Consolidation

I would like to suggest it’s the time of year for consolidation. It’s time to establish your gains. It’s time to take what you have and make it stronger by celebrating it.

~to become, or cause something to become, stronger, and more certain ~ Cambridge Dictionary.

~to consolidate something you have, you strengthen it so that it becomes more effective or secure ~ Collins Dictionary.

I’ve been doing a very simple, but effective (for me) practice for the last couple of months, and that is a weekly consolidation. This is stopping at the end of a week to “take stock” of everything that has happened in that week.

This consolidation is not about ticking off what I have done on my to-do list, although that can certainly be a very satisfying part of it (sometimes!).

It is about looking back on what the week has held; emotional ups and downs, difficult meetings and people, lovely interactions and lovely people, or negotiating brave spaces. This is about celebrating what I’ve handled well, and reflecting on what could have been done better or what I found difficult. Essentially, consolidation is about making meaning of life even as it goes at such a pace.

Stopping to consolidate helps to slow me down to think long enough so that my work becomes more about awareness and less about performance or ticking boxes.

How I do it is by journalling, or sometimes simply by scanning my diary and thinking through my week. Sometimes it’s very comprehensive, and sometimes it’s just a couple of highlights. You can consolidate by talking your week through with someone, if you’re a verbal processor. You can draw a timeline of your week. There aren’t any rules, just go with your gut, start and see what happens.

I would like to suggest it’s the time of year for consolidation. It’s time to establish your gains. To return to the dictionary definitions, it’s time to take what you have and make it stronger by celebrating it. When we look back and think about how far we’ve come, we grow in gratitude, appreciation of our strengths, and we can put our “failures” into perspective.

Let me know how it goes if you practice something similar already or if you try it out for the first time. I’d love to hear from you!