Looking Back…And Learning

Last week I wrote about taking advantage of important moments and how I felt blessed to have had my family here over the last few months. As I thought about that a little more, I realized that there is a second piece. Not only should you take advantage of those unique opportunities but we also should regularly look back and learn from our past experience, and that of others.

Look but Don’t Dwell

Before diving into a couple of these areas, I want to set the stage just a little bit. I am a perfectionist. I don’t want to make mistakes, I don’t like looking back and realizing that I made mistakes and both of these things can really frustrate me and impact my attitude. So I have learned that I need to look back but not dwell on my own past.

Here is an example. If I look back at the last several months, there were definitely times when I didn’t fully take advantage of the time I had with my family. I still prioritized other activities. If I were to have that opportunity again, I would like to do a better job of prioritization so that is my goal in the future. That’s all I need to do: recognize what I would like to do differently and then try and do it. If I were to sit and think about every instance where I didn’t prioritize as well as I would have liked to, it would really start impacting my attitude and it would be way more negative and dramatic than it needs to be.

My advice to everyone is to look to the past to learn, but don’t dwell in the past. Recognize what you want to do differently next time and then move forward.

Learn From the Experience of Others

As my kids were growing up I tried to emphasize that some of the things I was trying to teach them were based on my own experience, both things that worked well and things that didn’t. The same thing applies as I coach and train team members and leaders. I base much of what I do on my own experience. When it comes to making mistakes, I have always tried to emphasize that the best way to avoid big mistakes is to learn from the experience of others.

I think some of the actual words I used were “It’s easier to learn from the trials others went through instead of going through them yourself”, or something like that. You can look at family history, historical figures and in many other places to find individuals that have had similar experiences or been in similar situations. If you are willing to look and then identify what you would have done differently in their situation, you might be able to have a different result.

And it isn’t just history you can learn from. In today’s digital age, we have access to so much information. There are books available only almost any topic you can imagine. Not to mention the web and it’s vast amount of information (some good and a lot not so good). Online learning is also becoming more and more prevalent, not just for formal education but for things that are much less formal. LinkedIn Learning is a great example of courses that may not get you an official certification or degree, but may be very relevant for your current opportunity.

Take some time to learn from others. Identify those topics, authors, individuals, etc. that are most interesting or relevant to you and then dive in. It will be worth the effort and may help you better achieve your objectives.

Learning Through Experience

As much as I would love to avoid pitfalls by learning from the experience of others, there is no substitute to learning from your own experience. This applies to both positive and negative experiences. In fact, we most often grow more from mistakes, pitfalls and failures than we do from successes. That seems to be a way of life even though it directly conflicts with my perfectionist tendencies.

I need to regularly work on managing my fear of making mistakes. For me it requires conscious effort and deliberately decided to take risks (mostly small) or move forward even if I don’t have all the information I would like to have. If I don’t manage that fear, then I end up staying in my comfort zone, becoming complacent and not living up to my potential. An even bigger impact is that I don’t have an opportunity to grow through failure.

So manage your fear and be deliberate in taking risks that will help you learn and grow.

Lastly, look back on occasion (don’t dwell) and identify lessons learned and opportunities to do things differently in the future. I would also encourage you to write about your experiences. Don’t assume you will remember how things went or what happened and definitely don’t count on your memory for lessons learned. Write it down. Add lessons and what you want to do differently to your leadership kit. Keep a journal. Share experiences with others. Just pick a way to do this and be consistent. Without writing it down, you risk repeating and for me, that’s not appealing at all.

Summary

Learning is so important in our lives. We can’t grow without it and without growth, I believe we wither. Standing still just isn’t realistic. Learn from others, both in the past and present.

Deliberately seek out sources of learning that will help you on your personal journey.

Don’t be afraid to learn from your own experience. This means managing any fear of making mistakes, taking deliberate risks and then learning from them by documenting your experiences and lessons learned.

Doing a combination of these things will help you to continue to learn and make yourself and others better tomorrow than today.