Do you reflect on and take the positive from your past experiences?
Does the prior version of you return to report?
We are all practicing life each day, each week, each month, each year.
Everything is an experience.
Some experiences are routine and habit, like waking up, making and drinking coffee, driving (or walking, as the case may be these past couple of years) to work or school…
Other experiences have a great impact on our lives. For example, completing a personal fitness challenge, finishing a significant work project or a life event like marriage, kids or moving into a new home.
Especially for these larger experiences, there is huge value in the reflection process, or in having the prior version of yourself come back to you in the present to report on the experience. Seeing your present from your past self can help you take a lesson from the experience. That lesson can be used to improve your life going forward. This is certainly true for me, which is why I bring this idea to you.
When I look at life as practice, and am constantly looking for ways to improve, my experiences become great opportunities to apply the lessons of my past life as I go forward.
I love the simplicity of this message, because it is so true.
Too often, we get wrapped up in what went wrong.
Not often enough do we shift to consider what we can do better next time.
Focusing on what went wrong is not the correct attitude, because nothing went “wrong.”
You did the best you could do at that point in time.
The benefit of practice is that you get to reflect on your mistakes and use them as lessons to learn what you can do differently or better next time.
Accepting that you are not expected to be perfect, that you will make mistakes and that those experiences result in lessons that are valuable to refine your future will create incremental momentum and growth.
We are all learning. Every day. And that’s the way it should be.