What Went Well & Why – A Weekly Review

by Jess Van Den | Mar 6, 2015 | Community, Other

Do you review your progress on a regular basis?

Do you have a routine of reflection – thinking about what worked, what didn’t, how things could improve, and why things that worked, did?

I want to invite you to join me in the TC FB group each Friday to do just this.

Every Friday, I’m going to ask you a simple question about your business.

What went well, and why?

You might already have a review system in place. You might already have a gratitude practice.

Perhaps you have neither.

Whatever your current practice, I wanted to give you this opportunity to reflect and share about your journey each week, in a way that focuses on the positive – not the negative.

This exercise comes from a book called ‘Flourish’, by the father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, who is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

The idea is to not only think about what went well – which is what we do when we have a gratitude practice – but to take that next step and actually think about WHY it went well.

Why is this important?

From the book:

“We think too much about what goes wrong and not enough about what goes right in our lives. Of course, sometimes it makes sense to analyse bad events so that we can learn from them and avoid them in the future. However, people tend to spend more time thinking about what is bad in life than is helpful. Worse, this focus on negative events sets us up for anxiety and depression. One way to keep this from happening is to get better at thinking about and savouring what went well.

For sound evolutionary reasons, most of us are not nearly as good at dwelling on good events as we are at analysing bad events. Those of our ancestors who spent a lot of time basking in the sunshine of good events, when they should have been preparing for disaster, did not survive the Ice Age. So to overcome our brains’ natural catastrophic bent, we need to work on and practice this skill of thinking about what went well.”

If you’ve ever heard of the ‘write down 3 things you’re grateful for each night’ exercise, this is where it’s from. But, along the way, the last part of the process seems to have gotten lost.

“Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before you go to sleep. Write down three things that went well today and why they went well. You may use a journal or your computer to write about the events, but it is important that you have a physical record of what you wrote. The three things need not be earthshaking in importance (“My husband picked up my favourite ice cream for dessert on the way home from work today”), but they can be important (“My sister just gave birth to a healthy baby boy”).

Next to each positive event, answer the question “Why did this happen?” For example, if you wrote that your husband picked up ice cream, write “because my husband is really thoughtful sometimes” or “because I remembered to call him from work and remind him to stop by the grocery store.” Or if you wrote, “My sister just gave birth to a healthy baby boy,” you might pick as the cause … “She did everything right during her pregnancy.”

Writing about why the positive events in your life happened may seem awkward at first, but please stick with it for one week. It will get easier. The odds are that you will be less depressed, happier, and addicted to this exercise six months from now.”

So, come over to the FB group and share your WWW&W with us. You can share just one thing, or you can share 3, if you like.

See you in the Circle!

Jess x

Further Reading:

• Flourish by Martin Seligman
• I got the above 2 quotes from this Brain Pickings article, though I saw them elsewhere, too.
• Find out more about Marty Seligman here.