Reflecting on the past and planning for the future are powerful ways to ensure you make and keep your goals. Understanding what choices, behaviors, and activities have led you to where you are can help you make the best choices moving forward.
If your outcomes haven’t been what you’d hoped for, reflecting on the past is a great way to identify what isn’t working, but don’t count out what is working too. That’s because life is complicated and while we may be missing the mark in some areas, we are also crushing it in others. Identifying what works and what doesn’t is the key.
How Do You Know What Is and Isn’t Working?
You may be well aware of some thoughts and habits that are, and aren’t, serving you, but you may also be blissfully unaware of a whole bunch more. Being intentional and purposefully reviewing your past can reveal a lot.
Start By Breaking Things Down
Whether you are doing an overhaul on your life or hyper focused on one aspect of it, you’ve got to break things down.
Let’s say you want to change your diet for the better. Breaking down your past and current eating habits is the best way to start. Review your eating history by recording your typical diet or the types of foods you’re used to consuming. Analyze these foods against healthy food options and see where things stand.
From there you can dig deeper and explore your thoughts and feelings about the foods you have chosen in the past and what habits, mindsets, and behaviors reinforce those choices. Did your family grow up eating highly processed foods? Were most of your dinners served through a drive-thru window?
After you’ve spent time reflecting on the past and how it has impacted your diet, you can determine what, if any aspects work for you and which do not. Maintain the ones that work and look at ways to drop or replace the activities that don’t work.
Keep Doing What Works
Your reflection will reveal habits or mindsets that work well for you. Keep doing what works. Celebrate where you feel successful and complete. Recognize your strengths and use them to help motivate you in areas you may want to change. No matter what the situation, there is always something good happening.
Stop Doing What Doesn’t Work
When you recognize a habit or mindset doesn’t serve you, it’s time to evaluate and make changes. Sometimes changes will come easy. For example, learning that consuming a candy bar and soda at 3:00 pm spikes blood sugar, adds calories, and causes you to crash at 5:00 pm can help you make the easy decision to eat a protein-rich snack instead. Easy fix!
Other times, change can be harder. Recognizing why you want to eat an entire pizza every time you feel discouraged likely has more to do with a past trauma than a true hunger response.
Either way, reflecting on the past can help you determine what thoughts and behaviors don’t work and begin to find a way to replace or overcome them.
Reflections For Progress: Avoiding Old Habits & Embracing Growth
This helpful resource is designed to help you identify the business habits that aren't working for you, an how to embrace the ones that maximize your growth. Enter your infomation below for a FREE download.
