Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Hindsight Is 20/20 . . . Or Is It?

We say that hindsight is 20/20. That is to say, that when we reflect back upon a situation that has occurred, it is "easy" to see what proper course of action in that situation should have been.

Yet I would say that our hindsight fails us more often than we care to admit.

Too many times, we look back upon a situation and criticize our own actions or the actions of others, without making any attempt to adjust our behavior for the next time a similar situation occurs. If we only use our hindsight to play Monday morning quarterback, and to declare what the "obvious" solution would have been if we had only taken time to realize it, then our hindsight is not really serving us.

Our hindsight is only useful when it translates into insight for future situations.

If we want our hindsight to be helpful to us, we must be intentional about recognizing the thought patterns that let us to a bad choice, and to recognize the situational cues that should have pointed us to the right decision in the first place. We should learn from those mistakes, and look for those situational cues as new challenge arise, so that our hindsight can inform our future decisions.

20/20 hindsight is no good to us until it translates into clearer foresight.

2 comments:

  1. I agree. There was something that I did a year ago and I regretted doing it and thought I was stupid doing it. But now, I don't believe that. Because the choice I did make proved to be a good one, even though I did't think so in the early future. So my hindsight of my hindsight might be 20/20. ;)

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