Hindsight is when you look back on a situation and would do things differently knowing what you know now. Try looking at current problems as if you are looking with hindsight at them from the future – how would you solve it, what extra signs would you listen to and what advice would you give yourself?
Thinking about the current situation as if you are looking back on it in the past frees you from consciously ignoring important signs because you don’t want to deal with them, and allows you to look much more objectively upon the situation, giving you much more freedom to find a better solution you’re much happier with.
How do I use hindsight as foresight?
- for each problem you are reflecting on, identify what behaviour caused the outcome. Did you think you were too shy, or that the signs were there but you chose to ignore them?
- now identify what the ideal behaviour would have gotten you – for instance, if you had been less afraid of failure then you would have gone for the opportunity.
- act as if you now have that behaviour. If being too shy stopped you from getting the best outcome last time, it will stop you from getting the best outcome this time until you change your behaviour to get the optimum result.
- changing to remove the old, limiting behaviour will ensure that the lesson from that problem has been learned, that you won’t put yourself in situations where it needs to be learned again, and that going forward you will consistently get better results.
Read more
- Hindsight-Foresight-Insight @ LearnTheLessons.com
Excerpt: The wise man went on to explain that one needs a balancing point, a point where you can see both ends, or both points, simultaneously. “What you need, my fellow, is insight; which is vision in the moment, that’s the transfer point between hindsight and foresight. Insight is neither hindsight or foresight, yet it is of both.”
- Using Hindsight As Your Foresight @ the change blog
Excerpt: Take the failure of the past, and maneuver the new predicament the way you wanted the old failure to work out. In life, you get as many tries as it takes until you understand a concept. You can’t move past something, to the next step, until you understand the concept behind it. The goal of using the failure in this way is to open your mind up a bit more. Your hindsight is a source of mind-opening material. One other important part of this is to trust that you can outdo or work around the failure this time around.
image by LTDSupport under CC0 license
