Activity: Drawing on our past selves to help us navigate change
A reflection activity to uncover lessons from a prior experience.
While situations may differ, we’ve all navigated change before. By reflecting and sharing, we can draw on these lessons to help us now and in the future. Grab a friend and have a peer coaching conversation following the approach below (you can personally journal your answers to these reflection questions, but techniques that invite deeper connection through the power of conversation often spark new insights that we don't come up with on our own):
Reflect on a period of change when you made a bold decision or ventured into the unknown.
Describe this period of change to your peer then have them ask you the following questions:
How did you feel before acting? Use three words to describe your feelings.
What approaches or support helped you make your decision or take the leap?
How have you grown personally or professionally from this experience?
Swap over
Reflect on both of your responses, then answer the following question:
How might you apply these lessons learned to help you in a current or future period of change?
Key takeaways
Research shows people with resilient mindsets regularly make space for moments of reflection and ask powerful questions like these to transform periods of adversity into periods of growth. Deliberately practising techniques like this over time helps us to build our resilience.
We deepen our learning when we share and reflect on our experiences with others. Coaching conversations can enhance growth and well-being by fostering quality connections, sparking new insights and facilitating meaningful reflection.
Take time to recognise the resources and capabilities that we already have. They help to remind us that while past situations might differ, we’ve navigated change before and by reflecting and sharing, we can draw on these lessons to help us now and in the future.
Here to help
Stepping into the unknown and working out what is next can be uncomfortable and exhausting, but it’s also an opportunity for growth. If you are going through a career transition and would like more activities and questions like this to help share the load and get you moving forward, I’m here to help.
