Evaluated Experience is Your Friend
When things don’t go as planned, evaluated experience is your friend.
Up till now, I’ve talked about things in a pretty positive light. Want to grow yourself? Follow these guidelines, set some goals, and set yourself up for success. If you’ve started the process, I’m sure you’ve realized it doesn’t always work out that easily. We’re at the end of the first quarter of the year, and perhaps you haven’t made as much progress as you wanted. We all run into barriers and hardships along the way, and that’s the focus for today.
First I want to share a story about a friend. This friend always talked about losing weight. He was really fit and played football in high school, but as all adults have experienced, that goes away pretty quickly once you start your career. He would go on various crash diets which all had the same formula… eat very little and “magically” you’ll lose weight! Obviously, it worked for a few weeks, but then he hit a plateau and gained even more weight back. This happened year after year for a few years. He claimed that losing a lot of weight quickly was important and he liked fast results.
We are a society that really looks up to speed and tenacity. We cheer on people who keep getting up after they get knocked down, don’t we? The faster they get up to do it again, the more impressive it is.
You get started, something goes wrong, and you get knocked down.
You try again and something you didn’t expect happens, and you get knocked down again.
Now wipe your nose, get up, and push forward again, only to get knocked down even faster!
My friend, maybe you should just stay down.
We say experience is the best teacher, but that’s not really true. My mentor, John Maxwell, teaches that evaluated experience is the best teacher. After getting knocked down, maybe you should mull it around in that coconut of yours for a little bit before trying again. Is the strategy not working because you didn’t try hard enough? Or was it the wrong strategy in the first place? After you evaluate the experience, get back up and go at it again.
It was somewhere in the middle of the pandemic that my friend was tired of gaining back the weight that he finally decided to make a shift in his approach. Rather than doing crash diets, he would eat a little cleaner, eat a little less than he had been, and start to regularly exercise. Now exercise was boring to him, so he decided to get on a stationary bike and exercise while watching shows. It may not be the best for fat burning, but it was a sustainable action for him. In short, this became a lifestyle for him, rather than a tactic or shortcut to achieving his goal. He got good about saying no to eating certain things, or he exercised more that day to make up for what he would eat.
So if you’re struggling with your goal, I strongly urge you to take a minute and think about why it’s not working. I don’t have an answer for you, but maybe these questions will help:
Have I put my full focus and effort into this?
What else can I try?
If I were someone who was successful at this, what advice would I give myself?
This list isn’t exhaustive, but it should give you a start and lead to other questions to ask yourself.
Oh, my friend has done a great job keeping the weight off. He’s single and ready to mingle ladies, so if anyone is looking, let this coach know!
Kevin Koo is a professional coach who specializes in personal, business, and leadership development (and being a wingman). Contact him at kevinkoocoaching@gmail.com
