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Thinking Backward Is a Must

We drive into the future using only our rear view mirror.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN

I’ve spent most of my professional life in publishing. I’ve worked pretty much every job in the business—marketing, editorial, management. I even spent some time in literary representation and artist management. One of my clients had a number of very successful projects under his belt, and I was setting him up for what my business partner and I hoped would be a major new deal.

I worked my tail off for about a year, focusing exclusively on this one client. Before taking his new book to publishers, my business partner and I conducted a ninety-day, thirty-city tour with our client. Turnout was fantastic. We ran between fifteen hundred and two thousand people a night. When it was all done, my team and I were exhausted. But it was worth it. Our client’s existing publisher took notice and offered a preemptive two-book deal for a million dollars a book. Wow! My partner and I were over-the-moon excited. We invested a lot in this deal, and it was about to pay off in a big way.

We told our client and expected an enthusiastic response. But then we couldn’t get our calls returned. It was stone-cold silence. Something was up. After trying for a few weeks, I finally got a response. It was written in legalese, but the message was clear. On the verge of my biggest deal to date, I got fired.

The deal I lined up for my client was huge, but it made him think he could land an even bigger fish. He signed with an agency that promised they could do better. Meanwhile, I was left high and dry with nothing to show for my yearlong investment. It sent me into a tailspin. I was an emotional wreck. I felt like my career was over.

Backward Thinking

Completing the past is an essential part of designing a better future. “Reasoning flows not only forward,” as psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Dale T. Miller say, “but also backward, from the experience to what it reminds us of or makes us think about.” They call this “the power of backward thinking.”1 If we’re going to experience our best year ever, we need to harness the power of backward thinking for ourselves. Why?

We can’t complete the past until we acknowledge what we’ve already experienced. As a friend told me, “An experience is not complete until it is remembered.” We can’t just ignore it or wish it away. Whatever we have experienced over the last twelve months—or even further back—must be addressed. If we try to ignore it, it’s just going to come back to bite us. How? Sometimes we live inside unhelpful stories we tell ourselves. Other times we nurse grievances to justify our current actions or feel unvalued because we were slighted or disregarded in some way. If we don’t get resolution, we’ll drag all our unfinished business into the future, and it will sabotage everything we’re trying to build going forward.

We can reason forward and back. Backward thinking allows us to learn and grow, which facilitates greater progress in the future.

Now, before going any further, I want to stress something. The process I outline next is designed to help you deal with setbacks and frustrations. It’s not designed to help you deal with serious trauma. Many of us have endured some real shocks, even catastrophes. Maybe you lost a marriage. Maybe you lost a loved one. Maybe you experienced an accident, an illness, a violent attack, or the total loss of your business. Unless and until you deal with traumatic events, they can influence and even define your future in deeply unhealthy ways.

What I detail below can only get you so far. If you need to bring in outside resources, such as a therapist, I recommend you do. As Brené Brown says, that’s “pure courage.”2 For the rest of us, listing our disappointments and processing them can suffice.

The After-Action Review

The US Army has a helpful backward-thinking method. It’s called the After-Action Review. First developed in 1981, America’s armed forces have been using it ever since to improve performance and get better at what they do. After an event, the goal is to understand what happened, why it happened, and how they can improve. Lots of businesses use this process, and we can use it too. This kind of backward thinking will put you in an excellent frame of mind as you get ready to design your future and experience your best year ever.

Marilyn Darling, Charles Parry, and Joseph Moore studied the After-Action Review process for Harvard Business Review. They give the example of a training battle in the California desert. I’ll call the two sides Team 1 and Team 2. Team 1 was top-notch and rarely defeated. Their job was to help train Team 2 by running them through a near-life scenario. But in this case, Team 2 managed to surprise the trainers with an unforeseen attack plan. Whoops! Team 2 broke Team 1’s defenses and left them outgunned and outmaneuvered.

So let’s ask: Did the trainers hang their heads in shame and defeat? No. Instead, they conducted an After-Action Review. They studied what went wrong, what went right, and how to adjust their approach in the future. In fact, Team 1’s commander called it “a good rehearsal” for upcoming engagements. Why is this important? Because completing the past is all about moving into the future. As the authors of the HBR study said, an After-Action Review is “a living, pervasive process that explicitly connects past experience with future action.”3

I’ll next break down this review process into its four key stages. We’ll move through each stage with several questions, and I encourage you to use a journal or notebook to jot down your answers. Writing is a powerful tool for leveraging the power of backward thinking. According to a study by University of California researchers Sonja Lyubomirsky, Lorie Sousa, and Rene Dickerhoof, “Participants who processed a negative experience through writing or talking reported improved life satisfaction and enhanced mental and physical health relative to those who [merely] thought about it.”4 Ready to begin?

