A Business Epiphany
June 27, 2008 by Miki Saxon
Post from Leadership Turn Image credit: zacchaeus
This week we’re supposed to write about “your business epiphany – what one moment influenced your career or business more than any other?”
Epiphanies are funny things. What we think is an epiphany (AKA, an ah-ha!! moment) when it happens may become more mundane in 20/20 hindsight, whereas a passing thought becomes monumental wisdom in that same hindsight.
What epiphanies I can identify fall in the second category.
Here is the one that’s had the greatest impact on me, because it stopped my laying all those coulda/shoulda/woulda trips on myself.
Don’t judge who you were and what you did in the past based on who you are and what you know now.
It wasn’t until I had to explain it to someone else that I was forced to think through exactly what I meant. Here is how I explained it then and have continued to explain it to clients and others ever since.
Each of us is composed of multiple, past “me’s,” each a different, stand-alone version from the current one.
When you look at past actions (Why did I…) you need to first ask yourself if you made the best decision/action possible based on the information you had at the time in conjunction with the person you were at that time.
If, in fact, you did, then the you you-are-now has no right to judge, i.e., beat up on, the previous you for that decision/action.
This doesn’t mean that you need to condone everything—today’s you may decide that in the future you should move in a different direction, do more research or whatever—but it does preclude you from taking your former self to task.
I hope you’ll consider saving yourself a lot of grief by integrating this idea into your own life.
What was your most important epiphany?
Your comments—priceless