Consciously taking our learnings forward

At the end of each year, I like to reflect on past successes and challenges – to learn from them and take this wisdom forwards.  I do 2 things – firstly I create a visual diagram (as below) which helps me to focus and organise my thinking.  My ‘big’ learnings usually cost me emotionally as I debate with myself how best to proceed, thinking through options, taking the impact on myself and others into account, then making and implementing a decision.  So why not gain a continuous benefit from this effort?

​To keep this quick and simple, you can create a map of your greatest Celebration and/or your biggest Challenge during any year by simply drawing the circles and arrows as below and responding to the questions in them.  You can also draw the circles twice – once for each type of situation.
 
What did you learn about what you did well, from both your Celebration and/or your Challenge?  Keep doing this in the year t come.  What did you pick up about what didn’t go so well and what may benefit from a little tweaking or a makeover next year?  Make this one of your goals for the upcoming year.
 
My second activity is to create a poster (displayed in my office) as a colourful reminder of what I learnt.  The poster above represents my greatest challenge which was a facilitation activity over several days.  I was taking a sizeable risk in using symbols that I had chosen (boats and fish) to represent aspects of the work we would be talking about.  I learnt that the symbols and my design engaged participants but there was too much sitting.  This is frequently a challenge in days of facilitation – so I now design with a colour code for when the participants will be sitting and when they will be moving around, seeking to balance this.  Are you transferring your past learning/s consciously into your future work?