I’m sitting on a train cruising through Tokyo. There is a mist of rain falling and even that amount can cause trains to slow down. I’m using that time to continue to ponder how to make this year a more successful year than the last.
This isn’t a slight against what was earned last year, but I am a fan of taking stock and moving forward. I ask myself the simple questions that come with sometimes difficult answers:
Where did I succeed?
Where did I miss my target?
And, for both paths, how can improve?
These are the three main questions, with of course an endless way of building off of them.
There is so much going on in any one life that sometimes all we can manage is to just sail through, weathering both storms and sunny days. In fact, in many cases that by itself is a tremendous success.
But, taking the time to look back and try and see where I can make more use of the positives I developed does indeed help make the next set of waves in life easier to crest. Denying myself times of inspection lends itself to repeating mistakes of the past.
However, take caution when exercising introspection. The wounds we give ourselves can be just as grievous as those from another. It is tempting to think in terms of failures.
But that term holds power. It can push us to the ground and keep us there. Thinking in terms of failures, especially those in everyday life, can keep us from trying. Growth, learning, is a difficult task. Looking back and branding our experiments as failures can feel like a full stop, denying ourselves the opportunity to learn from them.
I don’t want to stop trying. I want to keep moving forward and attempting new things. Undoubtedly some of those attempts will not go the way I planned. But what keeps me moving is the knowledge that I can examine those setbacks and try again, but with more knowledge than before.
2020 is going to be a great year. I have more knowledge than a year ago.
Let’s get started.
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