August 16, 2022

What to ask yourself afterwards

woman's silhouette drawn on green background and a big question mark

Do you learn from what just happened? Or do you lose the learning by beating yourself up for failing, or swimming in your success, or just ignoring your past experiences?

Constructively reflecting on your experience of events is arguably the only way you will ever grow and develop who you are, so you have a better experience of the future events in your life.

And I don’t mean just ‘big’ events. I also mean events like going to the supermarket, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, reading a book. Do you do any of those ‘perfectly’ yet?

The habit of tweaking what you do, even by only a little bit, will permeate your life and over time improve it immeasurably. Think Kaizen, which is a combination of two Japanese words that together translate as ‘good change’ or ‘improvement’.

So, how do you reflect effectively?

What do you ask yourself?

Stop, reflect, and answer these three questions…

  1. What did I want to happen?
  2. What actually happened?
  3. What caused the gap – or What contributed to success?

    Note: You MUST start the answer to this question with “I did…” or “I did not…”

  4. What am I going do about it next time?

    Note: You MUST start the answer to this question with “I will…” or “I will not…”

Keep it short and simple, and stick to the questions. A long story is not required. Don’t be too soft on yourself, and don’t be too hard on yourself either.

You can also use these simple but powerful questions as a tool to coach others.

My best wishes, Paul

Paul Matthews

CEO and Founder of People Alchemy

share this article:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

related posts

Female graduate student at a podium giving a speech

If you were to give a speech

If you were to give such a commencement speech to ten thousand people about to start their adult lives, what would you say?

Read More
faint background a woman smiling. Overlaid in blue a stick woman walking up steps towards a flag at the top

Get visibility of what line managers are doing post training

Following training the attitude and input from the line managers of the delegates is pivotal in determining if they are able to operationalise what they learned.

Read More
An illustration of the animals on noah's ark

Are you a manager or a leader?

Is the whole leadership vs. management thing a red herring? Consider your own situation…

Read More
Cartoon coach shouting through megaphone at four students running up a performance graph arrow

Introduce another player to the trainee/manager relationship

After delivering training you want to see behaviour change. The trainee may want to discuss this outside their line relationship. Introduce another player…

Read More

search blog

Get your free weekly tip

You agree that we can keep a record of your details, and send you other occasional offers. See our Privacy Policy