Lessons of Experience – Learning from My Past

As an introvert, my natural learning disposition is to reflect on my day or significant event that lands impact on me. I enjoy that quiet, protected time to think about what actually happened, what I experienced, the impact that landed on me and others, the insights gained from the events, and learning approaches that I might consider to learn better in the future. It also allows me to process my emotions and actions to bring a sense of calm and peace.

Every experience you have can provide a learning experience. The ability to reflect and process these experiences is key to an individual’s success in life, and especially key in leadership development. It may not be a natural way of learning for all but is something one could pick up, put in practice such that it becomes a habit.

General Application

I was first invited to do a simple life line of my life experiences more than 15 years ago at a training programme. Though still a very much a noob at the start of my career, the exercise raised my self-awareness on my values, principles and my trigger points. Since then, I have translated that exercise into different applications which I will share in my future posts.

A life line may consists several significant events, presenting a humongous task to complete if you are doing this for the first time. Instead, I invite you to identify 3 crucible events, which are critical moments in your life that have hugely impacted you and significantly shaped you as a person.

Pen these events down in your journal:

1. What was the event and when did it happen?
   (Be specific so that it aids your reflection and learning.)
   
2. Significance of the event
   (Aim: to help you identify why the event is more important than the others, especially in the aspect of shifting your belief system.)
   • What made this event important? What was the impact?
   • What did you take away?
   • What were some of your assumptions, beliefs, behaviours or values that changed after this event?
     
3. Learning and Reflection Process
   (Aim: to raise awareness of how you think and reflect upon the event, both cognitively and emotionally.)
   • What questions do you typically ask yourself
   • What were some things you did or others did that enabled you to learn from the event?
   • What were some of the things that hindered you from learning?
   • Looking back, what would you have done differently to learn more effectively from this experience?
   • What questions would be useful to ask yourself?

Creating More Learning

In the process of reflecting on these crucible events, you may to add in an additional dimension to think about how the event had a lasting impact on career choices or leadership practice, to gain additional insights to how the event had shifted your assumptions or belief system and impacted on your current choice of behaviours, actions and decisions. You may be surprised to learn why you tend to react or response to agressiveness by avoiding or why you are easily embarrassed in certain situations.

The learnings you gain through these exercises can be use to translate into development goals to shift your choice of actions and responses in future similar events. If you find it hard to guide yourself through this process, seek out a partner, friend or a coach to support you.