What I Learned in 2021 — Good, Bad and the Ugly
3 major lessons I am grateful for this year
It is important to practice gratitude. Both the bad and the good experiences can teach you something. Maybe your start-up failed or your relationship was doomed to fall apart. You tell yourself it wasn’t meant to be, you didn’t try hard or you ran out of money. It is funny how both relationships and business are similar, though the two should never be mixed. You may be able to wing both in the beginning, even if you don’t carefully plan for the future.
But in the long run, you may not be able to weather the storms that come your way without careful planning. Without a clear mission and vision of where you want to see your company or your relationship in the next year, and a clear plan of how you will get there, you will not be able to survive any major setbacks.
So, here is the first lesson I learned in 2021:
#1. Always plan ahead but be flexible.
Always plan ahead and plan as detailed as possible. Be prepared to deal with any uncertainties that may come up down the road. You need to have a big picture of where you are headed so you can always keep your big vision and goal in mind. But you still need to be flexible enough to adjust to any last minute changes. Because life is not perfect and things can go wrong at any time.
You need to set daily, weekly and monthly goals. You need to be able to review your progress every week and make adjustments to your plans as needed.
Maybe your partner is telling you they need you to be around more. You may need to prioritize your relationship and add it to your calendar.
Maybe you realize you need to hire external help for your business to keep it sustainable. You may want to contact third-party companies or look for additional software to help you with your business.
Whatever it is, you need to be able to make adjustments and plan accordingly.
#2. Listen to feedback and practice self-awareness.
I mean really listen.
How many of us end up ignoring something that makes us uncomfortable even if it stares us right in the face?
I admit that I used to talk more than I would listen. I thought that I knew better than anybody else. I had a huge ego. I was always worried about not sounding smart. Other times, I thought I couldn’t trust people with my business to know better than me or to care more.
If your partner says you aren’t helping around the house enough, you need to separate your emotions and really take a moment to think if they are right. You need to be able to listen without talking about all the other good things you’ve done in the past. You need to practice self-awareness to decide if they say these things to hurt you or if you have really been slacking lately. There is a good chance that it is the latter.
Maybe your employees at work bring up to your attention how they are unhappy with the workload lately. Maybe they don’t get enough help and they feel burnout, fail to reach deadlines. You need to be able to listen and ask the right questions to understand why they are not able to finish their tasks. You need to be able to pinpoint why the bottleneck occurs and come up with systems to ease the workload on everyone.
This brings me to the last point:
#3. Always practice gratitude.
If you really think about it, all the bad and good experiences made who you are today. You should be thankful for all the difficulties you faced and all the failures you experienced, both in your personal and in your work life. You should appreciate the honesty people bring and the feedback they provide because, unfortunately, honesty is rare in today’s world. You should also be thankful for your ex dumping you or one of your employees deciding to quit.
After all, maybe you realize that you and your ex weren’t compatible or you just did not put enough effort into your relationship to make it work.
Maybe your employees decided to quit because you have been micromanaging everything and failed to trust they would do a good job on their own.
You should really focus on understanding from those failures and look for ways to maximize your efficiency in the future.
This can only happen if you ask the right questions, listen to feedback, be open to adjust your perspectives from time to time and remind yourself to stay humble.
So what did you learn in 2021? Share your experience with me in the comments.
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