Why You Should Reflect on Your Milestones

What are Milestones?
Some truths about milestones:
- We all have some
- We all are they way we are, in part because of them
- At some point they shaped our behaviour
So, what are milestones:
By definition via dictionary.com a milestone is:
“An action or event marking a significant change or stage in development.”
Therefore, milestones can take many different contexts: career, education, personal goals, past, future etc. And the way in which we define them is unique to each individual person, as they should be.
However, the milestones that we should work to understand are not those that we’ve been blindly taught to measure our success and well being relative to others but those that signify to us a time when we have changed. These can be moments or experiences filled with fondness or with complete disdain as both play very important roles in how we grow and build ourselves.
Why Milestones are Important
We need them to understand where we were, where we are, where we’re going and why. That’s why milestones are important. They are the “why” to understand our path in life.
They are signals to our present self to understand who we’ve become. They allow us to mentally follow a bread crumb trail back to our defining moments.
This is self-reflection and it is a beautiful thing (learn more about why it’s important in a previous post here).
Only after self-reflection can we start to understand ourselves. After we understand our current selves can we start to intentionally create change to alter our path moving forward.
By taking the time to understand we can start to be insightful and help others when we recognize that they may be going through similar situations.
Developing Through Cause and Effect
Life is experienced and therefore understood through cause and effect. You do something and as a result another thing happens. We learn this as a child at a blistering rate. We learned that stacking Lego one block to high will cause the tower to fall down. We learned that if we try to run without learning to balance it will cause us to fall and hurt ourselves.
Now as adults, we are still learning through cause and effect but much of the learning we decide to ignore. For example, we do this with small things. If I stay up late and wake up early, it will cause me to be tired. The reasonable thing would be to try to go to bed at a decent time to avoid the following days grogginess and late afternoon red-eyes. Unfortunately, this queues are rarely taken.
This is magnified for larger events, we do not seem to understand the effect side of our experiences or bother to take the time to understand. Instead of blinding living and continuing on about our day, we should work to understand our own nature by looking at what caused us to be the way we are. Only through self reflection and the discovery of our milestones will we be able to start learning and changing into the person we hope to become.
Where it Began
I write about this now because it was a lesson I learned in first year university and it has stuck with me ever since. I was living in one of the on campus dorms when one night I got a text from my friend. We’ll call him Dan and he lived on the same floor as me. It read:
“Hey man, kinda bummed. Wanna come chill?”
Now, I didn’t and I still don’t get these texts often but I wish I did. The realness, openness and suppression of pride and ego mean everything.
I got out of my room and walked about 10 doors down and went right in. He was sitting there, having a beer just relaxing on his computer — it was a Saturday night. We sat for several hours, just listening to some music and hanging out. He had a bunch of Drake posters plastered over the yellow tinged walls, clearly painted decades earlier, so I asked about them. Turns out, Drake was one of his favourite artists growing up (probably still is) and his music helped him through quite a bit. We started talking about what happened and Dan narrowed down the reasoning for his pretty cold exterior to a few key things, his milestones.
- When his father became disabled
- When his older brother went to jail
- When he lived in a small town but remembered the day he set his sights on bigger dreams
It took hours to draw all this out but it was clear that he was at peace with it all and that by really digging deep and understanding himself, it allowed him to explained to me who he truly was and why. It bounded our friendship for years to come.
I’ll never forget that day. In the same night, I took a long time to figure out (for the first time) what happened in my life that clearly helped shape me. I finally narrowed it down to four events:
- When I found out my dad was in the hospital because of a heart attack
- When I quit the sport I loved (soccer)by walking away from tryouts
- When I moved schools at the age of nine
- When we got our first dog
Now these things on their own, may or may not seem significant but they were the foundation and ignition for the lessons I learned to become the person I was at that moment, in our first year dorms.
Not only was it profound, it was a the jumping off point for my journey of self-reflection, empathy, compassion and giving back.
Challenge: Take 5–10 minutes today and think about what major events have shaped who you are today, why they are important/standout, what can you learn about yourself as a result of that experience.
Tips: Find a peaceful space, calm down, take a few deep breathes and really dig deep. Go as far back as you want/can.
When you’re done feel free to share your story with us and our community.
Originally published on theflagmovement.com
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