Coaching practices for Good Things Happened This Year and I'm Grateful for Them but I Genuinely Couldn't Tell You What I Did to Make Them Happen So I've No Idea How to Make Next Year Go the Same Way on Purpose Instead of by Luck
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Good Things Happened This Year and I'm Grateful for Them but I Genuinely Couldn't Tell You What I Did to Make Them Happen So I've No Idea How to Make Next Year Go the Same Way on Purpose Instead of by Luck, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- Good things happened this year and I’m grateful for them, but I genuinely couldn’t tell you what I did to make them happen
- I can picture the handful of moments this year when I felt most alive, but I treat them like nice memories instead of asking what specific setup made them happen
- When I look at what went wrong this year I catch myself blaming the timing, other people, the circumstances
- When something good happens to me I instantly chalk it up to luck or someone else, never anything I did
- I can list the good things in my life, but they feel like they just landed on me from nowhere
Practices that may help
- Go deep on "what went well" — extract the recipe, not just the win
A win recorded but not analyzed produces no transferable knowledge — identify what specifically caused it.
The Annual Review (Tim Ferriss Method) - Inventory your peak experiences to find the conditions that produced them
Your best moments from the past year reveal which conditions you need more of next year.
The Annual Review (Tim Ferriss Method) - Spend more time on "what did not go well" than on what did
Failure analysis contains the most actionable information in any honest review.
The Annual Review (Tim Ferriss Method) - Train optimistic causal attribution deliberately
Practice attributing good events to stable, internal causes — not to luck or one-off circumstances.
Three Good Things: The Evidence-Based Gratitude Practice - Trace the source of each blessing
For each blessing, name the specific person, circumstance, or choice that produced it.
Counting Blessings: The Psychology of Grateful Reflection - Gather raw material before reflecting
Pull the data — calendar, photos, notes, emails — before you begin reflecting, so memory does not do all the work.
The Annual Review (Tim Ferriss Method) - Reattribute good events to yourself
When something goes well, practice crediting your own stable qualities, not just luck.
Optimism Training: Building Realistic, Flexible Optimism - Gratitude for the ordinary
Deliberately note small, easily-missed goods rather than only the big events.
Gratitude Journaling, Done Well - Generate a stop-doing list, not just a to-do list for next year
What you stop doing next year is as important as what you start.
The Annual Review (Tim Ferriss Method) - Three good things
Each evening, write three things that went well and why they happened.
Gratitude Journaling, Done Well
Related concerns
- Honest Year In Review
Failure analysis contains the most actionable information in any honest review.
Spend more time on "what did not go well" than on what did
- Honest Year Review Partner
A review held privately is easier to fudge; one shared with an honest questioner is harder to rationalize.
Share the review with someone who will ask honest questions
- Tim Ferriss Annual Review
Tim Ferriss’s annual review is built on two questions — "What went well this year?" and "What did not go well this year?" — applied systematically across major life domains and answered with enough specificity to produce different decisions next year. It is a practitioner tool without clinical evidence, but its mechanisms (structured reflection, explicit failure review, behavioral specificity) are consistent with goal-review and learning research.
- Year In Review Raw Material
Pull the data — calendar, photos, notes, emails — before you begin reflecting, so memory does not do all the work.
Gather raw material before reflecting
- Year In Review Template
Pull the data — calendar, photos, notes, emails — before you begin reflecting, so memory does not do all the work.
- How To Do An Annual Review
Tim Ferriss’s annual review is built on two questions — "What went well this year?" and "What did not go well this year?" — applied systematically across major life domains and answered with enough specificity to produce different decisions next year. It is a practitioner tool without clinical evidence, but its mechanisms (structured reflection, explicit failure review, behavioral specificity) are consistent with goal-review and learning research.
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