Do you ever find yourself marveling at how quickly time seems to pass? Does it feel for you as though you blink your eyes only to realize that the week, month, even year has just flown by?

With the holidays well underway and 2011 quickly drawing to a close, I encourage you to set aside some time to reflect. This time of year — when the days are short and the nights are long, when our bodies need more softness and even more rest, when nature models for us what it looks like to slow down and go within — is the perfect time to take stock.

This is the time when people think about New Year’s Resolutions: their intentions for the coming year. They make commitments to themselves to eat better, exercise more, create more balance in their lives, achieve the goals they have been wanting to achieve for years. There’s certainly value to living life intentionally, to making choices and taking action by design rather than default. But before you engage in looking ahead to what’s next, do yourself the favor of looking back for a moment at what has been.

• What from the past year are you most proud of?
• Which moments filled you with joy that was so exhilarating that it flowed out of you in tears of laughter or giggles of delight?
• What decisions that you made helped you to feel even more fabulous about who you already are?
• Who was really there for you when you needed support?
• When did you let loose and allow yourself to be fully yourself?
• How did you show up when the people you love really needed you?

What were the most magical moments for you in 2011?

My experience and therefore my guess is that as you begin to write about the special moments, you will remember more and more of them. We all have them, it’s just that we often turn our focus to what’s wrong instead of what’s right, what needs to be fixed instead of what is working, what we wish were different rather than what we love exactly as it is.

As you begin your list, I thought I would share with you a small portion of mine. I share this partly because I believe the world would be a better place if we all celebrated the beautiful things about our lives more openly, and partly as a way to lubricate your own reflection.

• Watching Alex get up and riding after providing him with some kitesurfing tips as we bobbed in the water in La Ventana.
• Hearing the honesty, openness and self-awareness of the students I coach at Stanford GSB during many of our Career & Life Design group coaching sessions.
• Watching the hummingbirds fly around in my backyard.
• Having Niina show up to help me pack up my entire house without even asking her for the help that I really, truly needed.
• Spending an entire day with Michael making unloading a truck and filling up a storage unit fun.
• Seeing clearly when I realized my storage unit had been broken into that things have never mattered to me in the way that people and my health and experiences do.
• Watching the sunset at Inspiration Point in Corona Del Mar with a group of people who honor the end of every single day by stopping to watch the sun drop into the sea.
• Having my new neighbor, Jake, hand me a glass of wine the moment I arrived to move into my new place — even before the movers arrived to deliver my belongings.
• Meeting new friends with fearless hearts that felt like old friends almost immediately in Squamish, BC.
• Dancing and dancing and dancing and feeling music move my body.
• Teaching my nieces and nephews how to play Settlers of Catan and Shanghai and then playing it with them and their parents again and again and again.
• Playing sand volleyball in the warm sun and realizing that my body remembered skills it learned long ago and hadn’t used for years.
• Walks & talks with Grace and Pamela and Lori.
• Seeing Daniel bust out the dark chocolate every time I came to visit.
• Being introduced to new fun music by Cassie and Meaghan and Mikey.
• Getting calls from friends when they were feeling stressed, depressed or overwhelmed and knew that I would be there, not to fix anything, but to listen and be there for and with them as they found their way through whatever was troubling them.
• Laughing hysterically during Tom’s speech at Stacie’s birthday celebration.
• Taking the ferry and rollerblading along the boardwalk with Niina.
• Kayaking in the Back Bay with Hannah and Dragon.
• Feeling like I was floating the first time I danced with Shmuel.
• Staying at Jane & Lester’s, and Paul’s, and Bruce & Cathy’s, and Lori & Keith’s, and Anne & Mike’s, and Carol & Mark’s and Grace & Daniel’s, and Gard & Heidi’s, and Michael’s and Niina’s and Marjorie & Andrew’s and Denise & Siggy’s and Karen’s and knowing that I am always welcome in their homes.
• Bumping into old friends that I hadn’t seen in years in the most random places imaginable, and getting through those spontaneous reunions that we are all connected.
• Being at Esalen to help Chip Conley and Vanda Marlow teach their Peak Leadership course.
• Walking barefoot through the streets of Palo Alto on a warm fall evening.
• Trying to remember the names of all of Aidan’s stuffed animals and giggling with him about them all.
• Developing expertise at baking mini pies with Lori on Thanksgiving.
• Falling asleep in the arms of the man I love and waking up still curled up with him.

What are the moments — big and small — that have been most magical for you this past year?

What can you do to honor and remember them?

What would your life be like if you devoted more time to reveling in the good stuff that already is?