Today I want to encourage you to see where you stand in the calendar of your life. In the appendix of my book, Leadership Just Got Personal, I include a timeline exercise. In this exercise you make a list of all the significant events in your life, good, bad or indifferent. Once you do that, figure out why they were significant by asking what values were honored or dishonored in the event. For instance, winning a ball game when you were 12 might honor the value of winning, or teamwork or a personal best. Then, ask it again. If you found that you value teamwork, then what about teamwork do you honor? Is it the mutual respect, the collective power of collaboration, the joy of celebrating a win with a group of friends…? While the book chapter goes into this in more detail, the point here is simply to get to a deeper understanding of where you place value in your life.
Now, the problem with this, and with so much of learning, is that we gain all this valuable knowledge from our experience, but then immediately learn more knowledge and more information and lose sight of the first piece of knowledge we learned. We are so overwhelmed with data and information these days that often what we want to remember is forgotten in the midst of new lessons. So how do we capitalize on all the stuff that we’re learning? The stuff that has value if we could just remember, take note and use?
How about starting here? Take a look at the timeline you’ve created above, then make a list of what you learned from those things, such as the value of celebrating big wins with friends. Now create a dozen or so calendar entries for the next six, twelve, twenty-four months to remind you of what you’ve learned. A simple note on July sixteenth might say, “Hey Steve–remember you love to celebrate big wins with friends.” If you want, add a note about the past experience that taught you this lesson so you can remember the point and the value. Do this over an over again to remember things that are important like how valuable you are, that no matter how dark things may seem at times, or your best friend will always love you. Or you can ask yourself questions such as, “Did you remember to smile 12 times today?” There are so many simple, important, invaluable little lessons we learn that make all the difference in the world for how we live, how we respond, how we lead ourselves and others and if we don’t make an effort to keep those lessons in the forefront of our mind they will drift away. New stuff is always piling on top of old stuff and it becomes challenging to keep and retain all the important stuff. Take the time now to stop and choose the lessons you want to remember in the future. Then take a step to remember them.
