One thing I don't do enough is reflection. 

I put so much focus on achieving the next thing and moving forward that I miss out on looking back, thinking about what happened, and learning from it. 

The truth is, the more one reflects, the more learnings one has to move forward faster.

So, every Saturday, I will share with you a "lookback" on my week. 

This includes *but is not limited to*:

I have never been great at encouraging people. I may think it, but I rarely take the extra step to let them know. That changed this week.

A friend of mine gave a sermon at his church last week, and after listening to it, I sent him a message to let him know how great it was. Another friend started a podcast recently, and I prioritized listening to his recent episode and giving him an attaboy.

As I approach my fourth anniversary with marketing (is that even a thing?) I invariably feel like I should be doing "more." Almost like I'm further behind than others who have the same experience as me.

Regardless of if that's true or not, it helps little to focus on that. Instead, I need to continue to focus on what I control (i.e., writing daily, learning about marketing + business every day, and making connections through my podcast). The rest will come. And if it doesn't, I won't blame myself; I did everything I could, and that is a peaceful place to be.

A trap we can fall into is thinking there is a specific time for sowing and a different time for reaping. If I did the work for the past X years, it's now my time to get the rewards.

While it'd be nice if life worked like this, it doesn't. You can't control how fast the tree grows (or if it does at all...). But you can focus on continually planting more trees. 

That's why rather than waiting for things to come to fruition, I focus on always planting new trees (building) and nurturing the ones that are sprouting.

When we do marketing, we forget we are also consumers. And how we prefer to buy and get marketed gets thrown out the window.

We make marketing decisions that we would never fall for or respond to if we took the time to put ourselves in their shoes. But we do them anyway because we forget to put our consumer hat on when marketing.

(A prerequisite question you first need to answer is "Where do I want to be in the future?")

Thanks for reading this week's lookback.

Now it's your turn to share:

Have a relaxing weekend!