Okay so you understand the importance of keeping your visions for the future firmly implanted at the back of your mind to keep pushing you forward. But there are two other spirits we are yet to be visited by…and again, not wishing to conform to societal norms, I am going to skip right through the spirit of present times and focus on that which visits us from the past…
Looking forward is essential. It creates a “point B” we need to get to. But if we’re moving forward, what’s the use in looking back?
Well, much as we discussed last time, moving through time is like driving a car. And while you should spend the majority of your time looking forward, if you don’t take a look in the rear view at the reference points behind you or perhaps those in the sites to the side of you, you’re not going to get where you’re heading because something might creep up on you and interrupt your progress.
Looking back is reflection. Reflection is essential to progress. But why?
1. Reflection gives us an opportunity to learn from past mistakes and successes.
We always hear people say we should use history to learn from it. We can see patterns in society and civilisation and the hope is we can use that knowledge to avoid the same disasters we encountered in similar circumstances. You are the same. You’ve had disasters. You’ve done stuff that worked and also stuff that didn’t. You know, like that time you got absolutely shitfaced on Corky’s and realised you should never finish the night off with 12 shots of the stuff…? Yeah, you learnt from that mistake. You have to make mistakes in order to understand what works for you; you have to try out different combinations of time blocking to understand how you and your family work, you have to understand what works for you in terms of perhaps working from home, outsourcing tasks around the house or in your job, things that worked for you when it comes to nutrition and exercise. But if you never spend time looking back on these things, you can never properly acknowledge what works for you and what doesn’t. Reflection, looking back, gives you the opportunity to do just that.
2. Looking back allows us to appreciate how far we’ve come.
Being the high-achiever that you are, you’re constantly striving to do better. You always want to be a better version of yourself. But that also means that sometimes you’re pretty hard on yourself. Sometimes you’re so busy slogging your guts out and focusing on the future, that you forget to acknowledge that where you are now, was at one point, somewhere far in the future you wanted to get to. It’s at times like that where it’s important to reflect and really evaluate how much you’ve achieved. This gives objectivity and helps to fight a fear mindset. It’s also something that’s absolutely necessary to assess whether we’re putting the right amount of work in front of ourselves; have we achieved what we wanted? Are we experiencing the quality of life we expected at this point? If not, then we need to understand why and make sure we change the plan for the future to accommodate those things.
So looking back in the rearview mirror isn’t something we need to spend 100% of our time doing. I normally recommend a brief reflection every week, which doesn’t have to be, nor should it be a painfully long and in depth process. Save that. In addition to that, it’s good to have a slightly more detailed check in at the end of each “section” which might be a month or a quarter and then of course, at the end of a longer period of time each year.
Reflection shouldn’t be a chore, it shouldn’t be a positive learning process that we all need to engage with in order to move forward.