Are you a glass half-empty or glass half-full - type of person? And how does that relate to your experience of passage of time?

I'm asking because today is the last day of the first quarter of 2026. Part of me feels like it was January 1 and I blinked and here we are staring at April. I could focus on the part of the year that's already DONE. But part of me also feels like it was a slower and more deliberate first quarter thanks to my weekly client accountability meetings every Monday. I'm actually choosing to focus on how great Q1 was AND how much of 2026 is left - a perspective shift for me.

WAMs are where the magic is happening

If you've been around SEAR for a while, you've probably heard us mention WAMs. In The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington (which we've talked about in our SEAR Community and Toolkit), the authors emphasize the power of Weekly Accountability Meetings (WAMs) as a cornerstone of execution. These 15 to 30 minutes small-group meetings are meant to keep participants honest about their weekly commitments and progress toward goals they have set to achieve in 12 weeks. In these Monday meetings, the participants account for and score planned-versus-completed actions and state top intentions for the coming week, while also getting support and coaching from the group. Moran and Lennington advocate that this ritual of consistent, lower-stakes accountability transforms intention into action, creating the social pressure and support necessary to close the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. And I feel that happening both in my client-participants and in myself.

But back to today - this week is a different sort of week: it's essentially an in-between week - week 13 or a week 0 - depending on how you're relating to it. And in yesterday's WAMs, we took a moment to reflect on first quarter accomplishments and learnings.

The reflection and recalibration process is something that I personally often glaze right by (in a sort of "who has time for that" arrogance). But I took to heart The 12 Week Year's encouragement of reflection upon completion of the 12-week cycle (which, by the way, does NOT need to neatly fit into a quarterly system). The 12 Week Year advocates for investing in this reflection: the person who reflects well, executes better. So this week I'm taking it all in.

Reflection Process

Quarterly reflection processes are not new of course, and they aren't rocket science. Our business coach is even requiring it - it seems that I can't escape it! But that doesn't necessarily make it easy.

So this week's coaching encouragement is simply to encourage you to set up a reflection and refinement process for yourself and your clients - and what better time to do it then today, the end of Q1?

I deliberately started my reflection process with celebrating:

• What was accomplished and what are you proud of from Q1?

Because honestly we were often talking mostly about failures in execution on our weekly calls (sure, there were plenty of wins but the peer coaching happened mostly around failures). Starting with the celebrating was really fun - we got to hear a range of wins from my new love of weight training to an early- in-the-quarter promotion (that was almost forgotten and glazed over) to the start of a job that had been in the works for over a year to hitting a quarterly income goal in an unexpected way. These were moments to cheer on and be inspired by.

And of course we broke down the nitty gritty too, asking the harder questions and beginning to sketch out next quarter's plans. Reflecting on questions like:

• Was the goal met?
• Where did execution break down, and why?
• What habits and routines actually moved the needle — and which ones were just good ideas that didn't produce?
• Is there a connection to the bigger vision?
• What thoughtful adjustments need to be made before committing to the next plan?

The yearly glass is mostly still full

It turns out that this reflection is actually my favorite part of coaching - not only is it fun to pressure test ways of living and dig into making change - but it's also fun to do that celebrating: to really see another person and honor their efforts. At the end of our WAMs this week, people were energized by the idea of Q2 and continuing on the path of 2026, knowing that there is so much more of this year unwritten as of now. But the reminder is that no matter when in the calendar year we pause to reflect, celebrate and recalibrate, the important thing is to take the time to do it.

I'm always going to advocate for a process that involves supportive collaborators and community members. It's just more fun (and dare I say effective!) that way. If you are looking for a weekly conversation to really get your Q2 moving, hit reply and I can give you information on our Monday WAMs - Suzee and I run several groups each and are really loving how effective this is for ourselves and for our clients.

Remember: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." — Winston Churchill