We win or we learn
“Winning and losing isn’t everything; sometimes, the journey is just as important as the outcome.”
A whole years gone by already of this pandemic and there’s one thing to reflect on. Learning is the most important part of it all.
Learning to adapt with the situation, homeschooling adventures with my nephew, making a banana bread, creating animated pictures and inclusion and diversity. At times I have failed from learning but I tried again, again and again.
There are 7 ways on reflecting and learning:
1. Humility: the spirit
Do you know everything? Do you believe you shouldn’t fail? Your responses to these questions will determine if you’re a learning spirit or otherwise. Humility is about what is right and not who is right. It’s about taking responsibility and having open mindedness, being objective and realistic whilst keeping connected. The opposite is pride; blame, denial, insecure and isolated. Changing from pride to humble doesn’t happen overnight, it’s not a passive process. Humility always wins.
2. Reality: the foundation
If you want to succeed in life and to learn from our losses, we must be able to face reality and use it to create a foundation for growth.
John C Maxwell
We should accept the 3 realities:
Life is difficult
Life is difficult for everyone
Life is more difficult for some more than others
Nothing comes easy but with action, initiative and maintaining that energy to carry on and solve what went wrong.
3. Responsibility: the first step
To make progress in life, we have to understand we are responsible for our life. When we don’t take responsibility, we end up having the victim mentality.
Nothing happens to advance our potential until we step up and say ‘I am responsible.’
4. Improvement; the focus
Improvement is a daily commitment. Our desire shouldn’t be competing against others but rather compete with who you were the day before. We should aim to move out of our comfort zone. It is not looking for the quick fixes but rather it’s the never ending process of taking small steps.
Ask yourself: what did I learn today? How did I grow today? What will I do differently?
5. Hope: the motivation
People who learn are motivated by the hope they have. As life gives punches that see us encountering losses, don’t allow ‘hope’ to be among our losses. Hope is a choice.
Choosing hope will reward most of the times which comes in small victories. Small victories will fuel us and the hope we have for ourselves.
6. Adversity: the catalyst
If we want to know yourself, adversity will introduce you to yourself. The character of a person is tied and tested the minute adversity walks in.
It’s how you respond that counts through areas of improvement. Respond positively as it creates a great story telling moment as life moves forward.
7. Problems: the opportunities
If we want to gain strength from every problem, challenge or loss, we should face this with the determination to gain something from this. We encourage ourselves to:
Anticipate
Communicate
Evaluate
Appreciate
We should think positively about the problems and be enthusiastic on how we should feel about it. Together, it will determine what we do.
Learning is not easy but it is not impossible. It demands discipline and decision. Being ‘uncomfortable’ does not always mean it is wrong.