Reflecting on the year that was
“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” - John Dewey
As a society we have selected this specific position in our revolution around the sun to indicate a new beginning. As random as it is we might as well make the best of this tradition and remind ourselves that our time on this planet is finite and we would be served to capitalize on anything that might make our next trip around the sun more meaningful.
Some of us have had a year of mostly hell and hopelessness. Others might be deeper into their recovery but have not been so far removed from it all that they have forgotten how terrible life can be sometimes. Then there are those who have been able to take their struggles and genuinely become stronger and more mature through it all. How can some learn from their suffering while others wallow in it?
Malcolm Gladwell made famous the “10,000 hour rule” of mastery. The idea was that if we were to do a task for 10,000 hours we would be world class experts. The detail that often gets overlooked is that it is not merely a lot of time spent on a task that makes one a master but deliberate practice, which includes significant effort, attention, and coaching in order to make the time spent practicing truly lead to mastery.
So it is with recovery from psychological disaster.
The passage of time does not guarantee recovery. Deliberate practice for our purposes looks like meaningful and often painful reflection, most likely with someone trusted like a family member, friend, therapist or all of the above. It’s about identifying our blind spots that keep us from learning from our mistakes. How much do we blame others or make excuses? What aspects of our disaster are we still unwilling to own? What reality are we still denying to protect our egos but which dooms us to repeat our same mistakes?
We can reflect on what went well as long as we remain grateful for the circumstances and people who helped make that happen. We want to be careful about taking too much credit for our success, lest we become blind to the external resources that may not always be there for us.
More importantly, we must reflect on what did not go as well and how we have brought about our own misery. This is not meant to drown us in blame and shame but to empower us with the sense that we are in fact in the driver seat of this vehicle called life. Since we are responsible for our pain that means we are also capable of getting out of it. The more we project our failures onto the others the more likely we are to repeat them or fall in to learned helplessness.
Most of our successes and failures have been due to the patterns of behaviour we have been unconsciously living for years. If we don’t accurately identify those patterns we are reduced to living our life by chance and the more we suffer without learning from it our odds of suffering again go up.
Reflect gently but objectively on your past year and learn from your gains and losses and then you will find yourself more firmly and consistently in the captain seat of your ship.
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
William Ernest Henley