Stage 1: State What You Wanted to Happen

For the military, this is pretty straightforward. Think of it as the battle plan or the object of the mission. For us, this could be your list of goals from the prior year. It could also be something less definite. Maybe it’s a hope, dream, or unstated expectation.

Start by asking yourself how you saw the year going. What were your plans, your dreams, your concrete goals if you had any? Don’t focus on just one or two areas. Remember, our lives consist of ten interrelated domains: spiritual, intellectual, emotional, physical, marital, parental, social, vocational, avocational, and financial. It’s important to get clear on what you wanted to happen across all these domains. In the case of my personal example above, I wanted to raise my client’s visibility, enhance his desirability to publishers, and land the biggest deal of my career to that point.

Blake, one of my 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever alumni, planned to move to New York, find a new job, and invest in a long-term relationship. But right before he took the leap, life took a turn. His girlfriend broke off their relationship while he was visiting in New York. It was a Monday. On Wednesday his neighbor back home called to say a tree had fallen on his house. “Fortunately nobody got hurt,” Blake said. “But they did condemn the building.” If that weren’t enough, his mom called that same week and said she was selling her house—which was an emotional blow because he grew up there and had a lot of attachment to the place. “So I went from going to pursue this girl and do this new career to no relationship, homeless, and no childhood home either.” If his year were a movie, Blake said it should have been titled I Didn’t Expect It to Go That Way.

Maybe you can relate. As you think through each life domain, don’t be surprised if you start feeling uncomfortable. I can tell you from previous students who have worked this process that you might experience profound emotion. Some people feel disappointment. Some feel sad. Others get angry. “I had so much emotional baggage around having failed achieving my goals in the past and around my health problems, and unresolved conflicts in relationships,” admitted Ray, another 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever alum. “I never before had the emotional experience I had going through that complete-the-past exercise.” Others enjoy real excitement.

This isn’t true for everyone, of course. Mileage varies, as they say. Don’t be surprised if you don’t feel any significant emotion at all. The important thing is to just be aware of your feelings as you work through these four stages.

Stage 2: Acknowledge What Actually Happened

As you stated what you wanted to happen, you probably became aware of gaps. You wanted to drive from Los Angeles to New Jersey. Meanwhile, your car threw a rod in Arkansas. There’s a distance between your desire and current reality. Some of your goals, perhaps many of them, remain unfulfilled. So ask yourself: What disappointments or regrets did I experience this past year?

Because these memories can be painful, it’s tempting to dismiss or ignore them. But as journalist Carina Chocano says, “The point of regret is not to try to change the past, but to shed light on the present.”5 You don’t want to leave these hanging in the air or push them behind you like they don’t matter. Both will prevent you from taking meaningful action in the present. I’ll return to the subject of regret in the next chapter. I want to share some research findings that can trigger powerful personal and professional growth in the coming year. For now, it’s enough to jot down your disappointments so you can begin doing business with them.

Another question to ask yourself: What did you feel you should have been acknowledged for but weren’t? This question was powerful for 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever alum James: “A lot of my limiting beliefs came from the past and the failures I had,” he said. “Truthfully, they weren’t big failures, but my mindset at the time was ‘You’re failing, you’re failing, you’re failing.’ There were a lot of things that I wasn’t acknowledged for. And I translated that into, ‘Well, you must have not done well enough.’” When he recognized that, James was able to reframe it. “No,” he told himself, “you weren’t acknowledged because you’re in the wrong place.” That realization ultimately led to renewed confidence and an important career change.

Let’s face it: Some version of that story happens to all of us. Maybe you’re a single mom who works hard, provides for your kids, and overcomes the odds every day. Or maybe you made the heroic decision to stand for your marriage when you really felt like quitting. Maybe you committed to sacrifice part of your morning to exercise when it felt like you really didn’t have the time. Whatever it is, there’s real emotional power in just admitting what we wished others would have noticed and commended in our actions but maybe didn’t.

Don’t stop there. What did you accomplish this past year that you were most proud of? Completing the past is not just about processing failures and disappointments. It’s also about acknowledging and celebrating your wins. It’s important to observe not only what went wrong but also what went right and how your beliefs and behaviors contributed to that outcome. We often downplay this or never think to do it. But it’s key to recognizing our agency and how we’ve overcome obstacles already. That gives us confidence for the future. It could have been something like running a 10K or even a half marathon this last year. Or maybe you celebrated a milestone in your job or marriage. Maybe you completed a degree or paid off the last of your student debt. Maybe you launched a new business or you beat your sales targets by a significant percentage. Regardless of what it is, it’s important to acknowledge what you accomplished this past year. I bet you’re doing better than you give yourself credit for.

