Remember, You Have Done Things To The Best of Your Ability

Whenever I facilitate retrospectives as a scrum master, I set the context for the participants by saying, "Remember, we have done things to the best of our abilities." All other retrospectives where I have been a participant have had other facilitators saying something to a similar extent.

This is said primarily to neutralize judgments that stem from different abilities and personalities. When done correctly, the retrospectives end up becoming about acknowledging past knowledge gaps and mistakes, discussing their effects openly and determining how to reduce and/or prevent them in the future.

Professionally, I have seen well-run retrospectives that translate to numerous long-term business benefits. Seeing the success of retrospectives in my professional life and how relatively easy it is for me to facilitate retrospectives at work, I thought I should try doing a retrospective on myself (which I realized is doing self-reflection). Initially, I forgot to tell myself "Remember, you have done things to the best of your ability",

This led to my inner critic being super vocal and eventually dominant. For the failed relationships I have had or moments of personal setbacks (a good few many to list out), I realized that I defaulted to blaming myself for not being able to protect myself during these moments. I kept stating things like "I should have known" or "Gosh I'm stupid for not being able to see that" and many other variations.

This just led to me developing self-loathe and that kept accumulating over time. What that did was whenever I had an outer critic who didn't even know me well being critical of me (e.g. a random Instagram follower), I started believing them more than any supporters of mine. I even had bouts of alienating myself from friends and family and picking up unhealthy habits like overeating and sleeping more.

There came a time when I realized that I was probably being overly critical during one of my self-retrospectives. Then it struck me, I forgot to set the context to myself that I have been doing things to the best of my abilities. So I started by having a physical sticky note on my desk that said "remember, you have done things to the best of your ability".

I realized that when I told myself that, any mistakes of mine were looked at objectively and instead of blaming myself for my past, I started looking at how to better myself for the future. What that also made me do is even give my past self the compassion and grace that I never gave myself, and that in turn gave me the healing I needed to go forward.

It is very easy to criticize yourself. It is much harder to show compassion towards yourself. The way I have started showing compassion towards myself is by saying to myself in the mirror daily "remember, you have done things to the best of your ability".

That works for me but maybe not be the right way for you. However, any way to constantly remind yourself that you are living each day to your best ability will make the positive improvement you are looking for.

Thus if you need a friendly reminder, remember, that you have done things to the best of your ability!