LESSONS LEARNED

At the end of every year, I usually take some time off to examine my life in the past ten to eleven months. There are a lot of great locations around the world where I wish I could get this done like beach resorts in the Bahamas, St Vincent and Grenadines, Brazil and even Obudu cattle ranch in my backyard. “One day,” I say to myself. Let me not get carried away looking at Forbes’ best beach resorts in the world. The reality is that I do not get to go on retreats so I just spend time in the quiet of my habitat, in the confinements of Crib de la Mine and reflect on how well I spent my life. I look at every aspect of my existence on earth; physical, emotional, spiritual and professional life. I tell you, it’s a long look. It was Socrates, the great Philosopher, who said that the unexamined life is a life not worth living. How true! Every person, project, company must review or evaluate how they have done. This is very vital to become better or to improve the way things are with your life, project or company. There is a popular phrase that says that if you do business as usual, you would get the same results. Therefore if you want to experience differences in your life or work, you have to examine your activities so that you can note down what to do differently next time. To constantly evaluate yourself is to open yourself to new possibilities, change and progress. At this point I say "TM" because I have never heard this saying anywhere, I am sure someone must have thought it, evaluated it but I have articulated it, so "TM".

The first thing I usually do is to recall the goals and resolutions I set at the beginning of the year. Over the years, I have seen the wisdom of SMART goals. At this point I give kudos to my teachers that taught me about making goals Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time bound. When I have done this, I try to write a list of all the activities that I carried out this year and then I start to match these activities with my goals to see how much I have accomplished in accordance with my set goals. A lot of times, I find out that there are some activities I engaged in that were not planned for but I list them as part of my accomplishments. There were also activities planned for that was not carried out. For these activities I either strike them out or carry them over to the following year depending on how high they fall on my priority list. When I have done this, it is also noteworthy to mention that it is expedient to go through the things that have been achieved and evaluate how well you excelled at each of them. Sometimes it is not enough to just say you did something. I have a magnet on my fridge that says, “Every morning, I exercise up and down, up and down and then the other eye lid.” You have to ask yourself, “Did I carry out my activities to the best of my ability? Did I use all resources at my disposal to produce the results that I got? It is then important to write out the things you did so well that you would want to repeat in the future and things you could have done better and differently. These are the things I refer to as the lessons learned. This process is usually bitter sweet. It can bring both happiness and disappointment in oneself but you must remember that there is always room for kaizen – continuous improvement.

I have not started this process of examination but sometimes you start to learn your lessons from day 1 of the year. The three biggest lessons I have learnt so far are: One, never JUDGE anyone. Judging, I can assure you, is a sweet task to do. You get to over-analyze another human’s behavior. If you like you could even go as far as to analyze why they act the way they do going back into the person’s past as if you were there. You become an unauthorized psychologist, an unpaid one for that matter. Of course I have stories and experiences to back this up and will share them another time. The second lesson I learned is the importance of being tolerant. I find that it is a virtue both necessary for my faith and my personal growth as an individual with a desire to establish good relationships with myself, women, men and organizations. The third of the lessons is the art of silence. Knowing when to speak and with whom to speak to are very crucial in all ramifications of life. Sometimes the person you deem wise enough to reveal your mind to at this minute might not be the person you need to bare your soul to at the next hour. Be Wise! I know we have been given the freedom of speech but we have to be very careful. It is just priceless to learn this art on your own as compared to being taught by life.

Finally, I will not hesitate to praise and reward myself for the good things I have accomplished this year. At this point, I encourage you to praise and reward me in tangible ways especially with the advent of Christmas which is a time to give and show love. I will also encourage myself to do better next year. I refuse to punish myself for things I have not done right because I am not perfect and I can only aspire to be better. When I have accomplished all this, I will certainly make concrete plans for the following year for he who fails to plan, plans to fail. At this point, I cannot say "TM" because Winston Churchill said this during the World War II and it is very much documented.