Written by Ashley Lopez

A personal monthly reflection is the perfect opportunity for you to track your goals and accomplishments to serve your true self. It’s also a good time to practice self-reflection questions with yourself.

Hi everyone, welcome back to Ashley Spills. Ashley, here. You can check out my other posts here.

Last month I shared the monthly reflection questions that the Passion Planner provides, so this month I decided to reflect on a few more that I conjured up in addition to the provided ones. Everyone has different ambitions and things they want to live up to, so keep that in mind when writing yours. Here are the two self-reflection questions:

How did I make the world a better place this month? What steps can I take to improve?

For humanity: This month I believe I provided good service and empathy at my job when the clients on the other line were frustrated or nervous and I offered my company and support to individuals who felt left out in certain social settings.
Step I can take to improve: I can volunteer somewhere, I can donate food and more clothes, and I can calm my nerves towards others when I’m stressed. 

For the earth: This month I made the earth a better place by recycling, turning off the running water when washing my hands and brushing my teeth, and I didn’t litter.
Steps I can take: I can unplug electronics when not using them, I can stop turning on the heater as much (I get cold easily), and I can try to drive less or carpool more.

Did I deceive myself to make myself feel better this month? If so, how?

Yes. I told myself I was proud of myself because I met my goals of posting on this blog every Tuesday and practicing yoga consistently. This was deceiving because I know I can do better and set higher standards for myself.

I barely met the goal of posting every Tuesday; I caught myself writing quick posts the night of just to post something instead of pre-planning (writing this on Monday, brainstormed earlier—oh snap, progress). My content should scream PRE-PLANNED AND AUTO SCHEDULED, but it doesn’t.

I practiced yoga consistently, but not a variety of it. There are poses I want to perfect that I want to focus on as well try different types of yoga like yin and hatha yoga. I also want to push myself by doing 1-2 heavy vinyasa flows a week to get my heart rate up more. I feel like I have a good understanding of the poses now and my flexibility is better, but now I just need to put myself to weeerkkkk.

Check out the differences in my March and April ‘Personal Projects’ in my Passion Planner to obtain a better outcome in my blog and yoga journey:

Self-reflection questions and personal projects

March:

As you can see, my goals in March for ‘Ashley-Spills’ were just to post and gain 17 followers. Nothing else. My months have been stagnant with these goals and they’ve been pretty much the same for the past four months… so, you can say I easily met these goals for the most part. Missed the 17 followers by 1, damn it. That’s why there is half checkmark/half X (let’s be real, there should be an X, but I was so close!).

My goals under ‘Health’ were so basic, but I guess in the end necessary to keep me moving. As you can see, they all have and X because I didn’t meet any of them—shame on me! I’m not too mad about not closing my rings 25/30 days (on my fitness watch) though because I still moved a lot and I’ve met that goal consistently for over four months now.

April:

My goals for Ashley-Spills this month are a little more detailed. I would say the most challenging ones are the last two because gaining followers is hard without SEO and I need to come up with more writing prompts that entail love/self-care and weekly challenges for my readers.

My yoga goals

My ‘Health’ goal changed to ‘yoga’ in general because that’s my main physical focus. I already go on my walks and runs (okay fine, I barely run a mile). But yoga is a passion of mine that keeps growing.

I suck at going from chaturanga-dandasana (yes, I know it’s spelled wrong in my planner) to upward-facing dog because I can’t do push-ups! I can finally go down firmly and slowly, but pushing myself back up is so difficult. My hips and thighs end up dropping and then I push up into upward-facing dog by pushing into my feet after straightening my arms; the goal is to not have my thighs or hips hit the mat at all.

This is definitely something that I want to tackle (reference pictures below). I also want to push more core work in my practice, it says ‘don’t drop’ (like just fall to the mat lol) and I usually don’t, but oh my, do I always consider it.

This month I challenge you to set more specific goals for yourself to reach milestones as well as come up with a few reflection questions for the month of April to kickstart your month of May. I’ll provide the Passion Planner questions again and a few more that I think are helpful.

Self-reflection questions

• Were you disappointed in something you did this month? If so, why and what steps can you take to make sure this doesn’t happen again?
• How much effort did you put towards your goals and personal projects this month? Can you put more?
• If you’re in school, did you study enough to make sure the content is understood and you’re well-prepared for exams?
• Are you working on or towards that errand/goal you keep putting off? If not, why? Be honest with yourself.
• What was the most memorable part of this past month? Describe it.
• What were the three biggest lessons you’ve learned in this past month?
• Are you happy with how you spent your time? If not, what steps can you take next month to adjust them?
• What did you accomplish this past month? What are you most proud of?
• How are you different between this past month and the month before it?
• What or who are you especially grateful for this past month?
• Name three things you can improve on this upcoming month. What concrete actions can you take to work towards these improvements?

I hope these self-reflection questions help you get to know yourself better and understand your goals more.

Thanks for reading, xo.