once you’ve acknowledged what you’ve accomplished and learned you can look at the habits, the patterns, the HSP shadow tendencies that have gotten in your way. Use this insightful prompt to support you:
“If I didn’t do ________, I would _______”
7. Create 3 “unlearn” actions you will take in the upcoming year based on what you clarified. These will become your pillars of focus throughout the year. As you center everything you create around them this will allow you to remain both focused and fluid as well as grounded in the strengths of your highly sensitive nervous system in the face of our continuously changing times.
As you engage proactively in this process I am confident and hopeful for a brighter year, a brighter world ahead for each and everyone of us.
Recommended Resources
Resources mentioned in this blog post and other helpful materials:
- Build The Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier – book by Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey
- HSE Training Kit: Stop the Overwhelm – training that includes the Belief Transformation Tool recommended
- Highly Sensitive Leadership Training Programs – our training program for highly sensitives in business and leadership
- Access Hope to Create What You Desire – our HSP Activation on YouTube to support with connecting to the energy of HOPE
- How to Use HOPE to Fuel Your HSP Visionary Strength So You Can Take Aligned Action – our blog post on using hope as a catalyst to take aligned actions on your inspired ideas
