You don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been. So chart your course for 2006 with a simple tool: the year-end review. Successful businesses and organizations know the power of year-end reviews. The yearly wrap-up can boost your spirits and motivate you for the year to come. To reap the maximum benefit of your experiences you need to record them and celebrate the growth they fostered. Here’s how to put them in a form you can easily refer to:

1. List your credits. Write down your major accomplishments for 2005. Include all important areas of your life: work/career, family, friends, finances, hobbies, community and personal development. Use calendars, diaries or other records to jog your memory. (Work related areas of the list can also help when you redo your résumé). Your list might read: “Organized auction to benefit child’s school.” “Started yoga classes.” “Had gallery show of my art work.” Results are important. Dreams fulfilled, goals achieved, big tasks completed obviously earn a place in your year-end review.

2. Consult with others. Ask your family, friends and closest colleagues what they see as your biggest accomplishment of the past year or what they consider most memorable. You may get some surprising answers. Perhaps they noticed something you missed. Add the items to your list.

3. Give yourself credit for perseverance. You gain strength from consistent follow through and persistent practice of new behaviors, even if the results aren’t yet obvious. For example, committing to a regular exercise program in 2005, and sticking to it is an achievement even if you haven’t shed all those unwanted pounds yet. Any other ongoing challenges should also be on your list such as “Third year of sticking to only one dessert a week.”

4. Include emotional successes. Your achievements in developing stronger emotional skills deserve to be counted, even though no one may know about them but you. “Negotiated family vacation without casualties” or “Resolved leftover issues from Thanksgiving with brothers” can be just as noteworthy as higher-visibility feats such as surpassing a company sales goal.

5. Add Details. To each item on your list, add details, feelings, others’ comments, special circumstances that give the achievement significance. For instance, to “Had Gallery Show,” you might add “Husband sent a big bunch of flowers and daughter took me to lunch.” Amplify. “Organized school auction” with “It was our most profitable fund raiser so far.”

6. Silence your inner critic. There are probably plans and goals you stalled on part way through or never even started. Don’t obsess over mistakes, losses or failures. Winners focus on their successes. Babe Ruth has a record for the most home runs. He also has a record for the most strikeouts. Nobody remembers him for what he did wrong. Celebrate what you want to see more of.

7. Replace scornful thoughts like “Didn’t get promoted “ with useful questions such as “What would it take to improve my chances of getting the promotion?” The answer will give you incremental goals you can put on your 2006 to-do list. For instance, the fizzled promotion goal might yield, “Do more face-to-face networking with people outside my department.” That’s a goal for 2006.

   Do the same for personal disappointments. Maybe you unexpectedly lost your job and you plunged into the Pits. Understandably you felt disappointed and anxious. It’s normal to feel sad and angry when you lose your job and your productivity might plummet. Don’t spend too much time dwelling over the time you wasted and mistakes you made in the past. There is nothing you can do about the past. Make plans to improve your future. When you experience job loss, analyze it. Maybe the job wasn’t right for you. Maybe you didn’t know how to deal with a difficult boss.