In last week’s post we took a look at how memories, and the strong emotions associated with them, can keep us stuck in the past and influence how we deal with present situations. We also looked at how we can reframe our memories into a story that helps promote growth and success. This week we’ll outline 5 steps you can take to get yourself out of the past and looking forward into your future.
Looking Back to Look Forward
In Judith Glaser’s book “Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results“, she suggests an exercise to look at the past, find new meaning from significant events, and create successful behaviour patterns.
You can do this on your own, but it’s much more effective to do with a trusted partner, friend, or better yet, your coach. In this exercise, choose events in your life that are significant. Write them down and then ask for each event “What can I learn from this?”
Rather than bringing along the negative feelings, revisit the event and reframe the way you think about it. Aim to extract wisdom from the situation that you can take forward into your current and future life.
Step 1: Draw a Life Timeline
You can do this graphically using a line drawing, or make a list. Outline your lifeline into three segments: the first third of your life, second third, and last third.
Step 2: Identify Significant Events or People with Big Impact
Looking at each time segment, identify the events that had a significant impact on you. Write down some key words to anchor them. Find at least one episode in each time frame. Each experience will have a key event, people, a story you made up about it, and a takeaway lesson you formed at the time.
After identifying your timeline stories, share them with a partner or your coach.
Step 3: Find Patterns and Meaning
As you share your stories, ask your partner if he or she sees any patterns you may not have seen. Help each other to step back to see the big picture. As you get to the present, see the larger patterns in your life. Capture insights.
Step 4: Back to the Future
Each partner takes turns at looking into the future to see what’s next. How is this life pattern going to impact the future? Is there a pattern that you want to replicate, change, or do differently? Find the elements of wisdom for your life’s journey.
Step 5: Map Making
As you reflect on your life from this perspective, what lessons can you carry forward to enhance your personal or professional life? What are your biggest takeaways?
Trust in the Future
Everyone grows along life’s journey, some in ways that are beneficial, others in ways that restrict their potential. The point is to grow and evolve, not to repeat the same stories and diminish our possibilities.
When you do this exercise with your coach, you use your past to enhance the future. Personal growth and wisdom come from being able to look at the past and reframe and revise our stories so that we continue to evolve for a changing future.
As always, I would love to hear from you. I can be reached here or on LinkedIn.
