Where Are You Starting From? (Productive Flourishing Pulse #476)

Have a conversation with "past you" to help answer that question

Chalk on a sidewalk that says, “YOU GOT THIS”. Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash

During last week’s Quarterly Planning Session, before setting our goals and objectives for the quarter ahead, Charlie had us pause and time travel into the past.

It seems counterintuitive to spend time looking back when you are primed and ready to move forward, but by doing so, you’re better able to see where you are now. Why? 

Because it can be really hard to get to where you most want to go if you don’t know where you’re starting from.

So after our round of victory laps where members shared their Q1 wins, Charlie encouraged us to take a few minutes to go back in time and share these wins with a past version of ourselves. To go back five years, three years, one year — or even just one quarter — so that we could see how much we’d grown, how many “receipts” or wins we’d collected between then and now, and recognize just what we’re capable of.

What would “five-years-ago you” think of where you are today? Where are you better and stronger than you were then? What are the wins that you couldn’t even imagine back in that time slice? Maybe things that come so effortlessly now that you almost forget to count them, but for “past you,” they’re beyond your wildest expectations of success.  

Five-years-ago Maghan was brand new to the PF community and had only just started reading a certain weekly newsletter called The Pulse. Past me is delightfully surprised and utterly amazed to realize that five years later I’m a frequent contributor to that very newsletter and blog, Head of Education at PF, and coaching others using the very frameworks and ideas that were so new to me back then. 

Past me is very proud of present me and present me is so very excited about what's to come.

The exercise also made me realize how I’d been setting my starting line well behind me — in my past. Maybe not back as far as April 2019, but certainly not here in present day 2024. The exercise made me see that it’s not my goal I need to make more reachable, but rather myself I need to move forward — so I’m starting from the place of strength I am actually standing in today.

I know what brought me here won’t necessarily get me there but I’m no longer going to discount that I did in fact make it here. I’m stronger, more resourceful, and more resilient than I was five years ago or even one quarter ago. And that is all the proof I need to start the next leg of my journey.

Before setting your sights on the horizon ahead, take a moment to look back and see how far you’ve already come. Then make sure to adjust your starting point accordingly. 

Future you will thank you.

~Maghan

PS: As I was writing this I came across some other ways we miss our real starting line. Look for those as a PF post in the not too distant future.

Other News & Features

• Join us next Wednesday, April 10, 2024, for our next Monthly Community Coaching Call (MC3).

• Charlie made an appearance on Billion Minds’ Humanity Working podcast, talking about his most recent book Team Habits. (Billion Minds is an amazing org that designs employee experiential learning for better change management.) 

Reads and Seeds

Thanks to Charlie for reminding me that

Steve Arensberg

and I have written pieces on our personal Substack publications that relate to this concept.

• Oh, the irony of having a publication called Dots Connect and not seeing the connection between this Pulse and a piece I wrote a few months ago asking the very question: “Where Am I?” “Only once you look around and come to grips with where you actually are and what you actually have can you move forward and do something. [...] And that allows us to open up to what is possible. Not hopes, not dreams, but very real steps we can take to create a new reality, one of our choice, one of our own making.” 

• In his piece, “What Voices Are You Listening To?,” Steve encourages us to focus on the voices that encourage us instead of those that hold us back. “My soul says, ‘If you don’t write what’s inside you, you will regret it. Go make your thing. Do it anyway, even if no one but you ever reads it. Do it for yourself. And do it for the one person out there who might see it and be changed by it.’”

• And one more:

  Anne Helen Petersen
  ’s essay, “Myths of Grit and Passion”, touches on past selves and time travel, too — on individuality, and how personality traits like shyness, creativity, confidence, and organization are influenced by our childhoods: “Think back to your childhood. If you failed at something — how did your parents react? If you struggled with a task, a game, an obstacle — what advice or feedback did they give you? Did you ever talk about figuring out who you wanted to become, or what path you wanted to follow? Did they encourage you to try a bunch of things and figure out your passions… or did that seem like a waste of time and money? In hindsight, what did you feel they wanted most for you? Stability? Money? Success? Happiness?”