Natalee, the 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever alum I introduced earlier in Step 1, said this exercise was “pivotal” for her. She came alive as she analyzed the positive impact she had on people she left in her previous job. “I realized that I had done some really amazing things,” she said. “It felt good for me to acknowledge that myself. But it also felt good to acknowledge that I was moving across the country and I was picking up my whole life. I was quitting this job that I loved, and I was doing it for my family. It was really good that I took the time to congratulate myself on those accomplishments.”

To finish this stage, it’s useful to tease out some themes. What were two or three specific themes that kept recurring? These could be single words, phrases, or even complete sentences. For me, this past year was about being wildly productive while protecting my margin. Not only did we launch a new book, we also created and launched a new online course as well. But it was vital for me to do so while still getting the rest and rejuvenation that makes that kind of productivity possible in the first place. That’s just me. Maybe your theme was making difficult decisions in a challenging economy. Another one could be challenging negative beliefs about your body. Or maybe it was stepping out and starting a new business. Or restoring a damaged relationship. There are as many examples as there are people.

Stage 3: Learn from the Experience

Let me go back to the story that started the chapter. When my client fired me on the verge of our biggest deal to date, it floored me. I thought I had done a great job. Besides, we had enjoyed a long-term personal relationship. I worked my tail off for about a year, focusing exclusively on this one client. But my client wasn’t so impressed. He had his eye on bigger things and decided I couldn’t take him there. So, without so much as a discussion, he dumped me.

In the end it was a humbling but helpful experience. I learned three important lessons. First, clients (and customers) can be fickle. I couldn’t afford to put all my eggs in one basket. If I didn’t spread the risk, I might find myself in serious trouble again. Second, I learned I couldn’t assume today’s victories would be remembered or appreciated. I had to keep raising the bar. Finally, I learned I needed to secure alignment from all the relevant parties up front. It turned out my client and his board had different ideas about what I was delivering. All three lessons have been invaluable over the years.

What about you? What were the major life lessons you learned this past year? Unless we learn from our experiences, we can’t grow. You’ve probably heard the line from the Spanish philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” If you have trouble identifying your key lessons from the year, one way to suss them out is to ask what was missing from your success. Maybe it was strategic planning—you wish you had done more of that in your business. Maybe you wish you had saved more money, spent more time with your spouse, or played more with your kids, or taken a sabbatical, or read more books. Listing these missing ingredients is an effective way to learn what went wrong and what it would take to go right in the future.

Santayana also said, “Progress . . . depends on retentiveness.”6 To retain these lessons, you’ll want to distill your discoveries into short, pithy statements. That transforms your learning into wisdom to guide your path into the future. Just for example, here’s one I wrote down a couple of years ago: “There comes a point in every experience when I’m too far in to quit but almost certain I can’t finish. If I keep moving forward, I’ll eventually get to the other side.” That was an important life lesson for me to learn at that time, and I can pull it up when I face similar experiences today. Here’s another one: “Don’t overthink the outcome, just do the next right thing.” Or, “I can do anything I want. I just can’t do everything I want.” I’m still not done learning that lesson!

You get the idea. Distill the lessons from your experiences so you don’t lose them and so they can serve as tools moving forward.

Stage 4: Adjust Your Behavior

If something in your beliefs and behaviors contributed to the gap between what you wanted to happen and what actually happened, something has to change. In fact, that gap will only widen and worsen unless you pivot. It’s not enough to acknowledge the gap. It’s not even enough to learn from the experience. If you don’t change your beliefs and how you act on them, you’re actually worse than when you started.

If I hadn’t adjusted my behavior as a result of what I learned from getting fired, all that grief would have been for nothing. I would have found myself in the same situation again and again. Instead, as I’ve progressed in my career I’ve acted on those lessons and have saved myself a lot of trouble as a result.

I mentioned before that businesses often use After-Action Reviews to improve their performance. But the improvement doesn’t always happen, does it? The reason, according to Harvard Business Review, is that organizations drop the ball at the end. They usually don’t apply what they learned, so their findings just gather dust on a shelf or get lost on a server someplace. Don’t let that happen to you.

Going Forward

Despite the rough start, after finishing his After-Action Review, Ray said it was “the most powerful part of the course” for him. Why? “When I was done with that process I felt so clear. It was like there were a thousand little windows open on my computer at the same time, and I was able to—click—close all the windows. It was very freeing.”

I bet the same will be true for you. Thinking backward like this can help us learn from the past and positively build our futures. The four stages of an effective After-Action Review are beneficial for completing your past. But it’s also beneficial to recognize that some of our greatest disappointments may lead us to our greatest possibilities for the new year. I’ll cover that next.