A time of change forces us to take decisions based on little information and without knowing how things are going to turn out.
One way to become better at this is by learning from our past — especially from a time when things didn’t turn out in the way we wanted or expected.
To do this, first think back to a time when you took a decision where events didn’t turn out in the way you wanted or expected.
Then ask yourself four questions:
- Remember the situation: What was going on? What was the choice you made? What did you expect to happen? What actually happened instead?
- What story did you tell yourself about this at the time? Did you judge it as a ‘failure’? Did you tell yourself that you ‘should‘ have known what was going to happen or done something different? Did you blame yourself or others for how things turned out? And most importantly, with hindsight, what other interpretations are also possible?
- With hindsight, what other actions might you have taken instead — to ignore, leave, fix, or improve the situation or prevent it from arising in the first place? Or how could you have chosen to learn from the situation?
- And knowing all this, would you now still make the same choice again? Or would you choose a different action?
To get the maximum benefit, answer these four questions before you read on.
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What was your answer to the fourth question?
If you decided that you would still make the same choice today then that teaches you that you can trust the choices you make now. Because even if things don’t turn out in the way you want or expect, it is still the right choice for you to make.
And if you decided that you would make a different choice then that also means that you can trust the choices you make today because even if things don’t turn out in the way you want or expect, you will still be able to learn from what happens and make a better choice next time — in the same way that your past has taught you what you know today.
In this time of massive change, nobody can predict what is going to happen. And with so much change happening so fast, all we can know for sure of is that many things are going to turn out differently from the way we want and expect. That is just the way it is.
So what matters now is no longer the ability to predict what is going to happen. In an uncertain world, that is impossible. What matters most is to be clear who we are and what matters most to us. Then let go of our assumptions, find the opportunities in the situation, choose our best way forward for now, manage our upsides and downsides, and then inspire ourselves and other people to long to make that goal happen — knowing that we won’t always get it right and that is OK. Because even when the situation turns out differently from how we wanted or expected we can still learn and move forward.
This is the attitude that enabled Thomas Edison to invent the lightbulb. Each time he failed he said:
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Learning from our past, especially from times when things didn’t turn out in the ways we wanted or expected, enables us to take another step towards becoming antifragile.
Over the next six months, do you expect it will become more useful or less useful to be able to take decisions based on little information or without knowing how things are going to turn out? What steps are you taking to prepare for that?
Adapted from Inner Leadership: a framework and tools for building inspiration in times of change.
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Photo By Markus Binzegger via StockPholio.net