John Dewey said, “We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience.” At this time of year, it’s the perfect opportunity to slow down a little bit and truly reflect. Because you’re ambitious your tendency will lead towards diving straight into setting new goals and projects and targets for 2024. But before you do that, force yourself to slow down and reflect on the past 12 months and see what you learn.

Reflection allows you to get the most out of your experience. It allows you to evaluate and doing it leads to new knowledge and self-understanding. This makes sure you are on the right path and chasing the right goals and it’s far more likely to ensure your happiness.

To properly reflect, you need to stop. To take a time out from the constant activity. Being always on is not sustainable. You need to recharge.

Like Pep Guardiola is concerned about whether Erling Haaland is getting enough sleep and not partying too hard, I’m know I’m not going to be at my best if I am always on. I need to recharge.

I like to do it daily and I get grumpy when I don’t do it for more than a day or two. My day is full on and high intensity. Before I hit the sack for the night, I need at least an hour or two of down time to switch off. Watching good TV, reading something light, anything but solving problems. That’s my day job but I need to switch off.

This coming few weeks gives us more time than usual to recharge and reflect so make use of it. We’re the only species on the planet that can step back from the world and examine our place in it.

Get outside. Spend some time in nature. Zoom out and look at the bigger picture of what really matters in your life. All of us here have clear goals for our business that we are relentlessly working towards. Often though people forget to have goals for their personal life. And last time I checked people’s personal lives are pretty important to them. Do yourself a great favour and reflect and set some goals in that area too.

One of my mentors said something years ago that has always stuck with me; “We are human be-ings. Not human hav-ings or human do-ings. So set some goals not just for what you want to have or do, but how you want to be.”

Have a happy Christmas and New Year! And thank you for being here. It’s a pleasure to do this work with you.