Project Alchemy Part Ten: Revisit Your Project In Time

Project Alchemy Part Ten: Revisit Your Project In Time

Once you feel you have worked through all the recommended steps, you may think your job is done.  You’ve reviewed, reframed, accepted and analyzed.  Now it’s time to just move on ... right?

Almost.  You have done a lot of hard work to turn your less than successful events into positive experiences, and you deserve major kudos for that!  But your job is not quite over.  Let's not close that chapter just yet.

Any person of real, raw experience will tell you that the true lessons from their past did not reveal themselves for some time, and in some cases, for even a decade or more.  It wasn’t until years later that the businessman realizes that the early failures in his sales career taught him perseverance and determination, skills that would be called into play as he led an incredibly profitable company through some very tough times.

The mom of three didn’t realize until her kids were grown and gone that the lessons she learned about juggling personal and professional responsibilities would serve her as she now works with single mothers in an outplacement agency.

The football player who got injured in the first game of the season did not realize at the time that he’d need to call on that same skill of resilience when he worked in his career as a sports agent and helped others through a similar situation.

That’s why it’s up to you to continue to revisit these parts and pieces of your past, continuing to look for patterns and clues that may only reveal themselves in time.  That’s not to say you have to go through the same levels and steps of dissection.  But it is important to periodically review your steps and stages.

A good time to do this exercise for your business and projects would be as part of your annual planning, either with your business coach or on your own.  When you sit down to look at what your plan is for the future, take a look back as well.  Look for the same things: the patterns, the clues, and the lessons.  Use this information in your planning.

For more personal topics, you can conduct this review with a trusted friend or a therapist.

In either case, you may want to keep a log – a section in your notebook, or a file on your computer – where you keep your associated notes.  While you may think it’s not worth the effort to revisit the past (and sometimes we convince ourselves it's not worth it, but only because we are not being honest with ourselves that it is too painful), it’s a step in the process you don't want to skip over.  You never know what lessons you may learn for planning for the future by taking the time to go back.

Failure is, simply put, a fact of life.  We fall down, we get back up.  While you cannot avoid it, you can choose how you react to it, (and even better for us once we learn to respond rather than react) and whether you use it to inform your future.  There are lessons hidden in each and every one of our life experiences.  It’s up to us to decide if we’re going to go through (the sometimes admittedly painful) excavation process.

I hope that this guide has provided you some suggestions for how you can transform your own tough experiences into fuel for future projects, and for whatever success means to you.  Remember, you are never alone in this process.  

If you feel you need support – and we all do – you have many resources at your fingertips, both online and off.  Business coaches, mentors, counselors, and even trusted friends and family members can help you put your fall-backs into perspective.  Keep it real, keep on moving, and all best wishes!

If you wish to go back to the start of this Project Alchemy series, please start here.