Becoming Wiser By Reflecting On Your Experiences
It is the end of the year and there are already a lot of webinars and workshops about how to make resolutions and set goals for the new year.
While this is good (even though it’s not the best approach in my opinion because I’m a big advocate of starting with clarifying your vision in order to set goals that really motivate and inspire you), let’s not jump into 2022 without learning some lessons from 2021!
I don’t know who said this, but I do believe it’s true: “People don’t learn from experience, they learn from reflecting on experience.”
If we learned just by experience, everyone who lives on earth would become very wise within just a few decades!
We usually don’t invest the time to reflect because we are so busy getting more things done, so eager to jump to the next activity on our to-do list or, at night, we are eager to go to sleep after another exhausting day.
Some of us get absorbed in relaxing activities and distractions, after working hard for jobs and/or our families.
There are some people who don’t reflect because they misunderstand reflection as being stuck in the past, either bringing up regrets or feeling proud of what they did.
I'm puzzled by all the Christian leaders who say to not look back and to look forward.
Non-Christian leaders are saying that 2021 was even tougher than 2020, so we need to get the best out of 2022.
I think when people describe the year in terms of “bad” and “good” what they want to say is whether the circumstances of their lives were favorable or not, whether all their dreams came true or not, whether their desire for comfort was satisfied or not. But this is not the main important point in our Christian lives. We are here on Earth to glorify God by being faithful followers of Jesus in any circumstances, by growing in His image, by loving our neighbors as ourselves, by sharing the Gospel through our deeds and our words. Amen?
Ok, coming back to reflection, in my opinion, reflecting on experiences means taking the time to learn more about God, ourselves, and others. In other words, to grow in God-awareness, self-awareness and other-awareness.
It means taking the time to be grateful for all the good things that we did, through God’s grace. It is also an opportunity to learn from mistakes and “unsuccessful tries” (a better expression for “failures”).
So, the main objectives of reflection are:
to understand, maintain and develop the things that are good, with gratitude and humbleness
to learn what to change and how to change, with responsibility and self-compassion.
If you want to do some reflection, you may use some questions that I prepared.
Please use the ones that make sense for you (this doesn’t mean “the most comfortable ones”).
If you have other questions that you usually use and are very helpful, please do share with us in the comments!
What were the most important events that happened in your life in 2021?
2. Looking at those events that you mentioned above and maybe others not “so important”, answer these questions:
What did I learn about God?
What did I learn about myself?
What did I learn about others or relationships?
What did I learn about my work?
What did I learn about my ministry or volunteer work?
3. What are the mindset shifts, actions, habits that you are grateful for and you want to maintain in 2022?
4. What are the things that you knew you needed to do in 2021 and you didn’t get around to doing? What do you want to accomplish in 2022, by trusting in God for the strength to work for and achieve the results you want to obtain?
5. What were your biggest distractions in 2021 and what can you do to avoid them in 2022?
6. Who were the people who helped you the most in becoming a better person or achieving your goals in 2021, and how can you show gratitude to them?
7. What are the things that you need to start doing or do differently in 2022? (“Do differently” doesn’t mean only with different strategies, but also with a different mindset or different attitude of the heart.)
8. If you were to summarize all the important things that God wants you to learn from 2021, what would you take away from it?
I hope that reflection on our experiences will really make us wiser and better people!